Floral Portrait

This little botanical pulp painting is mounted on a 5x7 mat board; I made it as an example for one of my classes when I was a visiting artist at a northern Illinois school recently. Each class tore colored paper into postage stamp-size  pieces to add to another batch of pulp. Colors changed as we combined containers throughout the day. I pushed the dried, pressed flower into a slurry-filled deckle box so it would be captured by fibers and become part of the paper itself, not just applied to the surface. The colors were divided by a metal form, and bonded together when I removed the form and pressed the water out.

On Friday, May 20, I will be leading an afternoon workshop from 12:30-2:30 at The Center, 12700 Southwest Hwy, Palos Hills, IL, where we will do projects like this, and many others. The special feature of this class is the invitation to bring fresh flowers from your garden or bouquet. We will press and dry them in my microfleur to use in our art projects. Beautiful results guaranteed.

Pulp Painting in Spring

Sometimes I want to celebrate circles as design elements in my work. That and alliteration. The 8 1/2 x 11 base contains tulip and daffodil stems and leaves I cooked in my fiber pot with chemicals, then couched (pronounced "cooch" - it's a French thing) the colored circles of pulp directly onto it. So this is a single piece of paper - a pulp painting. The vibrant colored wet pulp dries many, many shades lighter.