Reflections on Project 4

Did you manage to make space move?

What are your thoughts on your drawings?

Were you able to use your drawings successfully for other work? Are there things you would like to try?

Now that you have a good working method do you feel confident of carrying on?

 

This series of exercises of selecting drawings and working from them was a chance for me to really “connect the dots” with regards to my sketchbooks. I have kept sketchbooks for a large number of years, these books have gradually evolved from straightforward observational drawings in pencil / black pen to having colour and patterns added. When I did the Graphics module I started adding found images (as well as starting new sketchbooks, related to the course that were for working out visual ideas). Once doing Textiles,  I started adding material, threads and different papers to my current sketchbooks. I was theoretically aware of the fact that sketchbooks can act as a resource but in doing this exercise I realised that it was the first time I had really explored doing this.

 

Thoughts on the exercise:

I enjoyed taking a small element and playing around on the computer with it although ultimately I found the computer generated images less satisfactory. Maybe the next step would be to translate them back into materials/threads.

The exercise really opened my eyes and developed a  channel to a new way of working. I wasn’t really blown away by any particular result but it made me keen to try new things and  I would like to work in this way again. I’m interested in trying more things out such as stains and bleach, also rubbings.

Stage 4 continued. Designs 5 and 6

Design 5

I repeated this page using printing, rubbings and stencils. I also reversed the colours and added colours.

Design 6

The first image is from scanning in the image and playing around in Illustrator. I was dissatisfied with this so then had a go using other papers and teabags to make stains.

Stage 4 continued. Designs 2,3,4

Design2

I took the rubbings of the buttons and repeated the individual buttons in patterns.

Design 3 and 4

I tried to reproduce the photograms using bleach on tissue paper, bleach on wet ink. This was not very successful, largely as I discovered that bleach is a difficult medium to work with, it doesn’t flow like ink or paint but instead has a sticky, soapy quality which makes it hard to control.

Stage 4 Developing design ideas. Designs 1 and 2

Stage 3 Selecting drawings

I chose the following images from my sketchbook:

Two  rubbings. I could have chosen many more of these. Someone posted up on the OCA forum about an artist called Jane Dixon who works by using rubbings which I found encouraging as I am very obsessed with rubbings.

Two photograms, made by exposing photographic paper to a light source and placing semi transparent objects on the paper.

A constructed page, starting with found stamp paper, cut into, then worked on with marker pen, material added.

Found stamp paper with the random marks left by teabags, left to dry.

When looking at the images I had chosen, the first thing that struck me was the monochrome nature of the items I selected. Virtually all of them are black, white or grey, with a minor digression into brown.

Secondly I have a preference for  random, made by chance, marks to deliberate marks.

selection from sketch book

Study Day in Barnsley

Anne Morrell and Polly Binns in Barnsley or

Textiles…….the new Painting?

This was my first textile study day and the first thing that struck me was how similar this

exhibition was to a fine art exhibition. The pieces were all hung on the wall, framed in some

instances. It struck me that as painting has become deeply unfashionable in fine art, textile artists have moved across to fill the vacuum, leaving behind the more crafty side of textiles.

Coming from a fine art background I automatically found myself looking at the work as though they were paintings. For example, considering how well they worked from a distance and as a group, rather than just considering the fine detail and skilled technique.

The work by Polly Binns was inspired by the sea in Norfolk, an area I know and love but I found them lacking in some way. We discussed this as a group and there was a feeling that they would have benefited by a great increase in scale.

Anne Morrell’s work struck far more of a chord with me, particularly the virtually monochrome pieces on undyed canvas, which was her most recent work.She uses very simple stitches,

primarily running stitches and then uses smocking type effects and distortions caused by the stitches. The simplest, plainest pieces worked best for me.

sketchbook notes on Anne Morrell

Push Stitchery

“30 Artists explore the boundaries of stitched art” Curated by Jamie Chalmers

Basically this whole book was excellent and inspiring. It would be quicker to say what I didn’t like than what I didn’t. I found it generally very stimulating.

I liked Joetta Maus’s use of hoops as a framing device, once seen it seems an obvious solution to presenting a piece of work, also Diem Chau’s use of ceramics which work very well as framing devices.I tried my own version of Diem Chau’s work.

I loved the work of artists who used stitch as a way of drawing :

Rosie James

Racquel Alves

Diem Chau

Alicia Ross

Gillian Bates

Charlene Mullen

My version of Cecile Jarsaillon’s style

“pug portrait” in the style of Diem Chau

Technotextiles 2

 

By S. Braddock Clarke & Marie O’Mahoney

This was a really interesting book.

What are textiles?

They can be hard, soft, flexible or rigid. There is a wide diversity of materials such as knitted metal, ceramic foam.

The current state of textiles is a mixture of old and new, traditional craft and cutting edge technology. This is especially true in Japan where “unlike in the west, the applied arts enjoy an equal status to that of fine arts and there is strong reverence for traditional craft techniques allied with complete acceptance of new technologies”

Another Japanese principle that struck me was that the belief that “a design or work of art is enhanced by evidence of the hand that created it.”

 

What interested me most?

The new smart materials for architecture and the synthetic materials for extreme conditions.

Rei Kawakubo designing for Comme des Garcons

World Textiles

World Textiles by Gillow and Sentance