Project 7 Fruit skin

Hitting the wall

For the first time I've really hit a wall with my work.  I've found myself stuck and thinking I'm going backwards.  In my last report my tutor suggested I choose a line of enquiry to pursue and I've found myself devoid of ideas.

In an effort to kick start myself I've been looking at the natural wrapping of fruit; the skin.  It's interesting that we take the strangeness and beauty so much for granted.  Fruit skin is so everyday and often discarded and we take little notice of it.  I'm looking.

Watermelon

Watermelon

Whole watermelon

I played with the whole watermelon on the computer by changing colours.  The dark shape is reflection. 

I've got used to fiddling with images but they are usually my drawings.  I found it quite disconcerting to change a familiar fruit to this very unfamiliar colouring.  So much so that I quickly reversed it.  It just had to have some green.

I enhanced the original quite striking markings with the Paint.net paintbrush but concentrated on the very basic colouring of the fruit; the outside and the inside, hence the pink.  When I changed the tone of the pink using an effect it once again altered how I felt about it.

I much preferred the depth of the previous image so I took a snip and added some seeds.

I wanted to push this on a bit so I selected some fabrics and set to work.

I used calico as a background and bondawebbed some shiny green dupion onto pink poplin and began to machine embroider in a swirly pattern on the green "skin".  I planned to add black seeds made out of felt offcuts.

Then I began to wonder just what I was about.  It felt as though I was just copying the manipulated picture and abandoning all I had learnt over the past few months.  I have put this work to one side in favour of trying something else.  I was sorely tempted to just pretend this hadn't happened but there's lots of thinking to be done about why this should be.  My initial ideas are that I've just not followed the process.

Melon skin

I'm trying another fruit skin image; once again a melon.  I'm going to articulate the process so that I don't miss stages out.

Melon skin

The lines are bumpy, jagged, uneven, broken, organic, raised.

The colours are subdued, hard edged with white, slightly shaded

The texture is rough, matt, broken, ridged.  The green looks very deeply recessed.

I played with the image.

I spent some time doing a collage based on the original picture.  I reversed everything except the colour.  The pale marks on the skin were indented and the green skin was in relief.  The jagged feel changed to soft and sinuous and instead of being disjointed there was lots of interconnected lines.  Rather than being matt it is shiny.  And it hasn't photographed very well at all.

It's not frog spawn!

Stuffed bubbles, exposed holes and embroidery

I used bubble wrap which I stuffed, flattened, slashed and stitched on.  This is a technique I've used before but I developed it a bit more this time.  The end result bears no resemblance to the image.  How effective is it?  It's got plenty of texture and interest and the colours are good.   Remarkably some of the bubbles remained unpopped but I think there are rather too many of them without embellishment.  Compared to the work I ditched this morning at least I can live with it.  I hope it's helped me through what has been a bad patch.

Dents effect

I played on the computer again.
I used an effect I've used successfully before called dents.
This didn't do anything for me at all.  The image lost all of its lovely definition.  I'll be leaving this alone.

The next one is an ink sketch effect and this heightened the definition.

I superimposed a facility called "curves" which introduces colour.  I'm unsure of the science but all things seem possible! The beauty of this adjustment is that I can play about to my hearts content in relatively little time.  Just as with the watermelon colour changes the whole feel of the image and I think it looks like a view from space.  It looks like a machine embroidery project might be in order.  

These are both recognisably the melon skin but I like the change.  It makes me think that my unwillingness to accept the "foreign" colour in the watermelon was because the image was still a water melon.

Still using the melon skin image I imposed a "tile effect" and this one made the image unrecognisable. It used the ridges but placed them in the centre of a tile grid.  No two shapes are the same.  

I used "curve" again to alter the colours.  What I now have looks like plastic bags. 

 I tried to make similar shapes with heat gunned bags but it wasn't particularly successful.

I took a snip.....

 ....  then outlined the shapes in a contrasting colour.

Another colourway

This suggests lots of techniques.  Some, like printing, would give a repeat pattern if the shapes were standardised somewhat.  I can see weaving or fusing within a mesh as well but I think this is beyond my current skill level.   I feel positive about it the amount I can get out of this.

Pineapple skin

I've looked at lots of images of pineapples and been amazed at how different varieties have very different skin.  This one is comparatively regular although once again no two shapes are the same.  Every cell is six sided but there the similarity ends.  There is a smoothness to the dark green section but lots of tiny indentation towards the centre.  There are no sharp points on this particular fruit.

I wanted to move away from the computer so I got out my water soluble crayons and made a sketch.  I made no attempt to copy the image but simply drew a six sided shape with central texture.

I used small pieces of hairy wool secured with brads in the middle of the cells.  I'm happy with this especially the colours.