On Tuesday, I had my first full experience making paper. A friend who has been making paper for years, offered to show me a while a go. I've always been interested in the process and have bought myself some of the equipment required. I looked at the box and I got overwhelmed with tackling the process by myself. As a hands-on learner I do best when I can do each step myself with someone guiding me. So I shredded my paper, soaked it, and brought some petals and leaves from my garden for inclusions. Discovered that I had not prepared the inclusions properly, so we cooked them in the microwave as a stop-gap. (Not sure how that will work out!). Then put the pulp in the blender and used my frame and deckle to scoop out the pulp to form a sheet. Flip it out on felt (without messing it up), load the felted sheets into a press to squeeze out as much water as possible; then peeling off each sheet to get them ready for the drying process. Let it be said that there quite a number of steps before you have handmade paper. I look forward to seeing the final product once it's dry. I'm getting lots of ideas of how to work with this process and develop my own approach. So many ideas.....so little time it feels like.
I did do painting this week. This is one that I have finished using a modeling paste to create texture and I used four colours in acrylic which I got to blend in the middle ground. A little addition of gold and I like the results.
Monday I had to sit outside and keep mom company, so I worked on these two studies of a picture of a sunflower. the first one is done with water soluble ink and graphite pencils and the second one is done with watercolours.
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