Project 1 Stage 4 Review

I am going on holiday in a day or two so it's an opportune time to reach the end of this part of the course.  Next I will be making marks with stitches and I'm really looking forward to it.

Not only have I never thought about drawing in this way before; I've never thought about drawing at all because I knew I couldn't.  The idea of drawing being a series of marks that are attached to emotions and textures has been a revelation.  I scribbled a few lines in my sketchbook to represent leaves and knew that Turner had done something similar.

When I started making marks I felt very self conscious and rather worried that I might not get it right.  As time has gone on I have found myself getting bolder and less bothered about right and wrong.  I still have to remind myself to make marks and not to copy slavishly.

I don't think I'm doing enough drawing and what I am doing is very representational.  It has certainly increased my confidence to get something recognisable on the page but it bears little relationship to the mark making I've been practising. I'll have to work at it.

When I warmed through I found myself able to explore more widely with mark making.  I have done rubbings, printing, lifting with a rubber and lots more.  I have used many different media, soft pastels, pencils, crayons and paper of all sorts.  I've found a brand new use for bleach, investigated water colour and gouache and got messy with charcoal and oil pastels.  I've even used some emulsion paint to do some printing and general messing about.

It is a new thing for me to just play without any well defined end result required. It's quite novel  that there can be no right or wrong way to work. That realisation gives me confidence and I hope I can learn to use it to access untapped creativity.  I also love the idea that a fragment of the whole can be selected then re-interpreted time and time again.

It's hard to select one medium that I preferred more than the others.  I enjoyed the pencils because they are so versatile and I loved rubbing away the pencil marks with a rubber. I enjoyed using my paintbrushes and just experimenting with what marks the brushes could make.  Soft pastels appeal to the romantic in me.

I feel as though I've had a rapid journey through a lot of material and I want to continue with the play idea.  I would like to try some finger painting and some printing ideas that I remember from way back.  The doodling onto my eraser work last night was quite spontaneous and I think the that the freedom to play has enabled me to feel that experimentation is OK - it doesn't have to work.  If it doesn't something else will.  

I find that when I visit an exhibition I'm looking at things in a different, more focused way.   I am enjoying thinking less literally and more creatively and I hope this will inform my textile work in the future.

My decision to create blog to record my work was a huge move for me because I'm a very private person.  The reasons I changed my mind were twofold.  The first was to give good access to my tutor and the second was because I have gained so much by looking at the work other students had shared.  It felt as though I was withholding my contribution to the collective resource.  The area I live in provides a dire internet connection and things are frustratingly slow and often drop out altogether but I plan to stick with it.

I'll finish this now I've got to pack my holiday gear for stitching marks whilst I'm away.  It'll make a lovely change from reading by the pool!

Project 1 Stage 4

This exercise had been worrying me because I thought I was short of material.  Happily I was wrong.

The first image is one I did was I was practicing with oil pastels and trying to blend.  I ended up with something akin to a sunset.  This is just an 8cmx8cm section.

The things I thought of when I looked at the pastels were words like dynamic, hot and spiky. I noticed that these words applied less towards the bottom of the picture.  This drawing was done in seconds and I'm rather pleased with the result.  It seems so simple but it has energy and the dynamic feel I was looking for.

This is a page I nearly tore out because I thought it was awful.  It was just charcoal rubbed on the page.  It is bumpy because of the texture of the paper and I saw no value in it.  But I left it where it was and when I was looking for material for this work I suddenly saw water and movement in it.

I thought to get this sea feeling might be hard but I tried a rubbing on my wicker garden furniture and it is just perfect.  If you look closely you might even see fish.  Somehow I was resistant to using blue; I think the green pastel works well.

I did this when I was trying to make marks with anything and everything.  I used emulsion paint that was quite elderly so it was lumpy and it took marks very well.  When I was considering words to describe the part of the image I was looking at I came up with lumpy texture, soft colours and sharp marks.  This surprised me because those descriptors seem a bit of a mis-match.

However, I tried to work with those words and this is the result.  I used soft pastels and laid colour on without blending until the end so I could try to get the sharpness I wanted.  It doesn't show on the photo but I dripped PVA on for the lumpy feel I wanted.

Once again I was happy with the outcome.  There is a softness as well as the sharpness I wanted.  I have learned not to over blend because that increases the range of effects I can achieve.  Any more blending on this and I would have lost the lines I was aiming at.

I did this when I was playing with bleach and looking at its effect on a variety of papers.  I splodged it, drew with it and generally had fun.

