More ways with pebbles

 I am remaining true to my goal of attempting to 'play' with pebbles and stones in as many ways as I can without actually landing on anything decisively. I have painted pebbles with watercolour, and am stitching pebbles onto fabric. I most recently began to play with wrapping cement-cast pebbles; and have started to do some calligraphic renderings as well.

I think I first started wrapping pebbles a decade or so ago... just for fun.

I had these two cement-cast pebbles sitting on my desk which I had wrapped, in my own fashion, with some Habu threads. I had popped outside the studio and found some twigs from the lilly-pillies that grow there and tucked them into the wrap, and I thought to do some more.

I liked the idea of using the cement pebbles that we cast at home; with Habu thread, rather than the more traditional way with actual stones and cane that goes on wet, and shrinks to hold onto the stone as it dries. 

So I have done some more. I used brown string, some different Habu thread and a black silk tangle that I managed to get a few lengths out of!

I also used some heavy duty cotton thread that I would normally use for tying blocks of type together.

I love how this one looks...

What to do with them I do not yet know.  As per my desire to push further, go sideways, don't simply sit and think I have finished, I am considering how I might be able to use them in a larger piece. It's hard.

And so I turned my mind to words. Last year I wrote the beginnings of a poem titled "Grief is a stone" and soI thought I might play with those words and see what  sort of shapes they might make.

My notebook is a place for sketches only - no proper work can be done in there as the paper is pretty ordinary, but I did want to just try a few sketches.

Playing with background colours and shapes.

Here is the before I wet the watercolour pencils - sorry no after shot!

Because I had had done watercolour pebbles in a circle I wondered if the words might look good in a circle - this would really need more work and attention than I gave it here!

I think I could curve the letters more gently - the G and the S both offer a curve and I think I could make the E and the F could also curve. Something to explore

As is so often the case, the more you do, the more you think about what else you could do and I then began to think it might simply look nicer in a straight line.

I repeated the angled G in the first line, but decided I preferred a more upright look for the second, and also a narrow - wide variation. I think this gives me something to take further and refine as well. At the last minute I added in the downward serif on the G and I don't like it.

Again, no idea what I will do with the words, but it gets your brain active in a bunch of different ways and helps you not shut anything down too early...

I like the way I went with a stone shape for the O. It just happened as the pencil went onto the page and I love those moments. In the bottom one I like how the baseline is flat and there is movement in the upper area... we shall see.