Project 4 Stage 3

Selecting from your drawings

It's surprised me to stand back and see the volume of work I've done in just under 4 months.  What I noticed most was the colours I'm using; reds, yellows and vibrant contrasts and I'm really enjoying doing it.  My work recently has taken a quite unexpected direction with lots of energy and exuberance. Six months ago my schemes and shapes would have been almost exclusively delicate and toned down.  I'm not sure whether this represents a growing confidence or just a new recognition of the effect of the colour and design.

I've chosen snips from throughout the course.  I played with different frames and always came back to  an 8cm square except for the circular one which is a 6cm diameter.

This is from a much larger collage in the early part of the course when I was experimenting with mark making and bleach.  It reminds me of fireworks.

It is turned through 180 deg from the original because I preferred the shower effect.

This is part of an oil pastel drawing of an apple.  I like the depth where the stalk comes from the middle.  This was the first drawing I felt pleased with.  

This is taken from an A3 picture I did when I was looking at the effects of colours on each other.  It is in felt tip pen and completely random.  I think of grasses shaking and rattling in the wind because there is so much movement just as there was in my hand when I was drawing it.

This is in soft pastels and started life as a design on Fijian fabric and then a computer generation where it looked very flat.  I like this because it shows the texture of the hand made paper and  I love it's pushy, in your face shapes and colours. I'm thinking it's going to pop up time after time in lots of ways.  I've lots of plans for it.

This is taken from a very recent exercise and I like the way that as a fragment it could be interpreted  in lots of different ways.  This too is in pastels and the colour washed paper shows through in a lovely, moody way.  It looked so much better in the round frame.

This feels very different to the other selections; it's a little less flamboyant as regards colour.  The work was done as a doodle developed from an eraser rubbing and wasn't intended to be cohesive.  However, there are lots of snips I could have taken that work well or that I think have other possibilities.

Snip 1

Snip 2

In snip 1 the central pathway divides busy 

areas where many things are happening but never touching each other.   In the original work there are other areas like snip 2 that have elements that could be introduced to make a new image.

Composite picture

I like the way that my work still has the feeling of being a doodle.  Once again the feeling is energetic and full of life.  I've left my very obvious mistake as  a salutary lesson.  I wondered what the effect of more "comma" marks would be and instead of trying it in pencil I went straight to felt tip.  Big mistake.  It took all the energy from that section of the drawing.  Amazing effect.

One thing I noticed was the way the image looks good whichever way it’s viewed.

The best thing about this was the critique from my seven year old grandson.  He said it looked like a big water splash, a firework or an explosion and he was able to identify the component parts from the original.  More honest and open appraisal I could not wish for.

Project 4 Stage 2 Ex 4

I took this photo for another exercise and thought I'd done pretty well so I wanted to use it again.

I liked the colours and the way the leaves fell on and over each other in such an attractive way.  The colours are spectacular.

I isolated a couple of areas that particularly appealed to me then did some sketches and colour swatches and made a list of words that applied to what I'd chosen.

Selection 1

I'm never very confident with this sort of exercise and my inclination is to copy.  Pencil sketching I find particularly difficult so I made myself have a go.   I tried to remember everything I've learnt over the past few months and when I let mark making take over a bit things got a little easier.  Somehow I never end up with what I aspire to!

Pencil sketch from selection 1

I dwelt on shape when I was drawing and had to make my outline marks bolder to distinguish the leaves from the negative spaces.  I like the lower half of the sketch better than the top bit - probably because the leaves are more distinguishable.

My second selection was made because I liked the shapes the leaves and stalks made and the way the colours slipped easily from one to another; a sort of strata effect.  

Selection 2

I wanted to focus on this aspect and spent some time thinking about the medium to use.  I settled on soft pastels but began with a lilac colour wash to get me going.  I didn't know what would happen if I put light pastel over dark but in the foreground I found it worked well.  It was difficult to know when to stop blending and I will always wonder what would have happened if I'd taken it further.

Pastel interpretation from selection 2

I felt much more freed up with the pastels; less likely to copy.

Project 4 Stage 2 Ex 3

Focus on colour

This was my starting image.  I've really enjoyed working with these bright colours and I wanted to prolong it a bit.