This has an insubstantial air about it probably because I used tissue and mulberry paper.

I'm not at all sure about this.  I tried to get a flimsy feel but I think I went too far.  I planned to leave out the dark contrast; I thought it would make things look too heavy.  Instead I found it looked bland and uninteresting.  The colours I chose were too delicate.  This makes me see that brighter colours can look insubstantial. I put in the striped ribbon and it helped.  I used PVA which was a mistake; I got in a tangle and it didn't stick net very well; maybe spray glue would have been better.  I also think it looks busier than I had anticipated.  I did lay things out prior to sticking and it looked completely different maybe because some bits stood proud of the paper.  This is disappointing because I had given this a lot of thought.
My quick pencil scribble works much better!

I'm so much happier with this pencil crayon and soft pastel attempt.  It gets what I wanted much better.  The colours are bright but muted b the white and rubbing the pastel gave a dreaminess that I like.

Whilst I was leafing through World Textiles by Mary Schoeser I found this detail from an embroidery called Le printemps by Rebecca Crompton (1898-1947) and it reminded me of my work above.  It has the same ethereal quality. The photo in the book was poor and I've no idea what colours were used but my emotional response was similar to my own work. Crompton used a double layer technique in which applique is overlaid by stitched net.

Schoeser, M. 2003, World Textiles, Thames and Hudson, New York.

Felting

My husband has made a musical box for each of our granddaughters and now it's Esme's turn.  He asked me to line the bottom so I decided to make some felt.  The music mechanism he chose was La Mer so I looked at my blue shades.

I made two pieces of felt, got them to the pre felt stage and planned to weave them together to make a single piece of fabric with no gaps for tiny precious things to get lost in.

I was unsure how to weave them so I practiced a bit using contrasting wallpaper.


Straightforward even strips

Uneven strips

Wavy strips








I was amazed at how different each of the samples looked.  I chose to do wavy strips because I liked it best and it has sea connotations.

This is how the felt developed.

Weaving wavy strips

Weaving complete (I put some angel fibres in as well)

Fully felted

I'd never done any weaving before and I tried to leave no gaps but it was so difficult especially as I neared the end..  However, any small gaps that I couldn't quite close up disappeared when I fully felted the piece.

Famous Marks

Whilst I've been mark making I've dipped into lots of work by famous people and been amazed at how differently they paint both from the point of view of their personal style and the way they use marks to achieve the end result.  Here I've highlighted just one or two because they represent very different styles and evoke different feeling in  me.

Pablo Picasso  (1881 - 1973)

Self portrait 1907 (oil on canvas)


Angular lines
Hard lines
Feels sympathetic even though it's sharp
Some shading

Head of a woman (Olga Picasso) 10th March 1935 (oil on canvas)


Mix of straight and curved lines but feels hard and uncompromising
Feels unsympathetic
Blocks of colour, little shading












Gustav Klimt  (1862 - 1918)

Emilie Floege, 1902 (oil on canvas)



Marks are both smooth and angular
Many different shapes as marks
Lots of dots
Creates texture
Seems to use this instead of shading
There's lots of love in this picture

Houses at Unterach on the Attersee, c.1916 (oil on canvas)

These marks are much more linear.  I've noticed that Klimt's paintings of people tend to be characterised by marks like those on Emilie Floege and scenery more like this.

Vincent van Gogh  (1853 - 1890)

Self Portrait with Felt Hat, 1887-88 (oil on canvas)

This self portrait is made entirely with short straight marks.
The marks look rather like hair.











All images from the Bridgeman Library

Doodling

Last night I was looking through my sketchpad and came across a mark making exercise I did by removing pencil with an eraser.  

I had enjoyed doing the piece of work and I began to doodle in the space left by the eraser.

I had been reading Gwen Hedley's Drawn to Stitch and was inspired to try weaving as shown on P 41. I photocopied a section twice then fastened them together to make something like an A4 sheet.  I made 2 copies.  I cut one sheet into wavy line strips and the other (also wavy) almost to the top then wove them together. This is what I got.  It looked jumbled and the weaving got lost.

Hedley, G, 2010, Drawn to Stitch, Batsford, London

 This morning I decided to try something else.  I arranged the section of the pattern differently, more consciously try to align things

 I repeated the copying process but used two colours of paper so the weaving would show.

This time the paper was cut into straight strips.  The colour contrast made such a difference (although the photo doesn't really show it) to the final piece.  I'm not sure the more careful placement of the pattern was that effective because everything becomes very random.











