An insomniac night…

and an interesting day.

For once I put the insomnia to good use.

First, another variation on the accordion spine with holes in the pages – mostly made from envelopes. And interesting shadows, again.

 

 

Second, a copy of something I saw on a website – and apologies if it was yours, because once again I’ve forgotten where I found it. A tiny Japanese bound book in a matchbox – cover and pages made from collagraphed newspaper.

Interesting that something that small needs lots more stitches to look right, than I would put in a much bigger book.

And finally – a quick alteration of one of my altered photographs, and its inspiration – a postcard I found in a second hand book, of windows in Glasgow Cathedral.

I got lazy and punched the holes in the top, rather than cutting them out – the black marks are my doodling. An idea which needs work, I think - perhaps printing on acetate and mounting in black card windows?

College was interesting today, because, despite having been married for nearly 40 years, and having two sons, I can safely say I have never looked so long or so intensively at a man with no clothes on.

Yes. Life drawing. And I enjoyed it. Even the last hour when I was drawing the gentleman in a pose where he was lying down on his back with his feet closest to me and his head all but hidden.

Like I said – interesting. [Never have we been so quiet. We were concentrating, of course.]

No pictures, though, I don’t want this blog X-rated.

I can show you some of the photos I took in the lunch break, though.

Bluebells 

 

 

 

 

and litter. Do you think this is becoming something of a fixation?

Ta da!

Essay written and printeda

PowerPoint completed a

PowerPoint notes printeda

Handouts printed a

Visual tactile aids made a

Personal Journal completed and printeda

And in addition I've wrestled this semester’s drawings into my portfolio – well, most of them. Fighting A1 paper into an A1 portfolio on the only space big enough [the spare room bed] made my back ache.

Now I need a drink.

The tactile aids are an example of French Knitting, which MacMurray used on two of her early pieces, [here, and here] and a sample of balloons pulled through rug underlay, which I think is  how she constructed these dresses. Not strictly necessary but I made the balloon bit a while ago, so as I’m into recycling…

I did try doing the French Knitting with string, which seemed closer to the rope MacMurray used, but after I’d bent the knitting needle I was using to pull the string over the pegs, I reverted to wool.

Since then I’ve made the mistake of looking at the marking criteria for Drawing Studies – and my heart sank. I’ve got the drawings, I’ve collated lots of images of relevant art from various places – but now I need to write something about some of them, as well as the ever-present evaluation. I’m not worried about the writing, just the time – I’d hoped to get DS out of the way today and make a real start on the real 3D piece.

I was thinking of a chest of drawers full of ‘everyday treasures’ – maybe it will just be a drawer – possibly with dividers?

Ticking more things off the list…

Christmas cards written and stamped       a

Cards posted                                        r

Wensleydale’s birthday cake made           a

Last minute Christmas shopping done     a  r    [Just realised what I’ve forgotten]

Presents wrapped                                 r

Well, three out of five ain’t bad.

The tree isn’t up yet but W. likes to do that on his birthday – i.e. tomorrow. Only one of the presents need posting – and that one has already missed the last posting date for the US by a week, so  it’s going to be late anyway. [I’m sure December has been much shorter this year – or maybe it’s because I've had other deadlines to worry about…

I gave myself another one in college yesterday, by volunteering to do my presentation at the earliest opportunity – i.e. 12th January. The essay is half written anyway [more than half after an attack of insomnia last night] and I just want to get it over with so I can start worrying about the next deadline – which is Drawing Studies, a fortnight later.

As it was the last session this term, we had an outside speaker – Jackie Langfeld talking about her experience on the Opus degree course, and the birth of the Paper Warriors. She was very good, and it was wonderful to look through her sketchbooks , and to see where she is moving on to. Although she told us that, at the start of the course she had no firm ideas about the way that her work would develop, [very reassuring!], it was fascinating to see the seeds of the warriors, to mix a metaphor, in her earlier work.

Lots of good ideas for my own sketchbooks, and a good potluck lunch as well – now no college till next year - just one Babybel sleepover, two birthdays, a wedding anniversary, Christmas and New Year – I’m sure I’ll find plenty of time to write an essay and do a PowerPoint presentation…

More finishing!

Well, nearly.

This is done – all bar mounting it in my portfolio, as it is a Drawing Studies piece.

Notice the train on the left – it was amazing what a difference adding that little bit of couching made!

 

And this is also finished, bar the buttons. which will be added later tonight – glad to have finished it in time for Christmas. If the small cow fan it is intended for likes it, I may make another in the next size up, as it looks as though it will be a close fit – and it was quite quick to knit.

