Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope you all have a lovely day.

Enjoy the simple things.

Steampunk and an anniversary.

This week is the first anniversary of the Rusty and Boots blog. It's been going for a whole year. Yay! 😊 Thank you to everyone who has read it so far, I hope you've liked it.

For some reason this year I've somehow developed a liking for Steampunk. I didn't like it to begin with; when I first heard of it I thought 'What is this?' but then I didn't really get it. The more I saw of it the more I found out and now I understand the attraction.

As I love fantasy novels and films, Steampunk kind of fits into that genre, along with science fiction, with its nature of being an alternative history of the Victorian era or a sort of dystopian time in the future where we've gone back to those fashions and to steam energy rather than electricity. 

Obviously, having begun to like Steampunk and seeing so many artworks in that style, I had to have a go at creating my own art. This is my first attempt so I'm not sure how good it is yet but I have more ideas in which I hope to improve the imagery and composition.

First of all I painted the canvas in a rose gold shade, then used modelling paste to create the cogs, which to begin with I painted gold with brown parts like rust.

Then I used puff paste on some areas.

 

I painted the puff paste gold.

 

I added some brown cogs and placed some actual cogs on it to see where they might fit in.

 

Then I decided I didn't like the rose gold colour and repainted it with a kind of old gold. I also painted the puff paste creating a rust effect.

 

I added some painted cogs then attached the real ones.

 

So there it is. As I've said, this was my first attempt at anything vaguely Steampunk, so I'm not sure of the result yet and I may change it. This is only experimenting and playing with the style and feel and as I continue on my Steampunk journey, along with all my other textile and painting ideas, you will see the results. I hope you'll like them.

Autumn Colours

Here are some photos I've taken of leaves with their Autumn colours and some work in progress which has been inspired by them.

Some lovely sycamore leaves......

Some astilbe stalks.....

Some astilbe leaves.....

Some cherry tree leaves.....

Finally, this is the work in progress I've started which is inspired by the colours of Autumn and is another version of my Wild Nature wall hanging.

So far, I've cut strips of fabric in amber and chestnut and used machine embroidery over them. There's more work on the way! 😊