Dry media
Felt tip and soft pastels
I inverted the colours - what had been black became red or yellow.  I encouraged some smudging and I'm surprised how dense the pastels are.  The yellow is particularly crisp; I love it.

Wet media
Acrylic paint
I'm not so happy with this it doesn't seem to flow.  I wanted to encourage some mixing on the paper but only rarely did I manage it.  I was away from home when I did this and I'd taken the wrong brushes.  I think I might have changed brushes at home and got more movement.  What I wanted was lots of flicky motion from the end of the "comma".  Once again the introduction of the blue spoils things for me.

Collage
I took red and yellow origami paper and cut 2cm strips.  I then cut each strip into two long triangles and glued them onto paper.

I cut strips of varying width along the length of the paper then cut long triangles again.  This time I stuck them onto black card leaving a slim line of black showing between each triangle.  The red seemed to continue where I knew there was no red and both colours appeared to move.

I photocopied this and with the copy repeated the process.  I began by leaving no black spaces and gradually increasing them as I placed the pieces.

This second picture is most strange.  There wasn't the same amount of  movement as in the first try but the difference in the black spaces made the triangles appear to stand out from the page and slope upwards.

These last two pieces of work created so many optical effects it was quite surreal.

Project 4 Stage 2 Ex 2

Colour

Most of what I did in Ex 1 was in neutrals but I particularly liked it when I went  a bit wild with primary colours so for this exercise I decided to take the coloured computer generated image as my focus.  As in an earlier stitching exercise I felt that the red and yellow worked particularly well on black so I tried to isolate them. 

That left me with an image that had drama but no cohesion; just good colours  I thought of making a repeat pattern but because of the angle of the image and my inexperience with the programme I couldn't make it work so I tried the same manipulation that I had used previously (Paint.net with the "twist" at 9.3) and hey presto wonderful things happened.  

I played about using a snip containing the blue and it didn't work nearly so well.  It seemed to lose it's drama and the negative shapes became less prounounced.

I think I should be able to say why it didn't work after the colour module I've done but I'm not at all sure.  Could it be something to do with the yellow and red being saturated and the blue more muted?  I tried a saturated blue.  I anticipated that it would get swallowed up in the dark background and that is exactly what happened.

It's hard to believe that all this thinking came from a photo of a piece of bark cloth.

Project 4 Stage 2 Ex 1

Shape

This is a detail from Fijian bark cloth called "masi".  Bark is stripped from the Mulberry tree.  The inner layer is soaked and scraped then beaten to flatten it.  It is then either glued or beaten onto another piece of bark.  All this hard work is done by the women.

Patterns are stencilled, stamped or smoked onto the fabric and the images depict the environment and way of life.  Nowadays the fabric tends to only be worn on ceremonial occasions and tourists can watch the making of the cloth.

I like the fabric because it is elemental and both simple and complex.  I wanted to check out the pattern repeat and made several copies and stuck them together.  I developed a real appreciation of the work involved and the skill of the painters.

The three parts I have isolated show different design details.

The first one feels very settled and repetitive.  It is taken out of context - the reality is a diagonal line.  I couldn't grasp the way the positive and negative shapes work so I spent some time trying to make a similar stencil.  I used card but the Fijian people used banana leaves.

I had to focus really hard on the positive and negative  (I didn't always get it right).  I had a very sharp craft knife but I expect the traditional tool may have been a shell or something similar.

Pencil sketch for the stencil

The cut out stencil

My finished print

This was all very tricky and the nearer to the end of the cutting the more nervous I became.  On the printing there are some splodges where the paint seeped through but it's turned out better than I had hoped.  It taught me a lot about the process of stencilling and perhaps the fact that I was trying to make a copy of something made it harder.  It may look like a simple thing to do but it's certainly not.

This one seems very dynamic with its point and crossed lines.The negative shapes are very important but once again I found myself getting very confused between the positive and negative. 

I wanted to use odds and ends of natural material for this so opted for newsprint, string and bits of undyed wool.  I began by cutting out shapes from the folded newspaper then coloured them in with felt tip pen.  I like the arrow shape because it keeps the energetic feel of the original.  The straight lines and the newsprint triangles work well and keep the feel of the piece as does the bobbly wool. I'm not so happy with the "X" shapes because they don't look cohesive.  This may be because the shape was hard to achieve.  I hadn't realised how important it was to have things in line.  The "X" that it off line looks awful. 