I had to think hard about this as I was doing it and try to anticipate the outcome with the placement of the pattern.  I was interested in the differences between the wavy weaving and the straight.  I had thought the wavy would be the most interesting but it wasn't because of the lack of contrast.

This was really enjoyable even if it did wander a bit away from what I should be doing.  I'm hoping that I can use what I made in some future project.

Goldwork

I've had a lovely day learning to do goldwork.  It's what adorns alter cloths and church vestments. It's very ornate with a high bling factor.  I wasn't sure this was the skill for me but I really enjoyed it and am pleased with what I've done so far.  I think I've another couple of hours work until it's finished; it's a very slow process for a beginner.

The tutor was Jane Drummond,  highly skilled in goldwork and textile conservation.  I talked to her about the possibility of incorporating goldwork into a less traditional setting and she was very enthusiastic about the ways it could be used.

Jane had worked hard putting together little kits of the materials we needed and had even stuck the silk to calico with bondaweb and traced the pattern for us.  She gave us clear instruction about how to do this for ourselves and it involves cuttlefish!

It's a good job we didn't spend time on the prep because no one finished the embroidery before the 4.00 pm deadline.

The pattern we used

After one exhausting hour

Various sorts of gold thread are laid onto the fabric and couched on, sometimes with coloured thread. 

The wonderfully named pearl purl, cord and twist , T69 and Jap no12 were a plunge into the unknown.  Talking of plunging that's the term used for forcing the gold through the fabric. It makes a quite unnerving ripping sound.





At lunchtime I had to go and buy some 3.5 reading glasses!

This is where I got to by 4.00pm

This is the finished piece.  Unfortunately when I pressed it the bondaweb went a bit bumpy. Gold work isn't  something I would pursue enthusiastically in its own right but it is another useful skill I can incorporate into my work as appropriate.

Pencil Drawings

I've felt that I'm not practicing drawing nearly enough.  As it was the thing I was most worried about I suppose that's not surprising but in fact when I've had a go I've been impressed with myself considering my inexperience.

Yesterday I took a pot of tea into the garden and loaded my sketchbook and pencils onto the tray as well.
I drew lots of things that were in my line of vision and really enjoyed it.  The time just disappeared in the same way that it does when you're deep into a good book.

This is a selection of what I drew.

The swing on the apple tree

Comfy sandals

Essential equipment

The workshop

I feel unsure about exactly what I should be doing here.  Am I trying to develop my observational skills and make an accurate representation or should I be using "marks" in the way I have learnt?

Project 1 Stage 3 Exercise 2

This lovely little vase (15cm tall x 5cm circumference) is something I see many times every day.  I chose it to draw because it is such a lovely texture.  It feels quite smooth but the matt glaze means light is not reflected so it appears dull. There are barely visible ridges going around the vase which make it look a bit stripey. Until I was looking at it closely for this exercise I didn't realise that its sides are a bit convex an irregular shape (probably because it is hand made). You can see this on the photo.  The benefits of looking closely!

Now I've set myself the task I find I don't know how to represent the vase.  Pastels are too obvious and I'd struggle to show the variation in the finish.

Using pastels

I tried pastels anyway.  I laid horizontal strokes, spread it with a course haired brush then fixed it.  When it was dry I scraped it with a sharp point and this made barely visible marks quite similar to the vase. Whilst the colour was good and it looked matt nothing else really worked to evoke a feeling - too effect was not smooth enough and too blotchy.

I decided to abandon the colour lovely as it is, and just go for texture. I lifted out marks with an eraser but I didn't like the initial outline.  I tried to fiddle until it was less prominent to to no avail.  It stopped the stripy look reaching the edges of the vase and this spoilt the effect.

 This time I only made horizontal lifts so any edges were defined only by them.  I think it works much better.  The rough, matt surface is really there.  On the vase the ochre stripe was laid on before the glaze and it bled a bit into the blue.  I used gouache to show this and outlined it in white.  The big learning point hear is that colour isn't everything.  Textures  can be created just with pencils.









My next item is a light catcher that hangs from a tree in my garden.  It has an ethereal quality that I thought might be a challenge.

My light catcher

 I wanted to capture the insubstantial quality of this light catcher.

I tried to capture the ethereal quality

I used tissue paper that I marked with spots of bleach.  Then I mounted some angel fibre onto fine glittery paper and that went onto some pale blue fabric. I used felt tips to make the darker marks in the glass and the surrounding lead is in gouache.  

