Back to the Drawing Board

I know I sounded a bit down and out in my previous post and sometimes things get that far and the minute I write it down  I find the way to move out of it again. Usually it is simply by doing the work and starting with something I know and like- it's been a drawn out process with many interruptions. My youngest daughter turns 18 soon, which means she can get her drivers'  licence but in order for this to happen in Australia, they have to do 120 hours of driving practice- with a parent or other suitable adult- well it's been almost all me because I am a single parent ,except for the lessons I have paid for- and I can tell you that 120 hours is a  lot of driving, and time you have to sit and be there- three weeks of normal working hours to be exact- not to mention the cost of petrol- yes  she drives on a lot of normal errands but as we live in a city and the bus stops close by and we are walking distance to the nearest post office and supermarket, that is not very far so we have to make extra kilometers.We have 18 hours to go, so we will make one long road trip and go out on a number of hour long trips here and there. On the upside her driving is improving  a lot. She finishes high school this year and will go onto university, which means  I will move from this area where the rent is really outside my means, but I needed to provide a stable home environment for her to do the best she can at school and at a decent school- the school  where we used to live had a lot of  culture problems including a giant lack of support for kids with an academic inclination.

So to get back to basics.... I  love linocutting and after my workshop  at Il Bisonte  in April I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I want to develop further as a print maker- on fabric or on paper also? And of course at the moment I am  still working on my France book, which will be available later this year so anything I do needs to fit into the structure of the book. I also love the woodblock designs of Raoul Dufy, and as I am doing a chapter on being inspired by other artists I thought I would do a block inspired by one of Dufy's fabric designs. I did change it around a bit as I really wanted to play a little with balance of negative and positive space, and also incorporate the quatrilobe motif  but in a floral way- so here are the results
first my drawing which is more directly related to Dufy's design- some of his floral motifs are pretty generic to a lot of earlier floral motifs used in fabric design.

 The above image is a pencil drawing. Below is the image drawn onto lino and then coloured in to show areas I want to keep or cut away- undecided.It was something they were quite particular about at Il Bisonte- which is your negative space and which is the positive space....

And below the image inverted and I see that the balance is not quite what I thought and I will probably change the way I cut the flowers with the stripey petals, and because i have drawn onto the lino with a permanent marker ( but if you don't you end up with very dirty hands and a disappearing design) . Also I shall be working this onto fabric so  i have to think where will the colour of the fabric come through... I can change things in the cutting process...

And last but not least- the rhythm of hand stitching is soothing, I seem to forget this from time to time- so when all else fails start another blanket- this one was a piece of stitched resist which failed- how to resurrect it? By simple stitching and so another travellers' blanket emerges- I might think of this one as emerging from the swamp ;-).

And there is still time to enrol in the next Travellers' Blanket on-line class - you can see some of the results of this class  via the links on my blog, and a description here though the cost is $60 AUS . If you are interested in joining just email me ; the class will start on 17 June 2013