Project 2 Stage 4 Preparing to create textures

1.

This is an oil pastel I did of an apple.  I like it because it has depth and roundness but now I need to look at it in a different way but one that will preserve those qualities.

The surface is smooth and shiny with an indentation of dark roughness where the stalk is fixed.  The colours are semi blended with identifiable lines to indicate the shape. The colour is layered and I can find red, yellow, orange, brown and a highlight of white in the fruit.

I think the apple demands some stitching that radiates into the central core of rough brown.  My experiments with stitches have taught me that I might achieve roundness with the thickest thread at the outside of the apple with diminishing size and thickness as I approach the centre.  Stranded silks could be used for this as they give a good colour range and can be subtly blended like the oil pastels.

My colour bags seem full but there's a strange absence of just the right things!  

I have selected light, shiny fabrics (the yellow is more intense than it appears in the photo).  I'm not entirely sure how I would use them but it may be that the apple shape could be cut and the pieces appliqued together.   The stitches would then be worked. For the rough indentation  for around the stalk might be the rough Jacob wool could be stitched tightly in and a thin leather stalk (not shown) would finish it off.

The stitching would have to be quite dense in order to achieve the smooth silkiness of the apple.

Bearing in mind my doubtful decision about background fabric in my Stage 3 sample I realise I have failed to consider it in this context.  I think maybe a rough natural hessian might be a good contrast with all the sleek and shiny stuff going on.

2.

This piece is from a mark making exercise where I used bottle tops to print with.  I used emulsion paint with a silk finish and got a lovely bumpy texture with not all of the surfaces printing fully.  The background colour is a lilac and the large splodges are a mushroom colour.  The pink circles are printed with a milk bottle top.  The colours are subdued.

All the lines are broken and the whole thing is very curvy and soft.

My colour palette here is very limited but there is scope for using things other than stitches. These are my choices.  The lilac is a little too vivid and I tried putting it on white cotton to tone it down but it didn't have much effect.  The mushroom colour is towelling that I thought could be given a broken look with some paler French knots worked loosely.  Best of all might be some loopy machine stitching but right now that is more than I can manage.  I like the idea of twisting the silk tops into circles in an uneven way and couching them on.

When I was stitching on holiday I loved just doing it without much of a plan.  When I came home and did the Stage 3 sample my plan didn't work that well so I'm a bit afraid to commit too much future planning on this task.  I think that to prepare something basic and to go with what seems to work from that point is a way I'll prefer to stitch.


3.


When I did a textural drawing of my lovely little blue vase I struggled and ended up having 3 tries at it.  The colour version I kicked completely into touch.  I was most happy with a pencil and eraser piece of work.  I've returned to the colour version again to look at how it might be interpreted in yet another medium.

My discarded drawing

This was drawn in soft pastel with a band of gouache.  I tried to show the subtle horizontal bands on the vase.

I thought hard about how to get the soft linear effect I wanted.  I considered knitting but didn't have anything approaching the right colour.  This is a soft silky chenille that I couched on.  I then introduced the wispy blue that can be used sparingly as a highlight.  The band is actually darker than the photo shows and is edged subtly with gold. I have used a beige/gold silk background as it picks up the colour of the band and makes a lustrous contrast to the soft yarns. I used spray glue to fix this in my sketchbook and unfortunately it has marked the fabric.  Overall I'm quite pleased with this little sample.

My textural interpretation

4.

This is something I did some time ago when I was looking at adjectives.  The words I was working were hard and fast.  I remember pressing hard on the charcoal then moving really fast to produce severe, angular marks.  I was pleased with it at the time and with the distance of time I still find it powerful.  Doing the drawing taught me that lots of time doesn't necessarily mean a better picture.  This was done very quickly and is more successful than most.

To get the hardness I want I'm going to use black silks and white background because I want stark contrast.
I've got some beads with a high shine that might work if they could be worked to look spiky  and sharp.  I've recently bought  Machine Embroidery Stitch Techniques by Valerie Campbell Harding and Pamela Watts and on page 21 is a picture of an embroidery by Della Barrow.  She uses threading pins to indicate rain and it looks fabulous.

By Della Barrow

I'm not happy to use pins on work that's likely to be handled (just in case) so I'll strive for something that gives the same effect.

I've become aware that I'm writing this as though it's going to happen not just selecting materials.  Better get going.

Materials chosen

I chose white poplin and covered it with white organza.  I bought a DMC six stranded rayon thread which had a high sheen but was hard to work with because it kept splitting into it's constituent parts.

At the edge I laid down heavy satin stitch mainly with the shiny thread but put some cotton in as well.  I then used the silky thread to make the sharp points.  The first layer was done in fly stitch but the second row gave me a problem; I needed a sharp point at each end so I took just a small stitch in the hope it wouldn't show too much.  As can be seen from the photo this wasn't always successful.  I introduced silver thread to emulate the pins Della used and put in some clear beads.

 I'm pleased this fulfilled what I wanted.  It's certainly hard and uncomfortable.

When I look at against the original picture I now think the drawing isn't as hard as I thought it was.  It could be the charcoal that does that.  Maybe felt tip or pencil would have looked different.

5.

This is a piece of soft kitchen paper that I dipped into my water jar and it gave just what I wanted.I was trying to create something that looked soft and had several tries.  In my early efforts the colour was always too strong.

I had the idea to cut the bubbles away from bubble wrap and stuff silk tops in to the empty holes.  This gave a much more patchy effect than I wanted so I simply spread the silk around and placed the plastic on the top.  The colour looks soft and muted and the plastic gives an uneven texture that's tactile. My friend says it has to be felt to appreciate it. I'm pleased with this.

..

 6.

This was a making marks exercise in felt tip pen that I worked on in many ways and I've isolated just this bit.  It represented hard and cold.  I can visualise this using short lengths of coloured thread.  Maybe I could use the reverse back stitch I used on one of my samples.  It gives a textured but quite broken line that I think would be a bit like the felt tip lines.









This looks very simple but in fact it puzzled me for some time.  I couldn't get the colours right.  Only on really close inspection did I notice (and then remember) that there were three colours and not two as I had thought.  Once I introduced the third colour even though it was hardly perceptible everything changed.  I'm quite pleased that my back stitch has come up trumps again.  It offers a solid sort of line that has lots of texture.

I tried to achieve the feeling of this drawing and think I have succeeded.  I wonder if I should be developing things more though.  Maybe that's a question for my tutor.


















Valerie Campbell Harding and Pamela Watts (1989) Machine Embroidery Stitch Techniques, Batsford.