What happened to that sketchbook I bought more than a year ago? Not much. I recently pulled it out of storage and started making doodles and marks, mostly with crayon pastel and pencil, then adding puddles with watercolor.  These are the simple materials I enjoyed in elementary school!

I have been trying to work quickly and intuitively without giving any thought to purpose or result. Maybe I'll be able to look back at these in time and find shapes, compositions .. and marks that will lend themselves to a bigger purpose. But for now,  no rules, just doodles! 

I finished up with a large painting project this week. Painting as in walls. This is what I found when I reamed out the paint tray as much as possible for the last time. Nice work!

I had resolved to enjoy a little break from my studio but I needed to take refuge there while I processed a roller coaster of emotions prompted by the events of the last 10 days.

​A little bit of fabric collage was an easy choice. I enjoyed doing a lot of this type of design when I was making the Hoop Skirt dolls, but it has been a while.  I started by digging into my supply of hand painted scraps.

Then I laid out some of my favorites.  The background needed more interest and depth, so I painted the base fabric. I love painting wet into wet, first using black paint only and adding a rust  wash when the piece was almost dry. Then I transfered the collage onto the painting. Below is the result.

This was fun, so I made 2 other collages just using available scraps, eliminating the painting step.

All 3 of these could be greatly enhanced with free motion machine quilting. I seem to be out of batting, and sewing machine needles at the moment, so that will have to wait. I'd like to continue with a few more, and then just quilt the best ones. It is hard to say how, or if,  this will fold into future work, but it is not important to know that now.