Tight-lipped

This began as a warm-up exercise in which I rifle through a bin of odds & ends such as sections trimmed from collages and small bits that catch my eye. The idea is to grab a handful and make the piece quickly, without thinking. Sometimes, though, thinking cannot be avoided.

After finishing, it seemed to need something. I found it in my library, in the form of a face from a drawing lesson in "The Popular Educator" (Cassell, London, 1862). I decided to add it as a transfer. The thing about transfers is that they're iffy. Usually, they're a last touch and can destroy a piece if, for example, most of the image doesn't transfer or layers under it are pulled off when the transfer paper is lifted. Happily, he went on easily. 5" x 5" on acid-free paper. {Sold}

Tea time

I made this for my friend Ann Hicks, who has an extraordinary dollhouse. The central image is from the same 1905 Prang Educational Co. art instruction manual mentioned a few days ago. Below it is a section of a dollhouse from a 1920s French school primer. The top border's from a 1940s elementary school penmanship text while the bottom one was clipped from the back cover of a mechanical drawing manual (whose date I need to check). The dolls are acrylic gel transfers from an image in the Dec. 1895 issue of The Delineator, a magazine published by Butterick as a vehicle to sell its sewing patterns.

By the way, the splotches of blue ink on the dollhouse were not put there by me. I left them in, because I liked the idea of a child using the book and spilling ink on it. 4" x 6" on acid-free watercolor paper