Going nautical

Living on an island in the Caribbean has a lot of pro's, and yes, there are some con's also...
On my blog I mainly focus on the positive side and during the years of living here this helped to become more mild, less direct than when I was living in Holland, or so I like to think.

The island is slowly getting in nautical spheres with the upcoming Heineken Regatta of next weekend and I have some recent nautical pics that I so much want to share here!
DH and I had been invited to a farewell party on the sailing vessel 'Eendracht' (http://www.allatsea.net/article/January_2011/Tall_Ship_EENDRACHT_to_Take_Three_Trainees_on_Board_in_St_Martin) and for me this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a look on a beautiful ship that has it's port of call in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. There were lots of spots on the ship that showed their beauty, I will let them speak for themselves...

You got the idea?? Hope you liked it! We left the ship ten minutes before it was to sail away to Bermuda, where it was expected to be in the right place to sail the Passat winds back to Europe via the Azores. Sint Maarten DWI, so many pro's!!

A day of beauty

...that was Art in the Park 2012 on Sint Maarten!
A day full of visitors, young and old, a day of compliments and mostly positive remarks for my work, like the other years I was very happy to hear this all and in the end I was exhausted... So much so that I only now get to posting, I have been busy sorting and packing stuff for our coming move to Spain! Back to Art in the Park now:

my translation series shown together, although in a rather primitive setting, but you get the idea!
Rastafarians selling some kind of food; unfortunately I was too busy talking all day to have a look at the other artists booths

A local celebrity, Elektra, she is a radio host on this island and a very nice and colorful lady! The public that visits Art in the Park is a delight to look at, everybody dresses up so nicely...

there were not many sales in my booth and I understood this was the same with other artists: crisis seems to have hit our island also. I am so happy that I don't have to pay the bills!

Children playing in the drumband following their leader's instruction.

this lady was selling handmade dolls. She was dressed in one of the traditional dresses herself and got a lot of attention because of her beautiful, festive outfit

and last but not least one of the young children towards the end of the day. I have made it a goal for this last year on Sint Maarten to picture peoples faces, it is a good start don't you think?

In the meantime I have been enjoying other nice happenings: more on that shortly, promise!

Thanks for visiting, as always

Regina

Finished

... after really considering to throw it out!

This was the plan, remember? Collage and crayon on paper, thus forming the starting point for transforming it in textile. Picture is yellowish because of artificial light inside the house

detail of the finished panel. I have especially been struggling with the upper right corner. As you can see, the upper part is unlike the design, it felt too empty and bleak to me. So I started adding fabric to the left and upper part, but then the yellow was even more useless, pastel like, soft to my taste at least. Depth was wat I once again was looking for and in a courageous mood I took my brisles and acrylic paint and simply started: in the beginning it worked out fine, but as I gradually mixed some more colour in, something strange happened, that is I became too brazen and optimistic! I even applied a kind of rusty colour to the far right upper corner and that is when I realized that I had gone too far... So I put the work down a few days, I hung it on my design wall and it did not make me happy, at all. When I was talking with my daughter on the telephone about this, she suggested: why don't you just throw it away??? (my daughter does not make art!) I must confess that the idea sounded very attractive to me, so I took it down again, rolled it up and was about to throw it in the garbage, but I could not, I simply could not do this, after having worked on it for so many hours. Thus the idea came up to cover it up, to hide this ugly rusty paint and with renewed energy I rummaged through my fabrics until I found this silk piece. After auditioning several others, I choose this one and I think it works. Not that I am very enthousiastic about this work, but that maybe because of the strange, for me unusual way of making it. Whatever, it is finished! On the above picture you can see the corner I had troubles with, the satinstitched finishing and some complementary French knots I added.

and here it is in full; it measures 41 " x 17 "

Thanks for visiting!

Finishing...

