In my last blog I mentioned I did some filming at the International Womens Day march and rally. Before it got super crowded I managed to get a few photos of the Town Hall as people gathered. The Town Hall is definitely one of the most beautiful sandstone buildings in Sydney. I'll have to get some pictures of the front too.
This is Martins Place and it was the end point of the rally where they held a concert/ speeches and had booths set up.
During the march a couple photographers took photos of participant and used them in an installation piece. It was fun to watch people find their photos. A very neat idea.
Ok now it's button time. Recently I've been creating fabric covered button ideas with the intention of selling them through some stores in Ottawa. I've just ordered some fabric that will have a sample of each idea. These ones below are test buttons I did to get a feel for what can be done and how they work. The pin backing has to be attached with glue, many of my ideas are suited to be pins rather than sew on buttons.
One of the factors I've had to consider when designing these buttons is how much fabric to leave around each image. My test sheet will help with that so that I can maximize the number of buttons per yard. Currently I'm working with a couple of centimeters around the images. My designs look like this when I send them to the printers.
Here's what I'm hoping they look like when I put them on the buttons. The bi-planes are for a king-kong shirt I'm planning. And the ones below are for an Aussie Animal pin collection.
Here I have a pylon for a street scene t-shirt, barnacle buttons (I'm thinking sew on buttons), an acorn and Know Your Leaves pins.
Here are some of my fav's, Stencil-saurs! I'm really happy with how these turned out.
This first test I do will tell me if the lines I've drawn are compatible with the printing technology and if the sizing is right. The buttons I'm using are 1 1/8" so I'm trying to make my images take up as much of the available space as possible. I'm really enjoying the challenge and playing with colouring styles.
In other news Jan and I are both entering a local art show called the Pyrmont Art Prize. It's on May 15th and will be a day with music and food as well as all the works on display. It's all for fun with some prizes. I thought I'd have some fun and enter. The theme is "small is beautiful" so I've decided to paint a snippet of my imaginary under sea world.
This is one of my preliminary sketches, since then I've decided I needed to jump in and start.
Last night I set up my desk to begin. I turned on my podcasts and started with a background of plankton. It was a funny experience because part way through memories of my painting classes started to come back to me and I realized I'd missed a few steps that would have helped a lot later. Oh well.
My little plankton.
Next I did a light wash over the canvas.
My result so far is this. I'm starting to paint over some of the plankton with a lighter colour to bring them back out. What I've got down here will be the background. However once everything dried I found out that the paint I've been using it not water proof, so today I bought some fixative that should make it water resistant.
More to come soon. I've been designing some new fabrics too so I'll put up some of those next.
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