First of all I tried to find papers that were about the same colour as the glass but when I introduced dark blue around the edge the quality I was looking for disappeared.   I decided to use a paler colour instead.







I'm quite pleased with this result.  I'm not tempted to try again in another medium as I have before.  I think the fact that I've deviated from the actual colour is significant.  It teaches me something about interpretation  to get a particular effect rather than just representation.

Ptolemy Mann

The Architecture of Cloth, Colour and Space

Harley Gallery

Hot Chromatic Landscape detail showing the wonderful colours Mann uses

Ptolemy Mannn is a UK based artist, designer and colour consultant.  She graduated from the Royal college of Art in London and trained as a weaver, specialising in making large scale, hand dyed and woven artworks to commission.

Code is huge

Mann has a wide variety of patrons including  hotels, corporate clients and architects.  Her vibrant use of colour was the main reason for the commission for Kings Mill Hospital in Mansfield.

Kingsmill Hospital, Mansfield

The exhibition showed a wide variety of work and included lengths of woven cloth, wall panels and furniture.
Mann often uses the ikat technique where fibres are dyed in a similar way to tie dying.  Bindings create a resist and a skilled artist can make very intricate patterns.  I saw this done in Bali some years ago and the designs were wonderful.

Yellow Adras using the ikat technique

The use of vibrant colour is the most striking thing about the work on show.  Many of the combinations appealed to me especially the pinks and purples.

Circles showing the wonderful colours

The way the colours seem to blend into each other is intriguing and well beyond my understanding.
Mann creates rugs, cushions, furnishing fabric and furniture some of which are available in John Lewis.

A chair before completion

I left the exhibition feeling quite confused.  I appreciated  the skill involved, the colour and the quality of the work I had seen.  I liked most of it very much.  I simply wasn't excited by it.  I had expected to be really thrilled by the fabrics and in a distant sort of way I was.

When I saw the work of Lois Walpole at the same gallery a few weeks earlier and the drawings of Karolina Szymkiewicz I was exhilarated and energised by them.  It made me want to try things out.  Maybe that's it - they felt more accessible, more manageable and I therefore related to it in a very positive way.  Perhaps the only way I can aspire to anything approaching Ptolemy Mann is to go to John Lewis!

This work is made for a very commercial market; it has an industrial feel to it that feels alien to me.  I'm sure this will rumble around in my head for quite some time.

Elements: Art Through Textiles

This exhibition is being shown at Rufford Gallery.  Art Through Textiles is a Sheffield based group from a wide variety of backgrounds and they are dedicated to textiles as a means of expression and are keen to pass on their skills.  I met Pat Roberts who guided me through one of her pieces and gave me lots of information and tips. The best bit is she actually lives close to me  so we may well meet again.

The Rufford Gallery is a really lovely place.  The light is good and the exhibition was really well put together and displayed.  The range of work was huge.  Some things (like acrylic sheet and tyvek) I'd never even considered as textiles.

For a beginner the range of work was either overwhelming or inspiring and I chose to be inspired. If I was to be critical I might say there was too much to take in but maybe I need to remember to be selective in what I look at.  I don't feel I can do that in an informed way until I know what's out there whether it be design, materials or techniques.

Pat Roberts

Pat is the artist I met at the gallery.  She told be that she began training when she was 61 and took courses for the next 8 years.  She uses nature as her stimulus and this piece shows the strata of life from the core of the earth to the forests.  Pat uses purchased fabric, often batik as here, machine stitching and buttons.  She told me that the leaves were cut out using a soldering iron.

Elements, Pat Roberts

The core of the earth

The forest floor

Pat uses a lining then an interlining to firm up her work and this means she doesn't use an embroidery hoop.

Linda Bellinger

Linda Bellinger uses the landscape as inspiration.  She mixes fabric, threads,paint and print.  On this piece Hollow Rocks, there was very little stitching so what was there was very dramatic.  I liked the cut outs which made some parts of the piece stand out in relief.  I found the combination of the techniques and the colours Linda used very exciting.

Three images from Hollow Rocks by Linda Bellinger

Jay Johnson

Jay also uses the environment as inspiration.  Estuary interprets the landscape with the use of hand stitching, applique and fabric manipulation.

Estuary by Jay Johnson

Detail  showing how stitch can create texture

I love the way that texture is created by the stitches; the reeds really are blowing in the wind.

It represents the isolation and wildness of an estuary so well

Applique used to indicate water