07.02.10
Posted in Artwork at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Some of my hand-carved stamps
I admit it… I’m a craft dilettante!
I was, several years ago, trying to integrate my rubber stamping hobby into my textile art. I loved the depth it gave backgrounds, and being able to use the stamps themselves as designs to stitch.
Then I ran into a problem. I had too many pieces to keep for myself, and, frankly, I didn’t just want to give them away to relatives and friends who might or might not appreciate them. (I have been asked on occasion, why would you want to do that by hand when a machine is so much faster? !) So it would be nice to sell some of my art.
Unfortunately for the situation, though not in the long run, copyright law applies to stamp designs (and needlework patterns, and designs in books, and coloring books… and a lot more, too!) You might think this is silly, since stamps are tools to make art, but how you are licensed and allowed to use the images you stamp varies by company to company. My stamp collection sometimes doesn’t specify company any more. Many of the stamps I have date from before I went looking for “angel” companies who allow you to sell your hand-stamped work. Even angel companies have different policies regarding how or whether you notify them. Prints of artwork created are generally not allowed, although this can be negotiable. I didn’t want to have to go to the bother of tracking down the specific policy of each and every stamp I owned, and then keeping all the paperwork needed to prove I was in compliance – and what if I made art that just came out so cool that I thought notecards made from it as prints would be neat? Out of luck.
I decided that the easiest thing for me, was just not to use commercial stamps at all any more. Enter learning to carve my own (which has, in turn, led to woodcarving as an actual hobby {I didn’t think I was capable of hobbies any more!})… Did I ever mention that I play with WAAAY too many crafts? Maybe this blog should be Craft Dilettante! instead of Stitching with a Shimmy!
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06.28.10
Posted in Design Theory at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Color experiment
Color has always been tough for me… I tend to use analogous color schemes — like yellow-green, green and green-blue, so I can avoid the entire issue!
Color experiment
But I spent quite a bit of time learning – once you can pair value (how light or dark an area is) with color-brightness and contrast, and complimentary colors, the world opens up. I play with all of this in paint first these days – no intention of creating finished or resolved work from them, just little experiments in what works and why, and my color choices in threads need to be ripped out much less now, although I have discovered that what works in thread on a small scale may not work when enlarged — for example, three colors that work as a small face don’t necessarily work together when enlarged to an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of work. This seems to happen more in thread than in paint for me, at least right now. Still working that out.
Color experiment
I’ve been trying to learn this academically for a long while now – but the more I read, or even pushed buttons for (online resources follow) the less I understood. It finally took getting a bunch of cheap acrylic paint and doing it myself to actually grok it. My experiments may be ugly, but they did what they were intended to do! (I used quite a few of them as backgrounds in my journal, or I’d post more of the photos here.)
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06.11.10
Posted in General at 12:48 pm by deRomilly
And watch out what you ask for… Issue: fear of stitching…or anything else, for that matter! Recently I’ve had some issues around procrastination paralyzation – the wanting to get up and do something but not getting around to it, for whatever the thing to do, there is always some sort of procrastination technique that I can use to avoid it! So I decided to do a little bit of talking to the monster in charge of holding me back to see what I could do about it… This doesn’t’ directly relate to my stitching or dancing, except that my stitching and dancing was suffering because of it.
I started asking myself, “so what’s holding me back? Time? no. Money? no. Fear? ah. there’s the little monster hiding in the corner. Come on out, little guy! I’m not going to tell you to go away! M-Monster, R-Romilly.
A little fuzzy red critter slowly crawls out of the shadows… Wow he’s tiny, but boy does he have long legs!
M – Y’y'you’re not?
R – Nope – you’ve got as much right to be here as I do, and you, I’m guessing, don’t want me – us – to get hurt!
M – NO! I don’t! We need to be safe and happy!
R – But when I’m scared all the time, I’m definitely not happy! And I don’t FEEL safe! Besides. It’s lonely.
M – But you’ve got your sister, and the EO, and the cats… Why can’t you be happy hiding where no one bad can hurt you?
R – Because then I miss all the fun – remember the dune buggy rides in kindergarten?
M – No. We didn’t go on any.
R – I know – because we were scared it wouldn’t be as fun as swimming – that we’d waste a day.
M – Ummmmmm…
R – Remember when we got to go in our teens?
