Melanie Testa

Draw

Sewing what I see.

I have been making the Gather your Sew-plies purses obsessively. I am on #8 and I have set a goal of making 30 of them. Really I have made 9, but I gave one away. 🙂 I have also been at home and focused for quite a few weeks, and it is time to stretch my creative muscles and to see what change will bring. So I packed up the latest Sew-plies purse along with some buckram and thread and I walked up to the Promenade to ‘sew (I mean draw) what I see’.

This little drawing took about 3 hours to do. The buckram provided a ‘grid’, which helped in ‘drawing’ straight lines. I brought two types of thread, straight sewing machine thread and #12 Aurifil Mako’ (which has become my favorite hand sewing thread), both in black. I don’t think this drawing is complete and I would love to try using the #12 Aurifil thread in this drawing. The two different sizes of thread will compliment one another nicely, I think.

On the walk home, I began to wonder if I need to paint the sky a light blue… hmmm.

I will be doing this again. I would love to stitch/draw some people, crowds, horizon lines. I need more buckram.

From Messy to Clean and Back

6x6 Journal, hot press watercolor paper

I don’t know how it works for you but at Casa Melly, the studio gets messy as all get out, I can’t stand it anymore, I can’t clean while in the middle of project. Then, just when it is driving me batty, I clean it up, spic and span. 

Highline Drawings

While my studio was clean and approachable, I opened a journal to find gentle little drawings that I did while walking the High Line. I drew this last fall, while I was going through radiation treatment, I had gotten to the cancer care center too early and so took a walk on the High Line. The great thing about New York City is that New Yorkers are not generally, morning people, but I am. So I sat down next to some pretty flowers and drew. I drew in pencil and painted when I got home. I used pen later still. My journal pages are completed over time, not in one sitting or in one place. I don’t think this page is complete even still.

JJ Made these.

I asked a friend to make me a set of tiny sanding blocks and this is what she came up with. It turns out, when I paint with acrylics on pine board that I love debride, sand and deconstruct the surface of my work. What better way to get in small places than with tiny little sanding blocks? Super cute, right?