It is this pattern with added cow. I may put a pony on the bigger one – equines are fast catching up bovines in the popularity stakes. Her granddad and I both have bigger versions [without animals!] – elegant they are not but they are lovely and warm for dog and Babybel walking – and she is fascinated by the pockets on ours.

It has been quite a productive day as I have begun to sort out the Drawing Studies sketch books – making sure they have sketches in. They need to be handed in a week after Module 6, so I’ve got about a month to add contextualisation and evaluation. Might manage to fit W’s birthday bash [big one this year], Christmas, and the annual family journey on the buses in round it…

What does this tell you about me?

When I pick up a copy of ‘Hello’ at the dentist’s [the only place I ever read it] I recognise at the most 10% of the ‘celebrities’ in its pages – but show me a photo of the cast of the CBeebies Christmas panto and I know every one.

I can even recognise Justin Fletcher from behind by his boots [nice red Docs] - although to be fair who else would be playing the Dame?

Of course any non-Brit readers – and any UK readers without access to small children – won’t have the foggiest idea what I’m on about – but we get to watch the BBC’s preschoolers channel one day a week and we are aficionados.

This flippant digression is due to relief that Module 6 is finished! Writing the evaluation has taken most of the day but it's finished! I'm still waiting for the paint on the lid of this box [containing the ‘one’ piece I'm handing in], to dry but it’s finished! [Well, nearly.]

So tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new – like the landscape sketchbook, because it’s Drawing Studies - which means more contextualisation – and possibly a few ‘drawings’.

Snap happy!

Thanks to Babybel's daddy, I have been equipped with a little photographic knowledge and a tripod. Unfortunately Wensleydale is confined to bed with a bad back, so I have spent today, when we planned to go Christmas shopping, taking two or three [hundred] black and white photographs of inanimate 3D textile pieces -

and Rambo.

I wouldn’t say they were good photos, despite the excellence of Babybel’s daddy’s input – but there are enough not too bad ones amongst the many less good ones to fill the necessary portfolio – especially when the marker hasn’t really seen the originals.

So now I have to edit the photos, select the ones I want to print, print them, get more ink and photo paper, print some more, decide which piece I am going to hand in, [its photos don’t have to go in the book], stick in the photos, write an evaluation, contextualize the samples and I’m done!

This is the piece I will probably hand in – either that or the Anglo-Saxon coffee cosy, but that is a bit derivative of a piece the tutor showed us, so I think it will be this bowl of unidentified archaeological artefacts instead. Possibly with a labelled box? Or am I mad?

Of course I also have to finish this, including trimming off those unravelling hills and adding a train, put more stuff in the sketchbooks for drawing studies [contextualisation for those too], plan and write my essay [more contextualisation]and presentation, [aaagh - PowerPoint!], and start thinking seriously about the real 3D piece.

What will you be doing over Christmas?

Brrrr!

This is what a combination of sub-zero temperatures and a leaking overflow pipe will give you – roof to ground icicles.

I suppose it is a good thing really, as the water had obviously been trickling down behind the rampant ivy and we wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise.

 

 

 

The weather meant it was a good day to stay in and be creative. Here’s something I knocked up on the back of an old envelope or two. These were stamps I made in my Tamsin Van Essen phase, plus a blue ink pad and some blue patterned security envelopes, in the still life sketchbook. Love those envelopes – wonder how well they take stitch?

 

And while I was at it – grey security envelopes in the landscape sketchbook – sorry about the camera flare.

 

 

I was about to write ‘definitely better than paperwork’ - when it dawned on me that it is paperwork…

Here’s one for the railway buffs…

if there are any out there.

This week’s topic in Drawing Studies was ‘Landscape’ – we were asked to bring an image of a landscape which was important to us and make sketches from it, preparatory to producing a stitched piece. ‘Sketches’ could include computer images – so I pottered around with Picasa and GIMP and some of my photographs.

I quite liked this one,

 

 

 

 

and these,

 

 

 

but in the end I went for this one – the version middle right. [How long have I been using Picasa without realising that you can move the pictures around in ‘Picture Pile’?]

The original is top left,  and for those who aren’t married to men with an [always denied] interest in railways, it is the Ribblehead viaduct on the Settle – Carlisle line. I don’t think it is ‘important’ to me, I just liked the mucked-about image, and the one thing I didn’t want to do was a conventional landscape.

I took some painted papers to college with me and made a torn paper mock up. The squiggly lines were an attempt to represent the texture/stitch – it looked better without.

Then I made several attempts to do the same thing in fabric, brought it all home and started again.

