More design work

Continuing with my design work and playtime at Committed to Cloth.

My previous post showed me working with squares.  In May I am going to C2C to do Improvisational Pieced Cutting which is basically playing with fabric and a rotary cutter.  So for the latter part of my playtime week, Leslie suggested I played with curved shapes.   I had this photo with me.

Thankfully I realised fairly early on that trying to replicate this photo was difficult and I should just take shapes from it.  This led to these designs.

I took some close up photos of areas that looked interesting.

Eventually we realised that I had been working with the photo upside down.  It's of lifting gear in a a cafe in Savannah.

 On Sunday morning I returned to my comfort zone of small collages in a zigzag book.

And finally my show and tell design wall with lots of b&w photocopies.

I had an unusal 5 day retreat - a mix of play, some angst and some serious self investigation.  More about that next time in Climbing the spiral staircase!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Bobby Britnell

I spent a couple of days at Littleheath Barn doing a workshop 'Imaginative Design using tone & colour' with Bobby Britnell. This post is particularly photo heavy - I should, perhaps, have written two posts!

Day 1
For the first activity we covered the paper with charcoal and then drew into it with pointed scissors, charcoal and an eraser.

The second activity was a group activity where 4 of us on this table drew lines on the paper, moving anti-clockwise around the table.  There was another table with 6 people doing the same activity.

Then we each chose a pastel and started to colour in some of the shapes.

Then Bobby separated out the sheets and we each took one of the 10 sheets.

I took photos at various stages of the colouring in but I'm not going to show you every one.

Some of the lines were too harsh in this

 So I knocked some of it back.  We had to do more to it on day 2.

We went on to do line drawing where you don't take the pen off the paper.  We had to draw the person opposite.  I won't tell you who it is!  Anyway, we had to try 1. not looking at the paper and only at the person, 2. drawing with our non dominant hand, 3. drawing being able to look at the paper and 4. giving the face an expression.   Bearing in mind I was drawing a woman, I have here John Major puppet from Spitting Image,  almost Hermann Munster, Bruce Forsyth and who knows!

These drawings were of me

Then we moved on to some colouring exercises: Complementary, analagous, primaries (only I did secondaries with it) and black and one colour where I got carried away with the black!

Here's how it should have looked!

Lastly on day 1 we drew with a wax candle and then with wax crayons, followed by an ink wash.  I like the technique but didn't particularly like what I did.

 On to Day 2

We continued with the pastel drawing.  I had completed colouring all the spaces but went back to it to add more layers and to knock back some of the sharp edges.  I tried putting frames on various parts of the paper to isolate sections.

Sorry I didn't photograph this quite straight!

I took one last photo of the paper before Bobby gave me the next thing to do.

In preparation for the workshop, Bobby had drawn lines on the back of the paper, which none of us had noticed.   She had drawn 3 strips for us to cut off.

This one in particular looked like it could be made into a landscape hanging.

 Having cut off the strips I was left with a large square.

 I took various photos of small sections of the large square.  And tried the strips on top of the square.

 
The strips had lines drawn on the back for squares and rectangles.  I cut up two of the strips.  This was the best small rectangle.

We started a new exercise which I cannot explain.  I struggled to understand what we were doing.  It started with drawing squares with charcoal.

Adding some circles.

And then I added colour.  This isn't how it was supposed to look but it's my version of what I understood to be the instructions.  

We also did some tonal exercises which I didn't photograph.  I had done a workshop with Bobby before and some of the exercises are described here.

Congratulations if you've made it to the end of this post.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Some differing approaches to design

This post first appeared on Traverse Textile Art.

There are many ways of approaching design work for textiles and mixed media pieces.  I thought we might look at the various ways I have tried in the past - often on workshops.

Counterchange

I attended a Gillian Travis workshop where we worked on counterchange. This is where you cut out shapes - in this example circles in paper squares - and exchange them so that the colours are in different places.  I continued with the large heart and then the small heart.

Working in fabric I only changed one heart with another but started with several different coloured squares.

In this version there were three different pear shapes.

Taking a shape
Another way to play with design is to take a shape and cut into it and expand it.

In the examples above the shapes cut out were glued down on the outside of the original shape.  In the example below the rectangle was cut into different shapes and glued down with different intervals to expand the shape.

You can see the quilts made by Claire Higgott using this method on her website.  Click on Split Shapes in her Portfolio.


Drawing
You can take part of a photograph or part of your own drawing and make a physical stamp or digital stamp and produce various patterns.

This can lead to a piece of stitched textile.

I went on a Jean Draper workshop where we drew a small object and then expanded it on a photocopier.  This can inform structures, work on paper and fabric.  I wrote about this on my blog.

Non-visual inspiration for design
Not all inspiration has to be visual.  You could use a poem or a piece of music to inspire your work.  Earlier this year I used the poem 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost to produce a concertina book.  My starting point was the text and unusually for me through various stages of the design process I ended up with this:

Playing
Of course, there's always just letting the fabric 'speak' to you and coming up with a piece of work that results from playing with ideas without planning.  Just go with the flow and see where it takes you.

Some of my Venice pieces came from playing. I printed with stamps and thermofax screens randomly on a large piece of cotton using thickened dyes and fabric paints.

I played again with stencils and screens to make a further piece of fabric which eventually became this set of 9 Venice Tiles.

And finally in this post,  there's thinking!

Thinking
Lots of textile artists use sketchbooks and workbooks, experiment and make samples, I tend to think.  Instead of making several samples I think through what each once might be, ask the 'what if ...' questions and then disregard the ideas.  I might write a list of all the possibilities so that I have the capacity to think through each option - rather than hold the list in my head.  Maybe I miss out on some ideas by not doing samples.  I don't know. What I do  know, is that I produce pieces that work for me and really that's all that counts.

How do you design your work?

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Jean Draper

I recently spent 3 days at Bobby Britnell's studio on a workshop led by Jean Draper.

The course description:
The aim of this workshop will be to begin with the study of examples of small details from natural objects, leading to the development of different personal ideas for work in stitched textiles. Structured experimental drawing and design exercises, investigating the scope offered by changes of scale, tone, texture and colour, together with demonstrations, will encourage students to choose ways to develop their own ideas both 2 and 3 dimensionally. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on making notes and sampling in fabric and thread in order for more resolved work to continue later if wished.

I signed up for this because I really wanted to know how to get from design to stitch.  Even though it meant drawing!

We were asked to take a collection of some natural things and I took some shells.

I chose to draw this one.

I eventually drew something that looked freer but sadly didn't photograph it on its own.  It will appear on my display board later.

Jean asked us to cover a sheet of paper with willow charcoal and then draw using a putty rubber.

The next day we photocopied parts of our various drawings enlarging them as much as we could.  I liked this day.  Lots of paper folding and mark making.

I eventually realised that I didn't have to copy my drawings but could be inspired by them.  I cut shapes out of the photocopy and added black paper.

 I photocopied the piece above and cut away the white on the right and folded it.  I love the shadows.

 I cut into this photocopy and folded the cuts.   The orange paper behind really lights up the holes.

On our last day I did some fabric manipulation and stitching.

Here's the final display board at the end of 3 days.

I'm not sure yet how much these 3 days will influence my textile practice.  I need to process it for a while.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice