Just experimenting...

I've not been here for a while - life's just been getting in the way unfortunately.  Compared to the time I had when I was young, free and single (and more to the point without kids) I have so little time to be creative now, and quite often even when I manage to make the time, I end up feeling a little guilty, because there's always something else that I feel I should be doing instead (usually housework or other chores).

Still, over the last couple of weeks, I've managed to exhibit my landscape drawing at the local arts festival, dropped off my miniature building for the Crafty City project, and sold a couple more paintings online.  I also found the time to experiment a little more with some cyanotypes.

Those of you who also read Artful Adventures may start to notice a pattern forming here - I will do an activity with the kids (usually one that especially appeals to me) and as I'm working with them I begin to see all the potential and possibilities that the activity offers, with further inspiration being provided by what the kids themselves are doing with it.  I am then fired with enthusiasm to further experiment with the activity by myself, and see where it leads me as soon as I have the opportunity. So I originally tried this activity with my boys (you can read about it here).  They really enjoyed it, but I suspect I enjoyed it even more.

The lack of sunny days meant that my opportunity to experiment with it further was somewhat limited.  But I still had quite a stack of paper left and lots of ideas, so as soon as the weather allowed I dug it out and had a go by myself.  I now want to get hold of some of the specially treated larger sheets of watercolour style paper you can get so that I can create some larger images - I quite fancy having a try doing some mixed media compositions with these.  I have no absolutely no ambitions to work with negatives  - what appeals to me about this technique is directly taking an object, such as some lace or plant material, creating an image from it, and then adding to the print in some way to create something unique.  However unless we have a particularly sunny winter I suspect it may be next year before I get round to that.  In the meantime I can perhaps make use of some of the experimental prints....