illustration friday

The theme for illustration friday this week is Poem. I'm submitting my piece called "la poète." I've been lurking around the site for a couple weeks but have been shy about sending anything in. Perfect time to take the plunge.



Forgot to post this photo of the natural dye project from yesterday. Those are just regular grocery store, yellow onion skins. I'd like to try red onions to see what I come up with.
It seem to remember hearing it gives a light purple, but it doesn't say in the book. It's hard to get any reds, purples or blues. That's why royalty wore purple, and in the past only prostitutes would wear red (scarlet woman) because no other woman would "spend so much money on vanity." Sounds stuffy to me, but I guess if you're just trying to survive you're not going to spend the only money you have to buy cochineal (red), imported lichens (purple) or indigo.

I also dyed some cotton with the dyebath to use in collage. It turned out the color of Doritos.

This is an old photo from the newspaper, "The New Brunswick Reader" of December '94. That's me in costume acting out the life of an Irish immigrant of 1830 at King's Landing. For this job I learned about natural dye materials, embrodery, sewing, spinning, weaving etc. Just figuring out now that all those crafts can have interesting collage application.