JOJO

For the most part I've finished the cart for JoJo the Circus Boy. I have a little bit of painting and touching up to do. I have to put this aside for the time being because I have another project I need to get done first because it's due in early August. For the last five years I've created a piece of art work for an art auction here that benefits our local Humane Society. The event is called Art Unleashed and it draws tons of local artists every year. All the work has to be animal themed of course. This is a great cause and I love to contribute. The event its self is fun too. It starts with food provided by local restaurants which is followed by a silent auction then a live auction. My plan is to get my piece done before I go on vacation in July. Where do you ask am I going? Ah.... San Diego for the big Comic Con. More about that later.

BAG OF SCRAPS

I made this bag last weekend out of scraps I have laying around from other projects. I've got a huge bin full of scraps that I can't throw away. I'll save a 2" piece of fabric. This is a small shoulder bag that fits comfortabley under your arm. I usually carry a larger bag but found I needed something smaller for dressier occassions.

This week has been pretty busy. I've been working on my next sideshow guy, JoJo the circus boy. He will be enclosed in a circus cage that I'm building right now. I thought It would be easier to have that done first then I'd know exactly how big he needs to be. I may have had some problems building the cage after he was made. So hopefully the the image in my head turns out the way I want. That's always the hard part.
I've updated my website with the three circus freaks I've made so far. Enjoy!

TRY BALANCING THAT!!

Here are some more photos from the book Fashion: A History from the 18th to 20th Century. I would totally wear that second dress!
I should have mentioned that these books contain five hundred colored photographs of items of clothing selected from the collection at the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan. I recommend checking out the website.

NEW BOOKS!

The Fabric Manipulation workshop I took was taught by Candace Kling. She's published a book called The Artful Ribbon. This book shows mostly how to create flowers out of ribbon. It is very easy to follow and the diagrams are easy to read. I also got Fashion: A History from the 18th to the 20th Century, Volume 1 & 2. as a wedding anniversary gift last week. Perfect timing! These books are huge, heavy and full of full page color photos. These are a must for any fashion designer. After taking that class I can spot a lot of the different trims and pleats on many garments dating all the way back to the 18th century. It's unbelievable to think these garments were all had sewn. Not only are these books pretty to look at but they go into depth about the history of fashion and what's taking place culturally that helped shape the fashion world. Very fascinating. It is worth checking out!

SURFACE DESIGN CONFERENCE

Last week I had the pleasure to attend the Surface Design Conference at the Kansas City Art Institute. Again another fun thing I got to do because of work. I would never have been able to attend something like that on my own because it's pretty expensive. I felt a bit out of my element. These people are hard core Fiber artists that ranged from clothing designers to gallery installation artists. I've always found textiles interesting and have done nothing close to this kind of work. It wasn't until recently that I even dyed and printed my own fabric. It's an area that I'd love to know more but don't even know where I'd start. Luckily I was able to keep up with vocabulary.
I took a workshop called Fabric Manipulation that lasted all week. It was very intense and very informative. The week just flew by because I was so busy. As a result I was exhausted by the time I got home and was to tired to do any of my own work or post anything here. So I thought I'd post a few pics of what I worked on last week. Based on the photos it just looks like I did a bunch of ribbon work but it was more than that. It really was an exploration of how to do pleats, gathers, folds, stitching, etc. All different kinds of trims and fabric manipulations that have been used for hundreds of years in ffashion.

CIRCUS FONT

A few have asked 'how'd you do that lettering?'. I should have explained what I did. First I found a font that looked like a circus font or something close to it. I have lots of circus books to use as reference so I found something that looked pretty close. I first scanned my drawing of Strong Man and then layed in the type. I did all this in Photoshop. Then I printed it out (to actual size)and now I have a template. I did the same for the base. Then I just rubbed the back of my print-out with a pencil (you can use graphite paper too) and transfered it onto the canvas and the base by tracing over the print out. Hopefully that makes sense. After that I just paint everything in bright colors. It looks really tacky at this point. Then I went back and put a brown wash (a thinned out brown paint that's really runny)over the entire thing. I used acrylic paint for everything on this but oil works too, it just takes longer to dry. Once it's dry (a few minutes) I went over the whole thing with sandpaper in places I think it would have worn naturally. After that I do another wash of brown, maybe splatter a bit of paint on it or let the paint run like old water marks. I just keep doing this over and over until it looks right to me. I have also been know to run over something with my car to make it look old. You just have to be creative and not worry and getting the art work messy. That's the whole idea. Just beat it up, that's the fun part for me!

STRONG MAN STAND

Strong Man now has a proper stand and is officially finished. The second pic is of the poster behind Strong Man. I know you can't see this when he's on the stand, it's just a little added bonus.