The last detail shows a variety of stencilled designs and is very busy.  The pale lines in the diamond shape look very prominent.

I have really enjoyed the natural way this fabric is made and decorated but I decided to take things to the other extreme and manipulate the pattern digitally and use bright, mainly primary colours just to see what happened.

I used Paint.net with the "twist" effect then introduced colours in the negative spaces.  I used the default positions except for "direction" which I set at 9.3.

This is the first time I've tried painting on the computer and it was fun.  I tried to use the colours I've been working with recently and stay conscious of what was happening to them.  As I've found previously the darker blue tends to get lost on the black and so does the green.  The yellow and the red however leap out of the page.  The central river looks turbulent and exciting and although it divides the page somehow holds the thing together (probably more than the original central line did).  My first impression of this detail still applies even though the media is so different.  It's still busy and what were the white lines still stand out but now they are yellow.

As a matter of interest if the setting is changed to -19 things start to look a bit different.  I'm sure there's a long way to go with this sort of work and I'll enjoy playing with it.

I got very involved in this piece of work and enjoyed trying to re interpret using other media.  Having to look very closely at work I might previously taken for granted opens up a whole new world of ideas.  The notion of taking a detail, then taking a detail of that, then again ad infinitum is a lovely way to make creative opportunities.

I've just read through my course information and see that I have deviated from the instructions.  I'm hoping this is going to be OK.


John Gillow and Bryan Sentence, 1999, World Textiles, Thames and Hudson, London.
www.matangi-island-figi-resort.com

Project 3 Stage 6 Machine exercise

Combining textures and colour effects

It’s a good job this is a colour exercise and not something needing the perfect finished article!   When I dissolved the water soluble fabric I knew I’d not put enough stitches in to hold the fabric together so to say I’d made lace is something of an understatement. That said I was pretty pleased with what the colours did.

I used a standard straight stitch then a zig zag on top but I got really bored with doing it.  When I introduced black I decided to use some free machine embroidery for a bit of variety.

• The blue/yellow mix was interesting because the yellow became green.  This was the first panel I did and it’s the most dense and therefore is more stable.  After that my boredom started to show and I didn’t put enough stitches in.
• Red bobbin/yellow reel gave me a lovely mixture that really showed orange
• Blue bobbin/red reel produced a red/violet that could have been mixed on a palette
• The dense black I introduced did a good practical job of holding things together when I stitched across the threads but not when I stitched with the grain although it looks pretty.

I found the water soluble fabric quite tricky to work with.  At first it was difficult because it was so floppy and sticky.  After a time it started to pucker up so the yellow/red section looks shrunken. Last time (which was the only time) I used water soluble fabric I just used free machine embroidery and the puckering didn’t seem so much of a problem.

All in all, whilst this may not be the world’s greatest piece of work it taught me a lot about using this material.  I need to find a way to stop the puckering and control the result a bit more.  I wonder how it would respond to an embroidery hoop? 

I never could resist a challenge so here I am 24 hours later having tried again with both a hoop and the benefit of yesterdays experience.  I began by stitching in a circular motion all over with white thread.  I hoped this would give me a firm base to work on.  I then did blue bobbin/yellow reel, red bobbin/yellow reel, blue bobbin/black reel and finally a bit of each.

Looked at from the top side

Looked at from the underside

Once again I had problems with my tension so on the top the blue barely shows through the yellow.  Once I'd sorted the tension out things started to look better.  The yellow just peeps through the red - very attractive, and the black seems to drain the blue of its vibrancy.  My favourite is the multi colour section.  The bits of yellow that show through seem to dance. 

I was much happier with this piece of work.  First of all it hung together which is important.  But mostly I was happier because I enjoyed doing it; I wasn't bored like yesterday.  I think that's because I knew what I wanted to achieve; I had an aim.  I think not all the learning is about stitching!

Project 4 Stage 1

Introduction and preparation

Settled

Calm

Waking happy

Vivacious

Equality and balance

Busy, busy, busy

It seems that horizontal and vertical lines are calmer than those on the diagonal.  The eye seems to have nowhere to settle so has to keep moving.