Feed: Silk Painting with Deborah Younglao - AggScore: 48.4

Well I haven't got much further with "After Midnight", since I went to visit my cousins and Mum in South Carolina this past weekend. I took the piece with me, thinking I'd have lots of free time to work on it... . I like to to keep my hand busy while I'm chatting.... but I'll give you 3 guesses how much of it got done!
We went up into the mountains to see the fall colors and they were just beautiful.... the colors seem more intense than ever this year. That's Mum and me in the photo at Caesar's Head Sate Park.

I've started some machine and hand stitching. The painting is backed with batting, and the stitching is beginning to give it a nice dimension. Gotta figure out where I want to applique my moon....

Several years ago I created some designs on silk for a textile designer. Some of my designs were sold, but I have a pile of the unsolds sitting on a shelf, waiting to be transformed into something else. Every now and then I take them down and look through them to see if any ideas jump out at me.  This is one of my favorites - I love the rich purples and blues and organic lines. What happens is, I stare the piece down until it finally speaks to me! I was thinking this could be water, but it said to me, "After Midnight", so I guess it wants to be the night sky! I'm thinking some machine and hand quilting, addition of a moon and stars.... we'll see what develops....

Yay - I had these 2 paintings accepted into a silk painting exhibition in Maryland! The show, called "Silk Is…", is sponsored by Silk Painters International (SPIN) . It will be held at the U.S. Federal District Courthouse, 6500 Cherrywood Lane, Greenbelt, MD from October 29, 2009 through January 26, 2010. The opening reception is 5-7 pm on November 21st.

Any of you out there in the DC area, please go visit this show if you can! The courthouse is a wonderful space for art. It has a huge, 4-floor atrium with lots of natural light, that will be filled with silk paintings from all over the world, with many different styles and methods of presentation - it will be quite a sight!

I called this "The Wanderer" because the dyes were poured on freely and left to go where they wanted, and I also started the stitching with no idea in mind, literally wandering over the painting with my needle, seeing what developed. Sometimes I would stare at it, clueless where to go next. I'd start a few stitches, pull them out if they didn't work, and try somewhere else. And so it went...

The quilted painting is mounted on stretched canvas, which I covered first with another piece of dyed silk. At first I was going to just paint the canvas black so the background would be solid, but I decided to go silk all the way and dyed a piece black plus the colors that are in the painting. I think I do prefer the color variations to a solid color.

I knew that I wanted the silk beads to dangle (or at least appear to do so) but wasn't sure how. I 'auditioned' several ways from plain thread to strung beads, and finally hit on what I think works pretty well - wrapped pipe cleaners! These are plain white chenille pipe cleaners (remember when you used to play with those in kindergarten?), that I've wrapped with various bits of yarn and threads. Another thing to do with scraps that I simply can't throw out! The wrapped cleaners and beads are glued on, but it does look like they're dangling. I also brushed gold paint around the edges of the painting and on the tops of some of the folds. Below are a couple of close-ups.

No they're not fuzzy critters! They are beads I made by wrapping and glueing scraps of painted silk around bits of plastic straws, then embellishing further with yarn and/or glass beads. I think they're fun. I'm about to mount and finish off this hand quilted piece that I did back in July, and will use these beads as part of it.


Thanks for all the good wishes about my trip! I'm back in the US now, and Mum is happily settling in with her niece in South Carolina (her house is handicap-friendly , ours is not) and we'll be visiting back and forth over the next few months while she's up here. Our trip from Barbados was long but went quite smoothly. We were so impressed with the level of service given by the American Airlines wheelchair attendants on all segments of the journey. They were most efficient, attentive and respectful. None of them could believe their charge was 92 years old! Mum declared that the trip was pretty easy compared to the horrors she'd been anticipating - so we're very blessed and thankful.

Well I didn't win any awards, but thank you all again for your input on choosing paintings for judging! It was really quite fascinating to see the different points of view. Next time I have to make any kind of decision like that, I'll sure know where to go for help!

There were no major sales for me at the show, but I sold a truckload of notecards and a few small originals, so I'm happy with what I did get. The biggest blessing was the lack of rain despite the forecast for a 60% chance on all days. Although skies got very black at times and spewed out a few errant raindrops, the thunderstorms conveniently waited till nighttime to make their presence felt!

