21.05.11 Linocut with text

Spent the week starting to bring together my final pieces which feels weird as I can't help still wondering 'what would that look like ' but am also aware that I have to concentrate on completing the main body of work. It doesn't stop the odd excursion into something new though , as I feel I'm now feel better able to distinguish between an idea that's working well and therefore going somewhere and an idea that doesn't have weight so best stopped at that initial stage - I note it and move on.

Most of my time was involved with working on the print of my daughter sleeping, I wanted to give it more context. Whilst sitting reading to her it gave me the idea to use the text from a favourite book - Winnie the Pooh. I want to give the feeling of her floating off to sleep on a sea of words , a dream like quality.

I tried this thinking it might work well to have pieces of text coming through the print- it didn't ! It spoiled the print - cutting it up. 

Tried again this time tried to get the feel of the image floating on the waves of text.
Too busy , the text is distracting . The overall feel of the piece should be calm and dreamy.
I've used a pale cotton to emulate domesticity, it could be a sheet or another domestic linen - I just felt it was more appropriate than paper.

Tried to simplify the text putting it around the image, the image needs to be stronger as it prints on fabric differently to paper - the blue I'd mixed had too much extender in so didn't have enough pigment for the fabric texture.
The text also needs to be more evenly spaced down the sheet so that it doesn't look like a gap under the image.

Also thinking about colour as the soft neutral cotton looks a bit stark. I want it to look sleepy so it needs to be darker, more muted. This blue Indian paper has the look I want but doesn't drape in the way that a fabric will, even though it is made from rag.

I spaced the waves of text to represent drifting off to sleep whilst listening to a story, the drifting in and out so you catch some words and not others. I chose a dark linen colour so that I  keep the feel of bed linen and I like the way it works with the soft blue of night. I didn't want the whole piece of text as it's not about what that text says , it's about the text being comforting , familiar , safe so that it carries you off to dream. That's what my home feels like at night and this seemed a really good way to show that feeling. I'm really happy with this.

Thought I'd try a blue fabric even though I couldn't find the soft blue I wanted, It makes the whole piece too dark - everything starts to get a bit lost on it. It's trying to get a balance between the feeling of night and sleep and being able to see the image clearly , and I think the linen above works better.

I'm now going to tidy the fabric as I had to cut the piece larger than needed in order to tape it to card , otherwise the fabric moves and creases when you're printing.