Fish Tales

For today - a quick review of progress on rust prints so far. The idea is make pieces that look like an amalgam of cave paintings and fossils, only these are the future ghosts of fish. Having looked up a little information about rust printing, I sort of know what I'm doing but each attempt so far has resulted in a surprise.

The very first fish  ... I had not realised that the fabric was a cotton/polyester mix, so the print was rather disappointingly pale, although the loose tea sprinkled randomly produced interesting spots.

The paper on which I had drawn guide lines for the first fish, and then left under the fabric - I liked the combination of visible pencil lines with the bleed from the print. I could try this again...

Rust on handmade paper, with stitch added ... not that exciting.

This time I used pure cotton and soaked it with tea, vinegar and water - some parts came out very defined, others too pale. I have no idea at this point why that happens. Stitch is being added to define the shape and add detail. I had outlined a silhouette with white thread... two visiting textile artists both advised me to remove it... so pleased I hadn't used backstitch all the way around.

Handmade paper which has string embedded - I thought this might look interesting and it was promising while wet but faded to almost nothing once dry.

Much better ...possibly because I had forgotten about it for several days. What to do next with them???

Fabric again -the underlying print does not show well in this photo - it is much more visible in reality. Machine stitched over the print, then added a layer of burn-melted voile and stitched on top. A bit crude and technically not great but I like it ... could I take this further?

Metal baking tray lined with foil, a layer of paper towel, a layer of cotton fabric.... rusty bits of stuff, a few loose tea leaves, a layer of tissue to help keep the bits in place... all soaked with tea, vinegar and water. On top of it all, paper pulp made with mostly brown paper soaked for several days in tea, vinegar and water. I had got this far when I remembered that the pulp needs the addition of glue and sawdust (it's quite a while since I last made pulp)... plastic bag over the top, then an old T-shirt and last of all a couple of books. The result will no doubt be a surprise ...another one.

Fail better...

At the moment it feels like mostly failure ... if failure is a result that does not match what you hoped for...

The beginning of a bowl - playing with the idea of the absence of swallows and hoping for a filmy, semi-transparent base with graduated edges on which to add silhouettes. The first two layers are of translucent papers - of which I now have very little.

Adding layers to strengthen the structure, whilst keeping some areas see-through ...too thin and it will collapse...At this point it is too fragile to lift off to check.

Parts of the bowl are exactly what I wanted ...but the overall structure is still vulnerable and I'm not sure about those hard edges, or the direction of the vertical strips.

So I add more and now it's very wrong... far too harsh. It sits for a week.

Because I regret the loss of the paper in the first two layers, I do something I've never tried before ... soak the bowl gently with wet paper towel for a day. To my relief, the layers do lift off and I work back. It's now once again too fragile to lift off, so has to dry before I can check ... but I'm hopeful.

Although it feels like a failure in one way, there has been useful learning.

A "first thoughts" attempt at the absence of swallows... pencil and stitching on a paper map, with two layers of net overlaid. Room for development, but feels like a step in the right direction. Fabric maps would work better, so I now need to work out  printing on to fabric...looks simple on the internet.