Amazing Costuming and Needlework!

I just discovered the Hermitage's online catalog, which is amazing and filled with inspiring costuming... 

I've been emailing my mom, who is a textile artist, images all afternoon. 

The embroidery on these dresses is amazing! Click on the images to open them up larger in another window. They're all so detailed you almost have to look at them larger! 

 Ceremonial Court Dress of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, 1850's

Ceremonial Court Dress (according to legend, belong to Empress Maria Fydorovna, 1820's

Chamberlain's Ceremonial Uniform and Key, late 19th - early 20th century

Empress Alexandra Fydorovna's Masquerade Dress (17th century Ceremonial Dress of a Russian Tzarina) 1903

Evening Dress of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, Early 20th century

Priest's Vestments: Stole and Chasuble, First half of the 19th century

Shawl, second half of the 19th century

All images from the Hermitage Museum

Paper Cut Elevations

I went to see a Barbie exhibit at the Toy and Miniature museum with my mom Sunday and came across these amazing paper cut elevations of houses. 

Sorry for the crappy quality pictures, they were unfortunately from my phone.

The only information I could get on the artist was her name, Corinne Workmaster, and that these were cut by hand in 1979. After a couple of google searches, there isn't any info on the artist online either.

But the work is still amazing. Drafting elevations this nice are hard enough, so I'm astounded by how much detail is in these paper cuts!

Golden Girls Print!

Golden Girls for a print exchange... completely unrelated to my current body of work, but I LOVE the Golden Girls, and doggomit I wanted to make a Golden Girls print... in golden metallic ink!

Single Color Screen Print, edition of 24

I plan to print a second edition, but that won't happen until at least the end of the week...

New watercolor sketches

I worked on a few watercolor sketches today. I've been trying to perfect using layers of tissue paper like a substitute for washes of watercolor, or to make interesting textures and layers. I have an intaglio print from  2009 that I used silver and blue tissue paper as a chine colle under printing, and I thought it looked pretty neat, so I wanted to experiment with multiple layers of tissue. It's really subtle, and these photos don't really do the work justice, but here is a little look-see.

These little domes have layers of drawing (the geometric lines of the dome structure) drawn on several layers of tissue, then glued down in layers over light water color wash.

This big dome has the negative space between the structure of the dome filled in with two slightly different blueish tones. A layer of plain tissue is layered over the top and more watercolor added.

Hopefully these are a good start to more paintings and prints.