I've just been home for 2 days and will be off again tomorrow for another five. My 92-yr old mother, who lives in Barbados, is coming Stateside for a few months. She can't travel alone, so I'm going down to 'collect' her. I'm hoping to do some much needed blog-catching-up while I'm down there, but I hear that they're having computer trouble, so I might be out of touch again for a while. I think I'm getting me a Netbook for Christmas so my internet is more mobile!

Man, you folks rock! I mean really. I'm blown away by the time you've all taken with this, and with the thoughtfulness and depth of your comments! As artists, when we create something, we usually have a particular objective in mind and manipulate our medium to hopefully achieve that goal. So many thoughts race through the mind - composition, color, edges, placement, etc, etc etc. And then there are things that just spontaneously happen while we're creating that happen to work with the piece, and elements that we didn't even realize were there but that others see. Your participation in this "creative brain tease" as Don calls it has been so helpful to me, not just in choosing a painting to be judged at the show, but in discovering what you saw in this small cross section of my work. I'm going to refer to your comments often when I'm planning future pieces!

Right now Season's End is in the lead by a very slim margin. I leave for Atalaya on Thursday morning, so will tally the final result on Wednesday night and let you know.

Dear blogger friends - Weekend after next (Sept 25 - 27) I'll be at the Atalaya Arts Festival in SC. This show is unusual in that each artist has to pick one piece from their booth to be judged for an award. (Usually the judges look over the whole booth and decide for themselves). The 6 paintings shown here are the ones I'm considering and here's where you all come in - help me choose one! FYI the last 3 with the birds are quilted paintings.

Tell me which is your favorite, and if possible, why you like it. Everyone who votes by commenting here or on Facebook, will receive 2 of my art notecards. They are photos of my paintings that I've mounted on 5" x 7" cards, blank inside for you to personalize. Two examples are pictured at the end of this post, but I have over 40 images that I'll pull from randomly. Each card comes packaged in a clear plastic sleeve.

I'll take votes up to Thursday 24th, and use whichever painting gets the most votes. Just send me a message with your mailing address so I can send your cards. Have fun playing and thanks for your opinions!

I was tickled to read the comments on my previous post. I made my husband read them to prove to him that I have many Sisters in Mess! (He says he's sometimes afraid to enter my studio for fear of getting lost)!

Well we had a really nice class yesterday. It was small - only 3 students due to a couple of cancellations, but it meant we all had more room! They were all trying this medium for the first time and did a great job. Painting with liquid dyes that don't stay where you put them can be quite daunting at first. They couldn't believe that they could arrive knowing nothing about silk painting and leave with a finished piece - but they all did! I wish I had laid bets - I could have made some extra moolah! We had some good conversation and good painting. Here's the class and their finished scarves. Pretty good for just one day of painting, I'd say.

There's nothing like company coming to get a professional procrastinator like myself cleaning up the confusion I call 'home'. Well really, that's the only reason I ever tidy up. I'm teaching a silk painting class tomorrow in my home studio and am wading through the piles of stuff that have been accumulating there for months, to make room for the students to work. I'm sure the bottom layers of the bigger piles must be turning to stone by now. An archaeologist would have a grand time in my studio. Actually I feel like one, unearthing all sorts of forgotten treasures ("Oh, that's where my so-and-so has been hiding!" or "Gee I didn't even remember I still had that whatever!").

Now that I can see the surface of tables again my studio looks so much bigger and I feel like both it and I can breathe more freely. And it's such a relief not to have to play hopscotch to get from point A to point B becuase of all the obstacles on the floor. The sad truth is, with lightening speed after my students are gone, chaos will begin its always-successful bid to take over once more. But at least for a weekend every now and then, I get to start afresh with a clean, shiny and spacious workspace. And I feel very blessed.

Here's the completed Bev's Blossoms, 40" x 30". You can better see the veining created by dyeing over the cracked wax by clicking on the pic to enlarge it. So the whole painting wasn't batik technique, but I borrowed the wax cracking from it to introduce some more texture. I still haven't decided whether to mount this one and Cherry Blossoms 'n Lace on stretched canvas, or sew them into hangings. It was fun working from your photo, Beverly - keep taking those beautiful pictures!