This is where it is at the moment. It has some machine stitch holding the viaduct down as well as machine tacking. But I didn’t get round to selecting threads before it got dark, so I have a selection of red, yellow and blue embroidery floss waiting to be matched in daylight – although the dark blue is going to be problematic as it is almost violet and I don’t have anything like it. [I’m using floss because I want to use finer thread in the background, getting heavier as it moves forward.]

I also have to decide on stitch – I was going to use free cross stitch/herringbone, but I'm veering towards running stitch [again], or possibly fly. Anyone got any bright ideas?

It was just one of those days…

when you keep being interrupted.

The door bell kept ringing – delivery men, meter readers, that sort of thing.

One of the deliveries was a slow cooker – yes, another slow cooker. Not sure whether it was the first one or a third one as, as instructed by Amazon, I refused it. So it is, presumably, on its way back to Scotland.

Another delivery contained this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, when a girl’s got one of these, and it’s nearly Christmas, how could her granny resist?

 

 

 

 

 

In between all this excitement, granny played with paper and paint. And wire.

 

 

 

I’ve been looking through some old sketchbooks, and came to the conclusion that they are much more interesting than the current ones. The recent ones have a lot of other people’s work but not much of my own.

So I splashed some paint on some pages to make them more interesting, and cut up some paper, as I’d rather do that than draw.

This is in the figure drawing sketchbook. I cheated by tracing some fashion shots from a magazine. The paper is one of the sun prints I did in the summer. I think maybe it needs a bit of drawing [aaagh] added.

 

 

 

This was sun printed, and overprinted paper – for the still life sketchbook.

 

 

 

 

And then I got the urge to fold trees for the landscape book – although we haven’t ‘done’ landscape yet. I started with the backs of old envelopes and then moved on to a failed collagraph. [To tell the truth, I started with some pages from a John Lewis catalogue, but didn’t like the result.]

Perhaps not a conventional landscape, but the one thing I’ve learned over the last year is that our drawings are not expected to be conventional.

So I suppose I’ve done quite a lot, in between the usual chores, and answering the doorbell again and again and again …

Whinge whinge whinge.

My laptop has been a little temperamental for a while, periodically crashing for no apparent reason, but it has deteriorated rapidly over the last few days. I noticed that, just before each crash, there was a noise like a fan running hard, and the bottom of the laptop felt very hot  - even balancing it on a cake cooling rack didn’t help.

So the computer doctor is on his way, and I am using Wensleydale’s. But W’s [same model, set up by same computer doctor] runs like treacle, and because W. is probably the least computer minded of any laptop owner in the country, he had nothing on it. No Adobe, no Livewriter, no Picasa – nothing – and downloading each one takes centuries [although once loaded they seem to run OK].

And of course when mine is mended I will have to reset this one the way he likes it [no pretty pink flowers on iGoogle – no iGoogle, come to that.]

Whinging over -probably.

Apart from that, we’ve had quite a good week. On Tuesday the duck feeding and play park visiting went well, although the pumpkin face we made in the afternoon was ‘a little bit scary’ and so stayed at Gran and Granddad's, and the pumpkin bread we made from the left overs was a disaster [maybe a whingette?].

Wednesday was college – this was my contribution to the ‘glamour’ theme of Drawing Studies. Stop laughing!

[Hope you can spot the Botticelli influence.]

 

 

Yesterday we made our final visit for the year to ‘Art in the Garden’ where I got rather fixated on some dying red hot pokers.  

There was some good art, too.

 

And today I did some real drawing, based on photos I took when we were in Liverpool. I was trying not to be too obvious about it, which is why most of the people had their backs to the camera. 

 

 

 

 

And then, returning to the 3D theme,  I started making a bowl. After we went to Lois Walpole's exhibition at Walford Mill, I managed to track down a copy of her long out of print book ‘Crafty Containers’.

Walpole’s original  bowl is made from corrugated card [got that] and iris leaves – which unaccountably  I don’t have to hand.

So I followed Walpole’s recommendation to experiment with other materials. Like an old shirt. [Mine, not Wensleydale’s – magenta isn’t his colour.]

I ripped the shirt into 2cm wide strips [more or less] and machine embroidered down the middle [more or less]. The machining isn’t essential but I am doing a stitched textiles degree, after all.

I found the weaving quite relaxing, as I could get into a rhythm with it, and it looks as it is going to end up circular [more or less].

I think it may need some unidentifiable archaeological artefacts to go in it though…

What do you get …

if you cross some souvenirs of KLM

 

 

with some Softsculpt?  

 

 

 

 

 

Blueprints to go in the  architectural drawing sketchbook.

 

 

I've had the Softsculpt for ages and never used it, partly because I didn’t think making stamps with it would give very good images.

I was wrong – although they would have been better if I’d applied the paint a little more carefully. 

