Lines

There is something so inherently interesting about lines. Outlines. Lines of color. Lines leading into the distance. Lines of a car. Lines of a leaf. Ink lines. Paint lines. The swoop of telephone lines alongside the road.

A brush can express a line, which in turn, expresses something else. A line can be straight. A line can curve. A line can undulate. A line can be created without a change of pressure on the brush, or changing the angle of the brush. Or, it can be created with movement and pressure.

Lines can be used to enhance the sense of something, such as the veins in a leaf. Or give a subtle – and not so subtle – sense of a shape, by outlining it.

Coloring books have lines, too, and good kids stay inside the lines, and are tidy.

Lines can say many things. Yet, a part of me rebels against lines. “The shortest distance between two points is a line.” Is it?

Lines can contain. Lines delineate. Lines define.

Lines express. Lines move beyond the seen, on into infinity, leading the imagination to the unknown, leaving the mind to fill in what is expressed – the experience becomes unique to the person, the imagined is more real than that which is seen.

Lines can be broken. Lines can be solid. Lines can be heavy or light or medium in density, or gradated by the addition of color or more ink.

Any brush stroke, long or short, is a line. What is on that brush becomes an experience on paper, the process of loading ink or paint, choosing the angle of the brush, the tip, the pressure. Paper determines if the paint or ink runs and bleeds, or sits on the surface to be slowly absorbed by the fibers. Is the paper sized? Unsized? Has it been moistened or not?

A line.  Not so simple.

Bamboo 1b

Life in the Stash Lane

The other day while I was walking through the garage – which is something I seldom do, and generally avoid – I noticed a number of my plastic storage bins, which I had not seen for quite some time.  It’s not that they have been hidden or anything….I just don’t see them.  They are there, but not accounted for, therefore, invisible.

Until the other day.

Now, as Josh chops up bacon and fries it for carbonara, as the pasta boils, as the eggs are prepped, as the parsley is chopped, I have sneaked out to the garage, curious as to what is in there.

Fortunately, no spiders.

There are lots of UFOs – mostly socks – a scarf, balls of yarn without any labels, some beautiful stuff, but only one skein, and then enough for a hat or some other small item.  Some handspun.  Lots of needles, too – any wonder why I have to keep buying more???  And I only looked at two boxes.  I think there may be at least 5 or 6 more.

It’s been crossing my mind that I should go on a yarn diet, and use what I have (with buying only what I really need).  That would take the rest of my life!

So, I pulled out a few things – no matter that I have a hat to finish, a scarf, lots of other socks, some of this and some of that….but I have gotten some things done!  See this?

Alicia in the Clouds

The second beret – now known as “Clouds” – and some photos, too, of it.  The PDF is done – it just needs another picture or two,  and proofing by the test knitters, and then – corrections?  And publication!  I can hardly wait!

White Space

In Western painting, white space is often something to fill up. The closest I can think of in Western painting where white space is used as a part of a picture is vignetting.

Vignetting occurs when a painting blurs towards its edges, creating a shape inside a border of white or another color. The white space encases the central object of the picture in an oval or round shape, acting as a frame to the picture itself. This is a conscious use of white space by the painter to frame a picture – it contains the picture, but does not interact with the painting itself.

When French painters of the 19th century became aware of the compositional elements in Japanese prints it was quite an eye-opener. Parts of a picture were suggested rather than seen – the imagination was used to fill in beyond the edges. Thus, in this same context, a piece of white paper has the potential for so much more than being filled in!

In her book Japanese Calligraphy: The Art of Line & Space, Christine Flint Sato writes “The calligrapher, facing the blank white page before beginning to write, does not ponder how to fill it, but how best to activate it” (p. 55). This suggests a dynamic relationship between artist or calligrapher with the white space – the white space is vital and alive, an element with its own life, its own potential, its own heartbeat and breath.

How then does the artist approach this white space? In ink painting, or in calligraphy, white can show through breaks in the ink as it is laid down – but the relationship with the remaining white continues. How the artist or calligrapher proceeds can energize the white, creating an exciting and active alliance between ink and blank paper – or kill it dead. Sato refers to this dead white as kukyo, meaning “emptiness” (p. 61). You can see Ms. Sato’s work, and some details of this book, at http://sumiwork.com/

Many books dedicated to the art of sumi-e write about its immediacy, but in practicing the art of sumi-e, I have found that I must practice to create that immediacy. This means knowing how wet my brush needs to be, how thick the ink, where I want to paint, where I do not want to paint. Japanese calligraphers, according to Sato, practice and repeat until they can produce a spontaneous – but a controlled spontaneity – calligraphic artwork.

Ink painting, as with all arts, requires practice and experience, and a willingness to “just do it”! In “doing it” skill is gained, and the mastery of the brush, the ink, the paper, the white space, give the artist a language of experience that allows, at last, that expression of self to flow so easily . . . practice those bamboo leaves every day!

Pattern Design – Layout, Writing, Photos, Oh My!

I have spent a lot of hours over the past few days, trying to write out my beret pattern!  Talk about work, headaches, and so on.  It really is a nuisance – or maybe it’s just me?  Not only do I want clear instructions, I want to create a pattern which is pleasant to look at when it is published in a PDF format.  What to do?  Where to begin?

There are probably”obvious” places to begin…but I expect they vary with each individual.  This is the sequence I followed as far as publishing went:

  1. Create the diagrams of the patterns, the body and the decrease.  From there, export them into a PNG format and divide them up into sections.
  2. Decide on the layout – pictures, text – what to put where.  Also decide on a logical sequence.
  3. Create the pattern in MS Publisher.
  4. Convert to PDF

Steps 1 to 3 were easy enough, but for whatever reason, Adobe would not convert the Publisher file into a PDF document.  Finally, I hit on saving each page in Publisher as a PNG, and combined all 5 pages of the pattern into one PDF file.  Whew!  Of course, I’ve already discovered a few mistakes in spelling, and design flaws (biggies, IMHO), and thoughts for better instructions.  Despite this, the PDF is sent off to the test knitters, and I will need to make corrections – but not tonight, thank you!

Oriel Pic 4

Lastly, a friend has the beret, to photograph for me!  Certainly the pictures will be better than the ones I took.  The ones in the original PDF will be replaced by ones far better than my sad little ones….

Isn’t it good?

There is just something about color knitting – stranded knitting – that gets me more than anything else.  Of late, I’ve been enjoying the making of hats and mitts and gloves, in cables and in lace, but ahhh!  Color!  Truly addicting.  This WIP is from Terri Shea’s book Selbuvotter, and this is NHM #7.

NHM 7 - d

NHM 7 - c

I’ve only been working on these for a few days, but I think I should be done in about a week, between work and classes and life….

NHM 7 - b