First Love

When I was little and people would ask, 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'  my answer from a very early age was ARCHITECT.  lol  I'm not even kidding.  Imagine hearing that from a sun burned farm kid.  I've always loved math, lines, drawing, and geometry.  I used to play with graph paper a lot and map out the house in order to plan different room layouts.  I used to design compact, useful closets in the way you can get organizers these days.  I liked things to all have their place, their space... and I liked rooms to have windows that made sense with the light and direction they were facing.

When I was about 10 or 11, my mom's good friend, the local gallery owner, brought a woman to our house to meet with me.  She was an Architect from a big US city and she was asked to teach me about perspective, vanishing points, and such.  It was informal, but I remember it quite well.  I don't recall what the woman looked like.  I DO fondly remember how gloriously BIG the paper was!  I LIKED THAT very much.  : )

Fastforward to 2016.  While in Calgary this spring, I had supper with a friend who had just returned from Germany.  Her name is Gudrun Neilsen and we sat down together and poured over dozens and dozens and dozens of photos she took from the streets looking up at these amazing buildings.  She emailed me a few to play with and I sketched them out with free motion onto postcard sized stablizer.

free motion sketching with black thread

Its a very fun techinique done in reverse with the bobbin.  The off-tension makes a nice ink-blot effect.  So here are the first few, in collaboration with and thanks to Gudrun Neilsen.  : )

Happy Birthday Gudrun : )

That one above is finished and mailed off to her for her birthday!

In the mean time, I have collected oodles of Saskatoon city photos in unconventional poses for another batch of thread sketches.  : )

FUN

Have a great day!