Textures in Bark

Using bark to create textures inspires me.  Plugging images into the shapes of the bark allows other shapes and dimension to appear.  Here are a few textural images from bark.

The Sketchbook Challenge

A few weeks ago, Sue Bleiweiss asked me to be a guest blogger for her Sketchbook Challenge.  Tomorrow my post will appear on the blog.  If you haven't heard of this, you should check it out.  This is an amazing group!!!

Sketchbook- Noun; A book filled with dreams and inspiration.

I am one of those people who creates journals, notebooks, sketchbooks whatever you want to call them all the time, I have tons.  When Sue asked me to write a post I was thrilled. The opportunity enabled me to sort out my existing plethora of journals and sketchbooks.  It was fun discovering just what was in existence on my shelves.   

My mind had been wrapping around doing some full blown studio journals on my new Forest Book Series in order to catalogue the infinite amount of textural elements that appear in one of my huge books. I discovered what type of sketchbooks or journals I wanted to use to for this purpose.  I resurrected a book that was constructed from a recycled hard cover book. This book has never been used and I decided to document my journey on building a textural digital library.  This digital library are textures that can be applied to layer selections in Photoshop as I manipulate images.  

 This afternoon I took 90 photographs of rocks and nature on my property.  Patterns to use as textures on layers were created.  Then small pics to document the process were added to the sketchbook.

 

Textures Combining Images

Last month one of my hard drives crashed and I lost 750 GB of Photoshop files from the last 2 years.  Of course you are all saying- why didn't you back that up?  Probably because I kept saying, I have to back this up and in all these years I never had a problem, I'll get to it. The drive in question was randomly disconnecting itself and that should have been my first clue, but hey I'm invincible aren't I?   That would never happen to me.  This was an exterior drive I traveled with and got into the horrible habit of working on that hard drive anywhere I went since then it was easy to have tons of images ready on my laptop or my desk top. I am trying to be better at backing up my images, but find myself in the process now of rebuilding a library.  That brings me to the textural post for today.

This black and white is a scan of a photograph I developed the old fashion way- in a dark room.  The original image is on watercolor paper an emulsion I brushed on to be able to develop the photograph.  Here is the layering done in Photoshop to give me the final image with textures.  The textures come from the patterns and textures I create and emboss on the layer selections.

A photograph of the Merced River from Yosemite National Park was layered in with the black and white.

Selections from Merced River Photograph with textures embossed.

Final Image

Actually in some ways it has been a good thing to have to get more creative because there is only what is in front of me with images, not what was behind:)

More Encaustic with Digital Prints

These studies include digital prints on alternative surfaces with encaustic. My inspiration is observing the effect of combining digital prints and other elements to build textures with the wax.  In the previous post the base of the encaustic collage was paper clay and the base surface of the clay was fluid.  These compositions are built on Ampersand clayboard which is flat.  Descriptions accompany each image.

6" x 6" clayboard, dyed cheesecloth, dyed burlap, waxed linen, digital print on lace paper, encaustic

Detail

4" x 4" clayboard, digital print on velum, encaustic

Detail

3" x 5" clayboard, digital prints on cheesecloth skin, dyed burlap, dyed cheesecloth, encaustic

Detail

6" x 6" clayboard, digital print on velum, encaustic built up for texture

Detail

5" x 12" digital print on torn kozo paper, encaustic  

Detail

Encaustics and Digital Prints

Encaustics create a wonderful companion medium for digital prints.  Last week I finished a page for my  Forest Book (see my KathyAnne Art post) constructed of digital prints on lutradur, melted and layered with encaustic pieces that have a base of paper clay with an assortment of digital prints and other textures. 

The process of using digital prints with encaustic has inspired me to create small studies combining textures, digital prints and paper clay with other textural elements in the wax.  In using one of my paper clay bases, I am able to have a foundation that flows and is more organic than flat. There is something beautiful going on with the combination of these surfaces which leads me to continue to pursue their partnership.  Here are a few of the results and a few comments on construction.  Later this week I will post additional pieces.  

Digitally printed water color paper, torn and layered.  encaustic, the grid is in the clay and the wax is melts into the grid texture.

Detail

The 2 pieces just above have digitally printed lutradur layered with encaustic.  The top piece uses  dyed cheesecloth on the paper clay base and the one below has a lace paper digital print on the paper clay under the lutradur pieces.

Detail of second lutradur piece

This piece is on a paper clay piece that is dyed before firing.  The digital print is on silk threaded paper and the print is on both sides of the paper before it is torn and layered with the wax.

Details

Paper Clay Book Firing

My studio is awash with in process artwork.  The encaustic/ lutradur page posted last week is in it's final stages and hopefully tomorrow will see that finished.  That page will be added to my Forest Book containing the 2 feet by 4 feet pages.  The opposite side of the encaustic/lutradur page is being finished at the same time.  Several small encaustic pieces using paper clay as a base are also in the works. Those encaustics will appear in my next post.

When you fire books covered in clay slip, you are rewarded with some amazing textures. The first pieces are from a paperback that I cut in half before coating and firing.  The bottom clay piece is a composition notebook that I worked slip through and then fired with a base that ended up cracking in the kiln.  At this point these clay pieces are destined to be used with encaustics.  Still working with small studies to get a feel for where I want this to go.  For now you can see the way I am carefully pulling the fired books apart to get to all the textures hidden in the inside.  They are vey fragile and would never be able to be shipped anywhere in their present state, so combining them with encaustics will give the pieces stability. Now it remains to be seen how long it will take me to find my way through this part of the process.  Once I create some finished pieces I will post them here.

paperback book piece and detail

Fired composition notebook-base cracked in firing

Composition book pulled apart and turned over to check out the textures

Details of inside textures

Building Encaustic Texture

My Forest Book Series is all about building the textures of the forests.  Actually all my work wraps around developing textures in every way imaginable.  This time the lutradur is the base of my page and the elements in the textures of the printed and melted lutradur are encaustics.  In working with these small encaustic elements I include around 5 layers.  The bottom is metal screen, on top of that is dyed and frayed burlap, over that is a piece of paper clay, then little layers of threads from burlap, waxed linen thread, digital prints on various surfaces and of course the wax of the encaustics throughout.  This process is really inspiring and I find myself looking for other ways to use encaustics on my pages.

Here are some detail shots of the piece in construction.  The metal frame of the page has an inset of hardware cloth wired to the inside of the frame.  The lutradur lays on top with the encaustic pieces starting to be assembled to secure the layers to the hardware cloth.  When the page is finished, I will post it on my KathyAnne Art blog hopefully by the weekend if all goes well.