"Creating Digital Prints on Uncomon Surfaces"

This is the last day of the pre-conference workshops at the Surface Design Association Conference. Time is flying by! We will be setting up my demonstration "Creating Digital Prints on Uncommon Surfaces" later today and tomorrow it will be taped for the conference DVD. I will be showing how to coat and print surfaces such as pima tex cotton, organdy, a hand made skin, aluminum screen and recycled beverage cans. The basic parts of my process will all be there.

Last night I started creating a page in my new book of forests with some of the printed beverage cans, interesting surface. I printed 40 cans to take with me to play with. There is something about that surface that interests me. My plans for an installation completely out of digital printed cans has brought me to playing with the surface to see where I want it to go. So I start here. These are some of the cans that I have with me and a very small start of a composition using them.

It's all About the Surface

Last Thursday I arrived in Kansas City to participate in the Surface Design Association Conference.  

First working as an assistant in a workshop, "Photoshop for the Textile Industry", instructed by Heather and Hitoshi Ujiie.  They are great and I love being in the classroom.  Next I will be giving some demonstrations once the actual conference starts "Creating and Printing Uncommon Surfaces."  Since there will be 2 demos, the second one will be recorded for the conference dvd.  After that I will be teaching a 4 day workshop, "Expanding the Digital Prints to Uncommon Surfaces"  and one night during the workshop, I will be giving a lecture.

I am very excited to be at the conference, see some old friends, make new ones and teach on a subject that I am truly passionate about.  My work is about the surfaces.  Inspiration sores in me as I create each print.  Teaching others to experiment with surfaces brightens my world.

Depicted here is a print that will be included in my next addition to the Book of Forests series.  This print is on crinkly paper.  Before printing leaves were added to the surface, then the paper was precoated with inkAID.  The top print is the actual print and the 2 following are details.  As the book develops, I will include more pictures in the blog.  Right now the pieces are laying all over my hotel room an various stages of completion.

Any questions about my work contact me at KathyAnne Art!

Creating Journals

Working in my studio all day, I started with putting together some hand made journals. After dying and printing the watercolor paper, (I used Fabriano Artistico 140 lb hot press from Dick Blick) It is a fabulous heavy weight paper and prints beautifully.

The papers I start with are 22” x 30”, once dyed I cut them so they will go through my wide format printer. For that printer the paper needs to be less then 17” wide. The images I use have been layered on photohshop, with some of the layers deleted so the prints are more lines then total image. The opacity % is lowered on the layers remaining so that the pages are easy to write on. The pages as printed ar 5" x 11" and then folded to sew into the signatures.

These are some of the journals that I will have with me at the Trunk Show at the Surface Design Association Conference on Friday of Memorial Weekend. I will also have all sorts of digital prints and other artwork.

Tomorrow I will finish printing the various surfaces that will be used in my next Book of Forests. In the next couple of days, I will post my printing results.

Patterns-Patterns-Patterns

Just finished teaching a couple of workshops in Photoshop Elements.  It's such an interesting program. Sometimes the difference from the actual Photoshop program drives me crazy.  I miss my pen tool,  I miss the single line marquee tool, I miss curves, I miss the way you can make textures, but Elements has some good characteristics.  Whatever Photoshop program I use, there are always new ideas to try:)

A rock with 10 layers of texture created in Photoshop Elements is inspiring me for pattern making.  Actually, I always think of this as a rock, but it really is a piece of a tree in the Petrified Forest in Northern Arizona.  Those trees are actually around 200+million years old.  The crystal properties of the trees feel like rocks to me.

So many ideas on what I want to work on are going through my head.  Some new surfaces I would like to try to print on .  Plus my book about prints on uncommon surfaces is coming together even as I write this.  In a few weeks when I go to Kansas City for the Surface Design Association Conference, I will get clear on some of the information I would like to include.

If any of you have any comment on what you would like to see in a book on printing outsider surfaces let me know.  The book is never finished till it's finished and that won't be until the end of the year.

Tomorrow night is vendors night at the conference.  After that I will fly to Colorado to celebrate our grand daughters birthday.  Seems like she was just born, my how time flies.

Then back to my studio.  This week, a couple of youtube videos are on the agenda.

Topics of videos?   The 2 workshops I am teaching at ArtFiberFest at the end of June.