 

I’d like to pretend that I got the protractor out to measure the roof, before I did this – but I’d be lying – I just got lucky.

 

 

 

 

Leaning Towers of Delft?

 

 

 

 

 

I am not a regular flyer with KLM, but Cheese Major used to be, and he brought the little houses home to his mum. They contain[ed] some sort of Dutch liqueur, but not being a liqueur drinker I’ve never tried it [pity it wasn’t gin]– though someone must have because some of them have been opened.

These days he only flies to Leeds-Bradford, and I don’t think such things are available on those flights …

I know what it is now.

The Sutton Hoo helmet/vessel/box/thing, that is.

It’s an Anglo-Saxon coffee cosy. Obviously the Anglo-Saxons loved their coffee so much they were buried with ceremonial coffee cosies.

The tree on top might be Yggdrasil -although I may be getting my cultural references confused.

[One of the advantages of using wire in the machine cord is that it stands up by itself, and you can make silly interesting shapes with it.]

 

 

 

I have now got the right sort of wire to put in the spool of my machine – at least, I hope it’s the right type, I haven’t tried it yet.

 

 

 

I have also made another [possibly final] unidentifiable archaeological artefact, with the ‘help’ of a book on Scoubidous. [Once I’d worked out that in the instructions, when it said ‘left’ it meant ‘right’ and when it said ‘pink’ it meant ‘green’ – and  translated those colours into the two types or coppery cord i was using …]

 

You may remember that I said that, although I was dissatisfied with the architectural drawing/butterfly piece, I wasn’t going to do another one.

I misspoke.

The fabric printing experiments fell out of a basket in the clutter I call a workroom, and this one said ‘Quilt me’. So I am.

So far, it’s looking good.

 

Still no drawing, though.

I forced myself…

to do something in my sketchbooks today – plural because I have one for the 3D work and – foolishly – one for each of this semester’s Drawing Studies topics – still life, life drawing, architectural drawing, and landscapes. Most of the DS books had little or nothing in them,  which is what happens when you like making books more than drawing in them. [We haven’t done Landscapes yet, so I’ve got a good excuse for that one.]

Mostly what I've done is stick in some photographs, like these which I took in Liverpool last summer.

So they went in the ‘Architectural Drawing’ book.

 

 

 

And this went in ‘Life Drawing’.

I had hoped to get round to a bit of real ‘drawing’ [in its widest possible interpretation of course] but didn’t manage it.

 

 

One reason was that I got sidetracked into going through old photos – and I mean old. For next week’s Drawing Studies class we are looking at the work of Neeta Madahar and Madame Yevonde, and making our own stitched version of a glamorous or mythological figure, using a family photo if we have a suitable one.

My family didn’t really do glamour - but I did recall an image of a mythological figure…

Do you think she will do?

I think I was probably about Babybel’s age when this was taken – see what I mean about ‘old’? And no, I didn’t have long ringlets, the curls – and everything else - were made out of crepe paper by my mother.

On a more serious note, the Sutton Hoo helmet/vessel/box has made a little progress. I put some of the miles of cord I made round it – but then it told me it needed more decoration on the flaps so I will do that tonight in front of the telly.

I decided that, as it forms quite a narrow cylinder, I wouldn't wrestle with putting a base on it, so it won’t be a box. But nor will I wrestle with trying to make the flaps  line up – so it won’t be a helmet.

I think it’s a thing.

I’m definitely underwhelmed…

by my ‘architectural drawing’ piece. The last time you saw it, it was a GIMP design in blue and green. Then it turned pink, and I thought it wanted to be made out of the Cas Holmes inspired Indian piece of fabric.

I added some more layers to part of it, and free motioned the butterfly on another bit.

But there isn’t really enough contrast for it to work, even after zapping all the sheers and applying Rub’n’Buff in vast quantities. I did flirt with the idea of adding beads and/or shisha, but it may not happen, as work seems to be piling up and it isn’t a topic that inspires me.

I like this a bit more. This was inspired by a willow and wire piece in Lois Walpole’s exhibition. Mine is in fabric and thread – and is a lot less elegant. Fun as a corsage perhaps, but not quite what I was aiming for.

 

 

However, I like these bits of silliness, part of the unidentifiable archaeological artefacts series. [Pretentious? Me?] The top one is a copy of a piece in Ruth Lee’s book, the others are all wrapping of one sort or another, round a stick, a stone and a hank of – er – cloth, plus a few feathers.

 

 

 

And here they all are in their home. I may make a few more  smaller ones and remove the failed corsage, which doesn’t really go with the others.

I was also intending to finish the helmet/vessel today, but I’m going down with Babybel’s cold, and decided that in my current state of health things were bound to go wrong with anything fiddly.