Friday 30 March 2012

Gillian's Chickens

Inspired by..... This has been a very difficult challenge for me as I seldom work from images or text which was what the title implied to me. I have been thinking a lot about my friend who is ill and her hens so I decided to do a piece inspired by her hens wandering round her garden.

I first coloured some white cotton with inktense blocks and pencils. I then drew in lots of grasses using, paints, acrylic inks, Derwent Inktense blocks and pencils, Derwent Aquatone pencils and gel pens. I stamped the flower shapes with household rubbish and home made stamps and further embellished them with the same products. I screen printed the straw/sticks of the centre panel.

I then used free machining to draw in the hens.

I thoroughly enjoyed the making of this as using many of these products is fairly new to me.

Sorry for putting this in again but I forgot to include the image to go with the text. Apologies for a repeat of the text.

Irene MacWilliam
www.macwilliam.f9.co.uk

5 comments:

  1. It is lovely Irene! Is it not fun to stamp with whatever you can find?

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a delightful piece. Thanks for listing the techniques you used.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Irene, I just love this piece, not at all what I had in mind for "Inspired by" but it just goes to show that there are many interpretations for every challenge. Your use of such a variety of different techniques will certainly inspire me to have a go - I have a whole box of Derwent Inktense as yet unused. I would be interested to know what you recommend for painting on fabric, I screen print and use screen inks but never buy paints so any tips please??

    ReplyDelete
  4. How totally captivating!! And I love that I had to look a bit before actually seeing the chickens. Very playful and so much fun.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Ann in anser to your query re fabric paint.

    I can not recommend one product over another as I am using some fabric paints that are about 15-18 years old, some a bit whiffy but work fine and fabric does not smell when used. Just some of the many products and fabric paints I have bought at all sorts of venues and shows, all need experimenting with to see how they work and for what techniques.

    Today I did a workshop where students were working with all their various paints etc bought over the years and then I gave them all some binder and they chose colourant from my selection to have some to play with at home. My big thing is work with what you have before buying more products.

    Sorry you need to ask someone with experience of the various products for a definitive answer about what is best. Some fabric paints are thickish some very thin, some affect the hand of the cloth. All things to consider.

    Irene MacWilliam

    ReplyDelete