Lost in space ...

I did another Powertex workshop last weekend, again on a large canvas. This one is all about the night sky. I do love all those photos that the Hubble telescope takes, so that is where the inspiration comes from.

Powertex is mixed with 3D Flex powder, which makes it stiffer so that it can hold whatever shape you create.

The colour comes from a combination of Bister sprays and acrylic paint, in several layers, finished with a bit of splatter and gold dry brushing. I did finish it off at home, but I love how it turned out!

One of my favourite programmes from 1980 is Cosmos with Carl Sagan - so here are a couple of quotes.

“We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universe and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor. ” 
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos


“A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way” 
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

... from little acorns

At the weekend I went foraging for acorn caps with Laura, my wood-turner sister. Laura turns acorns from all different woods then puts them into the natural caps. The difficulty is turning them the right size so they fit into the caps (which are all different sizes!).

Last year there were hardly any acorns to be had, but this year there is a bumper crop, so we collected bagfuls!

With that excursion in mind, and this month's Craft Barn challenge couplet being ...

Fresh October brings the pheasant;

Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

It was obvious to me that I should use one of Laura's creations, so I resorted to Photoshop and played around with the images, settling on a couple of the artistic filters.

When the oak tree is fallen, the whole forest echoes with it;

but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.

Thomas Carlyle

Feeling a little rusty!

Did a fabulous workshop recently, incorporating Powertex into a painting. This was all done in five hours - pretty intense at times trying to keep up!

The base is a 18 inch by 15 inch box canvas.We used corrugated cardboard with the Powertex, and when that was dry, we painted over it with something that contained iron filings (can't remember what it was called but it had a rather strong odour!). To create the rust we then sprayed copper sulphate (I think). It started going rusty within minutes.

The bottom corner is random detritus - bits of wood, hemp, sand and dust.

In between all those steps, and whilst the layers were drying, we painted the farmyard scene with acrylic paint.

It is difficult to convey what it feels like looking at this, as it is quite large, it really does seem like I'm inside a rusty old barn looking out!