... this one. Designed and started a few months ago, then set aside when I did not know how to proceed

because I wanted slightly more red/pink in this area, it provided an opportunity to practice French knots, I love to make these now... will need to buy a lot more embroidery yarn in the States next summer, before going back to a euro country...

the ocre fabric I have used in several art quilts by now, I love the text, the fabric has an overall grafiti look and is easy to use since it does not fray. Initially I had it sewn into three pieces of garment, but then decided that it was even better in artwork, so went recycling again!

The work is almost finished now, I just have to satin stitch the edges and voila: my latest work, just in time for Art in the Park, February 12. Next week will be used for preparing everything, making some new business cards and several other chores. As always: thanks for visiting!

Regina

'Don't worry, 'bout a thing...

I had to think of this famous Bob Marley song, when I finished my latest work. How true it is, at least for me, now...

Do you remember this work? you can read the story here:
http://mostlyturquoise.blogspot.com/2012/01/challenge.html

the finished work has some yummie details and in fact I knew how to continue when I found back this picture of an unknown photographer that I've had in my stash since ages. You may know that I have a 'fling' with all things Indian and one of the ways this comes to the surface, is my love of cooking Indian food. And if that's not possible, then at least eating these delicious dishes. So that's when I got triggered in this direction...

one of the borders was a black/neutral stripe. Since the integrated food picture was a golden curry like colour, and since I always like a bit of sparkle in my work, I covered the white parts of the striped fabric with tiny gold lame patches by fusing

some parts of the fabric got a tiny apply of blue-grey acrylic to add some depth

and this is the result! In the end this self imposed challenge turned out to my satisfaction, I am happy with how it is now.

This way of working, of changing ufo's into a finished work of art, is quite interesting! While you have to overcome quite some obstacles, the work changes and you really go with the flow of the work. I thing I stick to this method some longer...

Thanks for visiting my blog today and eh.... I love reading your comment!

Regina

Challenge? Struggle!

my experimenting this week did not bring much pleasure until now, I can tell. But because I showed the start, I found enough courage to show the work as it is now. Ugly! After I toned down the yellow I was trying to get a greenish-yellow for the centre part. Of course I could have looked for a piece of fabric in that colour in my stash, but it had to be possible to achieve this so wanted colour via acrylics. So, I mixed white, blue-grey and just one drop of Peynes Grey acrylic paint and covered the centre part with it: oh, the whole peace looked dead boring!! I let it dry overnight and tried to look at it with 'fresh' eyes: I then saw that I had to leave the idea of greenish-yellow behind and maybe should now focus on similar values as the border to the right... a mixture of several blues followed with the above results. In the meantime the work is getting stiffer, but I don't mind that at all, just had to cover the unpainted areas with matte gel medium once again to catch up with the amount of stiffnes. You can still see the underlying colours shining through, but hey: I'm not finished yet...

There is some red/orange part that now seems to stand very alone and does not make sense at all (anymore), so that likely has to go also. By now I am wondering why I did not simply take a canvas to start with, but at the same time I am determined to make this into something, at least, ok. To be continued...

Challenge

Yesterday I was ready to start a new work and the overall feeling I had was going towards something red, something warm. So I looked into my stash for warm colored fabrics and found back this ufo. Started it, as is clearly visible, in June almost five years ago... The piece reflects the mood I was in at that time: it was graduation time at the highschools, but it was also a time that on this island happened some stupid, useless accidents with quads that took the life of people the same age as the graduated students. Somehow reading all this hefty stuff must have influenced this piece of work. However, while looking for other fabrics I decided to finish this one first, meanwhile trying to incorporate my most recent way of working...

the border and centre fabric was dyed by me; though I still like it, it feels way too strong for what I have in mind now, the amount of yellow is overwhelming, so that is the first part of this challenge, to tone it down and make it more subtle.

first I cut the fabrics into a square format of about 16", after which I ironed it onto double sided fusible web and then stitched the grid. I covered the work with a diluted layer of matte acrylic gel and put a wash of titanium white acrylic paint after drying on the orange-yellow centre. This is how it looks right now. I have a color in mind that I want to accomplish, but do not dare to mention it here, because I am not sure it is possible.

New developments next time!