14 artistsmagazine.com
under the cord and along its sides,
leaving the ends unglued. After the
adhesive has dried, you can cut the
ends off with an X-Acto knife or a
single-edged razor blade. A second
coat of adhesive may then be applied
to ensure that the cord remains
attached. Th is is the method I used
to attach most of the strings in
A Family Man (page 12).
For curved lines, immerse and
saturate the cord in a container of
glue or acrylic medium (a clean deli
container works well for this). Th en
remove the cord from the adhesive,
pulling it between your thumb and
fi rst fi nger so any excess adhesive falls
back onto the container, and drape or
press the cord into position. Draping
produces graceful curves; pressing the
cord into position can produce any
desired linear form.
Retaining the original soft char-
acter of a piece of yarn requires a dif-
ferent approach. In that case, when
you are working on canvas, paper or
mat board substrate, proceed as fol-
lows: Drill or punch (with a needle
or an awl) a suffi cient number of
small holes to secure the yarn in the
desired form. Use a needle threader
to pull a loop of thread that is the
same color as the yarn through each
of the holes in the substrate (see
Securing Yarn, image 1, page 16).
Leave the ends of the thread behind
the substrate and secure them tem-
porarily with masking tape so they
won’t pull through. Feed the yarn
though the loops, as shown in image
- Th en pull each loop tight from the
back (image 3). Retape the threads
temporarily, glue the threads to the
Ask the Experts
“Almost all papers
made prior to 1850
were made of cotton
and are essentially
acid free. ... materials
printed before 1900
are more likely to be
lightfast.”
12_tam1216Experts.indd 14 9/22/16 8:33 AM