M – Yeah – it was fun, but we thought it was probably more fun at 5 years old and in the desert, not on suburban streets in Seattle.
R – Right.
M- But what about mean people?
R – You mean people who will tell me I can’t write and my designs are icky and too expensive?
M – YEAH!
R – Remember how you said we’ve got all those people and the cats? We’ve also got a bunch of other friends…
M – ?!
R – They’ll all tell us we don’t stink, and remind us that we’re loved!
M – But mean words hurt!
R – Yeah, they hurt, but so did running into that car when we were learning to ride a bike — but how fun was the wind in our faces when we got it down? Worth it?
M – WAY worth it!!! WHEEEEEE!!! Bike Riding! YAY!
R – So maybe if we thought of show day as Ride day?
M – Around Green Lake!!!! really really fast! ZZOOOM!!!
R – If we’re going to do that, I need to tune up the bike so we can stay safe.
M – Um… okay? What’s the bike?
R – That would be the book that needs edited and illustrated. And the webpage for it, so you can have a bike, too.
M – Oh. OK. You tune up the bikes and I’ll pack a picnic. With cookies! Whee!!!
Little monster is suddenly running around the room playing airplane. I’m a bit worried that the picnic will consist of JUST cookies! but we’re off!
Notes:
Yes. I’m writing a book. You’d think that a professional technical writer wouldn’t fret about this, but I am. I’m trying to take the fear out designing or adapting needlework designs for your own purposes. If you’re interested in updates on the status, I’ll be adding those to the newsletter, as well as some preview information as I get going. And you’ll get the 5-part creativity in cross stitch class as well for signing up! Sign up in the sidebar, or click for a bigger sign up form!
The technique is adapted from something Havi Brooks does every so often when she talks to her monsters.
If you’re interested in talking to your monsters, you might look at Havi’s Monster Coloring book, too. (yes, this is an affiliate link: but if you don’t want me to get a commission on it, you can get there from the link on her name in the last paragraph, too!)
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05.14.10
Posted in Drawing at 7:00 am by deRomilly
Geometric versus Organic Doodling
In the “How to doodle” post way back when, I examined how I doodle around geometrically, creating geometric designs, subdivided and filled with yet more shapes. That method can be done using dice for inspiration.
My organic doodling is less structured – take a scribble – any scribble – on paper or digitally and then expand on it.
How to Doodle
- Scribble. I often use pencil for this. The key when making it is to truly scribble — don’t think and don’t try to make anything. In fact, scribble a bunch of these randomly on the page without looking. I like to keep a stack of pre-scribbled doodles to work with whenever the mood strikes, or several pages of them in my current studio journal.
First Doodle Step
- Now, pretend you’re a kid again, lying on your back on a hill watching clouds. What do you see? Each scribble is a cloud.
- At this point I like to use a brush tip pen to delineate what I see. The brush tip makes it easier to make some of the lines stronger and more obvious. You can get the same result with a different color of pen, or a pen over pencil, or whatever works for you. Remember – you don’t have to use all of the scribble – you can make multiple pictures out of the same scribble, or combine more than one scribble into one picture.
Finished and titled doodles. Click to enlarge.
There are no rules in doodling – and it’s about playing, not “real” art.
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05.11.10
Posted in Stitching Genres at 1:42 pm by deRomilly
I was reminded yesterday by a friend of a technique I had taught her several years ago. She was intimidated by all the counting in counted cross stitch, and couldn’t find a pattern she liked to learn on in any case. The easy solution? Make her own, without counting. If I can talk her into letting me take a photo of her finished project I’ll try to post it here. 
What we did was the following:
- Find an iron on transfer or a line art/coloring design she liked from a clip art book.
- Transfer it onto a piece of counted fabric. In this case, aida.
- Now fill in the various areas with the stitch of your choice. In my friend’s case, I taught her long-armed cross stitch. You can also use tent stitch, cross stitch, satin stitch, or any other filling stitch, lacy or solid that you like. Or a variety of stitches.
- Stitch over the outlines with stem or back stitch.
- Voila! apparently counted work that wasn’t counted.
Note: I’m not sure how regularly I’ll be posting for the next few weeks. Our old lady cat is in home hospice care, in the last stages of thyroid disease AND renal failure, so I find myself watching her and worrying more than I ought to, perhaps.
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