More gothic than Venice

On Thursday Roger & I went to St. Albans - a place we had never visited before.  It has the most amazing cathedral.  I don't much care for cathedrals but this one had medieval wall paintings and tremdous architecture which reminded me of my Venice sketchbook and Michelle Ward's gothic stencils.

Some of the brickwork patterns reminded me of La Mezquita in Cordoba.

And this made me think of interesting decay in textile pieces.

I belong to Workshop on the Web created by Maggie Grey.  Each month there are several textile ideas form a variety of artists.  In the March issue Gillian Cooper provided a phototutorial on 'A mixed-media approach to surface design' which involved gelli plate printing on fabric.

I love gelli prints but usually do mine on a variety of paper surfaces.  So I had a go and ended up with these two lovely pieces of fabric.

The first prints of each of these came out really dark so I took each piece and using cellulose glue put a layer over the top.

This is the original piece of fabric and a piece of repair tissue

which combined to be this and I added some extras.

 These two - fabric and teabag paper

combined into this image.

At present I'm not sure where this will lead but I am planning to try some sketchbook work!  Shock, horror!

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

February Sketchbook Challenge - what did I learn?

I have blogged weekly about the contents of my sketchbook for the Sketchbook challenge.  You can see the results here: week 1,  week 2,  week 3,  week 4

These are the pages I did on the last two days.

Day 28
A collage of painted papers, a photograph, a picture from a magazine, map paper and book paper.

Day 29
Two small collages with more of a textile feel.

So what have I learned from the 29 days?
1. That it's a good idea to work for a short time every day.   It gets the creative juices going.

2.  That I really enjoyed working with a muted and small colour range.   These are my favourite pages.

3. That I still haven't found my 'voice'.   I may have found the colours to work in but not the work that I want to do.

4. I started the monthly challenge wanting to do something with seedheads but soon found that the leaf stencil dominated.  I also found that I don't really want to work with seedheads.  There's some beautiful work out there from various artists and I was influenced by their work to a certain extent but I need to find my own style and subject.

On Tuesday night I went to a talk by Amanda Hislop and she does some amazing work.  She works with a very limited and muted colour palette on landscapes, seascapes and seedheads - particularly cow parsley.   She showed how she works from her initial idea through her sketchbook to the finished piece.  The sketchbooks were amazing (works of art in themselves) and that led me to my fifth learning point.

5. I've known this a long time but sometimes you need to see it to get it: you have to put effort into it!  Amanda's sketchbooks were full of drawings and experiments.  Sometimes a drawing was only minimally different from the previous drawing.  Her finished pieces were excellent due to the amount of preparation work she had done in her sketchbooks.

So where does that leave me?
I've no idea to be honest but I shall spend time thinking about it and continuing with what I do now until I can really get to grips with the things I've learned.

What have you learned recently about your creative way of working?

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

February

In January I told you how I am combining my One Little Word, 'I am' tags and my Unplanner all in one binder.

I managed to keep up with February although some days I didn't do anything other than art so at the end of the month I printed out some small photos of the pages of my February Challenge Sketchbook.

February Divider
I planned to put a large photo of snowdrops on this page and at one point thought I might have to find a photo from a previous year.  However we eventually did go out and find some.

Week 1
The theme for the I am statements for February was  'Made in the image of God'.  I don't usually include photos of peoplein my art but managed to do it this time on each tag.

Week 2

The List Ten for this month was about things I shouldn't have done and one of the art challenges was Gratitude so I decided to list 10 things I'm thankful for.

Week 3

Week 4

One Little Word
The assignment for February was to practice something everyday and record it.  I used my February sketchbook as my art practice everyday.

I damaged my back at the beginning of the month and wasn't able to do the Salsa exercise I had planned to do.  I was eventually able to do short walks.  The back is ok now so hopefully in March I will be able to exercise more frequently.  Just have to find the motivation!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice