confessions...

OK! I guess I cannot pretend, or keep a secret! I am not good with projects that the element of a deadline looming is not near...

I have to admit that I finished my black and white with a touch of pattern (and light) alphabet some time ago, and I have been going through the motions of every now and then posting updates on the progress, kind of... faking/pretending that I am still slowly working on it...

As I said, I am not good at faking or pretending; so here it is:

Anna's black and white with a touch of pattern and light Alphabet Flag Structure Book!

Digitally generated alphabet, printed with archival pigmented inks on Epson paper.

I used vellum on the concertina section for its translucence quality, thus facilitating the "light" element of my composition. 

Photographed lit from the back, to "showcase" the translucency of the structure.

Julie's QRSTU

Hi Gang!
Have posted 5 letters here since there are close to 5 weeks in May.
Wow! We are one month away from starting the second alphabet! I'd better get to work!
LOVE love LOVE all your letters!

JGR May

I hope you're all having a good year. It really is flying by! Below are my letters for May.

I've enjoyed this technique and as always: I've learned quite a bit while creating
my alphabet. I've also enjoyed seeing what everyone else has come up with.
I think my favorite part of this technique is the unpredictable texture.
Thank you for visiting!

Judith's latest letters

Mieke's Q-R-S-T

The next 4 already, I'm sure time goes faster!

Q,- with a background of a cane lampshade.

R,-Some old timber in the back.

S,-A painting of a sunset my granddad painted.

T,-with a section of a lovely clock.

All four together.

And then the letters from last month, on there finished pages.

Backing of a cushion.

skeleton leaves on cardboard, then shelac over the top.

A scarf, some tea-dyed muslin .

corrugated cardboard, feathers and a Chinese newspaper.

Nearly there before putting it together in a book.

Q, R, S, T - by Jo

We are on the home run now. Still not entirely sure how the final collection will display, but I'm working on it.

Here are this month's letters, next month there will be six.

Must say they look very colourful on the page.

More letters from Sue in South Africa

Catching up!

Well I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth and I have been keeping up with creating my letters, just not getting them posted. It's not that I live on a deserted desert island but I did leave the Pacific Isle I live on (PNG) :-) for a quick trip to Canada for our eldest son's graduation from university and that interrupted things. Still having fun with these letters, feeling challenged in making them all different colours and starting to think about what I will do for the next alphabet.

Kim Schoenberger - NOPQ

BLACK & WHITE With a touch of... ME, RED, & my focus on PLASTIC!

I'm late, I'm late!!! Please don't shut the gate...I remember reciting this one as a kid. Classic!

N - With o touch of... dot-to-dot, when I was a kid I spent hours amusing myself with these. We would travel alot on our school holiday's and mum would buy us things to entertain us for the journey. A tad different to today, eh! Sewn with the deadly treadley sewing machine, the plastic round reminder rim (focus on plastic rims - cut before disposing of!). Woodcut print with red printing ink.

O - With a touch of... Four plastic round reminder rims - to refresh (for those not aware) the rims are my focal point on plastic - that is, to bring to my awareness to remember to cut them up before disposing of, so they don't end up getting caught around birds necks and strangling them. I'm amazed once I started looking at them the amount of different sizes they can be found in. It happened that the centre rim has a bird in it. Red & black printing ink.

P - With a touch of... This one is reminiscent of my ole' blue jeans with all my patches on, complete with the button. A tad wonky sewing going on in this one. Black printing ink with woodcut print. Red printing ink collage sewn on.

Q - With a touch of... More plastic round reminder rims, black and white. The \ (slash) on the Q is from a cable (zippy) tie. Stitches sewn on the deadly treadley sewing machine. Red printing ink and side floral print from an Indian recycled fabric printing block.

Suminagashi

Hi All!

Well, I haven't given up! I've been plugging away working at learning suminagashi, albiet slowly! I gave the Arches Text wove a try and initially it seemed promising but was pretty inconsistant, so I gave in and looked on YouTube for tutorials, and BINGO! I discovered exactly what I had been doing wrong! (Everything.) So I headed back to the studio and tried again, slowly with deliberation and much less ink and more surfactant... I'm using a traditional Sumi-e ink and Orvus paste (cattle shampoo) as the surfactant, so I'm not getting the really vibrant colours, but the subtler grays have really grown on me.

With my improved technique the Arches stopped working...soooo I tried my cheap and cheerful "Sho-ji" paper - it's a big roll of cheap as dirt Japanese paper that I use for rough proofing and inital sketches... but it worked AMAZING! Way better than any of the 'good' papers, western or eastern, that I tried.

Technical note: I've been trying to add photos but appearently Blogger and I aren't friends today. It keeps 'messing' with my photos. deleting and rearranging them so hopefully this posts alright!

A few samples of the dozens of sheets I've made (this really is an addictive process):

First attempt at Arches text wove...the ink 'took' more darkly (as I hoped) in the top corner but not evenly... the contrast is a little high on these images (my camera was not happy shooting the mostly white/pale gray and I had to photoshop them.)

A second, more successful sheet... but still not looking 'right'!

One of the first sheets using Sho-ji! this is totally what I was looking for!

Awesome!

I can get two roughly 15" x 12" sheets in my tank, so I've got plenty of background to work with - now I have to get to making the letters. I know what form I want the final piece to take so from here on it it should be smooth sailing! (Famous last words.)

Sorry for the long post hopefully I'll be able to show some 'real' letters next week!

Cheers,

Lee

P.S. I'm not sure why it made a huge long blank at the bottom of my original post hopefully this will fix it and not double post. So sorry!

Judith's next instalment

Here are my latest letters...Judith

Heather's April Showering of Letters

More than half way round the track. I'm overseas for 2 months from July so the last lot will come in a rush as I want to get my book up and "published" before I get on the plane.

Heather.

Wendy's April Letters

These were done on time, but I am slow getting around to posting them. I spent the first weekend in May at Letters of Joy in Edmonds, Washington. It is an annual one day conference and always a lot of fun. The keynote speaker was Pat Blair, chief calligrapher, at the White House. Lots of fascinating calligraphy and trivia. Unfortunately, I didn't get in one of her sessions, but I did have fun in the things I took.

April offerings

These are getting harder . . . I must go back and look at the rest again! All the easy ones are done now.
I also don't know why the colour is different from the January batch. I didn't write down any of the specs when I first scanned them. They all look the same in the 'flesh' - just not on screen. Very frustrating!

No more for a while,

Meg

March posting

Well, we are back in the land of the living (every day life, that is!). The family have gone home having had a fabulous holiday and I am slowly catching up with my chores - this being one of them. I actually had these done sometime ago, but just didn't get the chance to upload them to the blog.
. . . the next four soon to follow,
confuzed as always,
Meg