Hi All,

Due to a family commitment, I was not able to produce any work at all during day today. I am sorry for no posting. Please come back here tomorrow for refreshed works.

Yesterday, I spent hours recalling my childhood while I was making the pieces. That made me wanting to look back myself and the Japanese history and its rich culture and art. I have been thinking about "my origins", "my roots" and "Going back to the roots." I am sure that this will give me an opportunity to re-explore my identity. As a Japanese girl living and working in the UK - I have spent most of my adulthood in London and South England and I feel that it is getting so easy to forget where I was from, who I was/am and increasingly difficult to focus on where I am heading to from here.

I do not know how to express it yet, but I will find my way around by tomorrow.... hopefully, well, I must.

I am going to spend a couple of hours with my old Japanese history and art text books which I brought from Japan. I studies the subjects with the books while I was at school, so it is going to make me feel a bit nostalgic.

Take care and have a peaceful Saturday night.

C x

Dear All

I am experiencing technical problem uploading pictures. It really is a shame as I created beautiful photographic images this afternoon.

I used motifs of dandelions and clovers which clump up in my front garden and prevent my nigelas, poppies, sweetpeas and other fragile flowers from brooming beautifully. I wanted weed them out, but as I looked at them closely, they are very pretty in their own way, too. So I decided to capture the beauty of garden weeds - Artwork 12 & 13. I hope to come up with a title by the time I post them :-)

I publish this now and will try uploading them again in a couple of hours, before going to bed. The problem may be caused by a busy blog traffic on Sunday night. May be lots of people in Europe trying blog at the moment, so I may have a better chance later. If I am not succesful uploading the pictures tonight, I will post them tomorrow.

I am also experiencing problem viewing "30dayartist.com" Is anyone able to view this page ?

I hope that all the technical problems will be sorted by tomorrow.

C x

I wanted to work on the Oil paintings which I started last Thursday, but they were still wet, or to be precise, "creamy". I was tempted, but my little experience in oil painting tells me I should wait a few more days. So I needed to look for an alternative to fill my day.

Since I have produced a few textile work, and they were successful, I wanted to broad my skills in different kind of textiles, something more traditional than contemporary machine embroidery (see Artwork 4 & 5). I believe in learning traditional and orthodox as well as experimenting new, because great classics are the ones which have been loved for centuries and serves well. To study how things have been developed over the centuries helps me to advance that great technique already available to me into my original work of art.

It is getting late and I feel very tired. I did lots of fine embroidery work today while Kilzac(webmaster) and I tried to figure out the server problem. Many, many thanks to Kilzac ! He has been really helpful.

I am finding very hard to concentrate on collecting and typing my thoughts now. There are 2 more Sashiko embroidery pieces in progress. I will post the process of making Sashiko and the rest of finished pieces tomorrow.

sleep well,

C x

I love the way he used the feathers, it makes me wanting to feel the chick and gives me a kind of illusion that I am touching a chick. Very nice indeed.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I will document how the Sashiko embroidery has been created, so here are some pics and tips when you work with textile.

I researched Japanese traditional origami paper designs and I created similar images in Adobe Illustrator and printed them out. (here I used geometric patterns, so it did not need to make mirrored image, but when you use other type of image, you do need to)



I traced the images onto infusible lining. In fabric shops, you will see many different infusible fabrics, but I recommend to use iron-on thin cotton ones. Synthetic ones have very smooth surface and are not good for tracing with a graphic pen.



Iron on the lining onto the fabric of your choice and hand stitch the design, you will need patience, diligence and great deal of attention to detail to complete hand embroidery !



I had enough of these now. Haha,

The Sashiko embroidery has been developed over the centuries, mainly in the north part of Japan where winters are very snowy and cold, and it was a poorer part of Japan in old days. Women there experimented to make a stronger and thicker fabric for their clothing and household textiles, so they saw a few layer of cheap and thin fabric together to make a tougher one. Well, in this modern society, I could transform the pieces into bags, napkins or just frame them to hang as a piece of textile art. I am tempted to make a large beach bag for this coming summer.

So, the study of Japanese traditional embroidery was very fruitful at the end, because I now know that I prefer machine embroidery which is freer in style, choice of colours, textures and thickness of material and its process is more intuitive, but allows me to be precise at the same time.

C x

Despite a lot of help from our webmaster, Kilzac, I have not fixed the server problem. We figured out who and what is blocking me from accessing to http://30dayartist.com, but I am still in trouble because its Easter holiday time and people are not in working mood, really, they just tell me that its not their fault....and they cannot help me because I am not their customer. Haha, what a joke. I am really pissed off.

Early in the afternoon, I decided to pop in friends' office around the corner to use their PC, YES, I can view 30dayartist !!! Hooray !!! I checked comments. Hello and thanks to Ming, Chinyew, Thaneeya and Kilzac. I also noticed that the pictures still look very very dark on their old PC with a sit monitor. Over the weekend, I will post Gamma adjusted pictures of old artwork. So, stay tuned.

Lets talk about art now, I finally managed to touch up oil paintings I started last week. I really wanted get them done, forget about them and move on to next, so it was a relief to see the dry surface. I mainly worked on highlights and adding more depth to the images.








Although it was tiring, I really enjoyed the process of still life and I learnt a lot about how to use oil pigments and their nature, like yellow pigments tend to take longer to dry and some pigments are almost transparent, such as Crimson and Viridien, while others are opaque.

This is the kind of series I would like to work on over months to develop my skills in oil and I have all the intention to do so. But for now, I am pleased that I am over with them. Since the 30dayartist is such fast paced, I should move on to next.

Since this morning, I had this idea, to paint a picture with my bare eyes, without glasses, so that I see the world in such a dreamy illusion. I just see very vague outlines, bold colours and strong highlights - the world of Impressionism. This morning, I forgot to wear glasses and I actually enjoy the different world, its fantastic. It is almost like to cocoon into my little world.

I am going to be an Impressionist for this artwork. I have worked with fine details until now, so it will be a nice change. So, what to paint ?

Well, in England, we had a very cold winter and the weather has not picked up at all. Over the months, the weather forecasts people are keep saying "it will get much warmer by next week" they are liars. In my patio garden, only Hyacinths are happily blooming, Tulips are struggling to grow, Snow Drops are just popped their head out. I ve heard that things are 3 weeks behind. That's a big trouble for me. Because I wanted to use my plants as motifs for 30dayartist, therefore, I chose to be Aprils artist and here I am, I ve got just green shouts. No colours except green and some brown... not the kind of colours I normally use, but due to the fast pace of 30dayartist, I cannot hung on. I ve got to go against the adversity and make an opportunity to try something in green and brown.

The greens are so broad in tone and hue, in my patio I see very youthful greens, light greens, and kind of thinned viridian with a hint of lemon yellow, while I spot tired browns, the colour of dead plants from last year.

Luckily, someone at an oil painting workshop gave me a bagfull of used, but good quality pigments and it included many greens. So I just squeezed them out onto a palette and looked at them carefully, and examined the colour, opacity and glossiness. I then thinned them with turpentines to see the difference.

Today I did a very rough underpainting. I deliberately did less so that it will dry quicker.




Over the Easter weekend, from Friday to Monday inclusive, I have Cosmo all the time, so I will be able to do less art making. But I will try to be as creative as possible with him.

Happy Easter

C x