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.