Numbers 10 - 14

Another lovely day, and some more drawing – it’s great to sit in the garden and draw, until it gets too hot.

I’m not sure if I can count these as two different ‘drawings’ as they are the same process – rubbings with oil pastels from the shell I was drawing yesterday. I actually made 4, but these two were the best, and I couldn't choose between the subtle and – er - the less subtle. Subtle used white metallic pastel, which I then overpainted with Wensleydale’s morning coffee – he’d finished with it, honest!

 

 

In your face was a black pastel overpainted with spent Procion dye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my favourite of all the ones I’ve done so far – drawing all the little lines on the shell without looking at the paper. I can see lots of things in it – not all of them rude.

 

 

 

 

I also quite like this one, made with a constantly breaking pencil which I sharpened so often I began to wonder if it would last long enough for me to finish the drawing. I drew round the shell and then added ‘growth rings’ to the background. The 4 versions are 4 different scans – original, grey scale, black and white and my usual favourite, inverted colours.

 

Today’s final effort was made with a finger, white and brown inkpads and not quite the right colour of pencil. This one is growing on me -

 

 

 

 

 

though I like the inverted scan better. I love those subtle browns and greys, which are more true to -

 

 

 

 

 

the real colours of the shell. You can see where I got the idea of growth rings from.

Anyone know what sort of shell this is? I’m tempted to say oyster, but based on my very limited experience of edible oysters, that’s not right.

 

 

Busy day tomorrow, so I expect a drastic drop in production …

Nine down …

only another 91 to do. And three of today’s efforts are real  drawings. Sort of.

The large one is a continuous line drawing, top right was done without looking at the paper, and the bottom one with my left hand. All drawings of a shell, in case you don’t recognise it …

 

I quite like the continuous line one – it could be couching with a nice lumpy thread. The less said about the others, the better – but I am assuming the point of telling us to do 100 drawings is to encourage us to work spontaneously, without agonising over the details. At least I hope it is …

Lest you think I have been very productive, doing 5 drawings in a day, the shells didn’t take very long – as you may have guessed.

And this is one I made earlier – it’s the paste paper I did the other day, now mounted in a larger homework book.

 

 

This is the only one that took much time – although I can’t persuade the camera or the scanner to make a decent picture of it.  Again, inspired by Alisa Golden, who points out in ‘Painted Papers’ that as the paint you use for paste papers is – paste – you can use it to stick things down. Like little bits of coffee stained paper with beachy words written on them. and – although Golden isn’t so mad as to suggest it – sand. I’ve just remembered that I have some tiny shells I could have included – but too late now … Sticking sand onto boring brown paper was just the thing to do on a hot day!

I did also make a book – the bigger homework book mentioned above. But it was almost instantaneous – the cover I made years ago, with collaged scrap paper, gesso and Brusho on card. So a few holes and some pages  and it’s done. I will bind it properly when I know how many pages its going to need. 

I am now ahead of myself with an average of 2.25 drawings per day – but as there will be days when nothing gets done - like next Wednesday when we have to assemble our end of year exhibition - I am sure the average will begin to drop soon. At least by posting about the process I can keep count!

A Saturday Saunter – and the first 4 ‘drawings’.

As I may have mentioned before, we don’t often go out on Saturdays – especially not in the summer, when roads leading to the south coast are best avoided. But Mrs Cheddar alerted us to an open day at Chawton House, and as it was a beautiful day, we ventured across to the other side of the M3 to take a look.

For non-Janeites, Chawton belonged to Jane Austen’s rich brother Edward Austen Knight, the one who was adopted by rich relatives. The house has obviously seen a lot of changes since then, but it is beautiful, with  lovely gardens. There were Shire horses, and Regency dancers, and the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted [after the one Babybel made, obviously]. There will be a sculpture exhibition by Jon Edgar in the garden later in the year, so I think we’ll be going back.

On a rather less exalted artistic level – I have put the first 4 homework ‘drawings’ – or rather, 3 paste papers and a bit of embroidery – in my homework book. The lower two are Alisa Golden’s technique from ‘Painted Paper’, using some fig leaves and a chunk of cupressus Leylandii. The red one is more of a traditional paste paper, and the embroidery is a recycled C&G left-over, which may be cheating but it seemed to fit the theme. It is free machined silk organza sewn over a painted page. It was only when I scanned it that I realised there is part of a flower in the background, so I may go back and pencil that in a bit more. Would that count as a fifth drawing, do you think?

The piece I showed you yesterday isn’t there because I couldn’t bring myself to cut it down to fit this book - I rather regret cutting down the two green pieces in the image. So I will have to force myself to make another book for bigger pieces. So much for using a smaller book to make myself work smaller …

This is a sneak preview of another ‘drawing’. I made a workshop sample for the 2D piece using eyelets, and although I didn’t use them in the final piece, i really liked the effect of lots of eyelets piled up on top of each other. So here are some summery eyelets – but there will be several more before it’s finished. And possibly a few beads. But definitely no sequins.

The base fabric is snow dyed silk, which as you can see looks very summery, like the dappled shade of our apple trees if i look out of the window right now.

After I’d posted last night I went and pootled about with a few on-line graphics sites and ended up with – er – about 50 images. So only another 50 to go – not. I don’t think I’d get away with it – and I do need to challenge myself a bit!

I am going to have to be very selective – but some of them are going into the homework book[s]. Probably this one, made here -

 

 

 

 

 

and this one, made here.

But as far as the other 48 are concerned – mmm – maybe not.

Scary Stuff…

 

Scary thing #1

At college on Wednesday we talked about our upcoming exhibition – what to include, how to hang stuff, etc. And then the words ‘artist’s statement’ were uttered. Aaagh! We were shown an example – possibly an example of how not to write one, as it was, in the opinion of several of us, incomprehensible. And ungrammatical. [Who am I to talk? But I can get it right if I want to!]

Of course I Googled when I got home, and found 1 or 2 hits – or ‘about 1,440,000’ according to Google – and some of those were quite helpful – no, I didn’t look at quite all of them. However, this morning I stumbled across an article on the subject in an old copy of Quilting Arts, and that was the best. So the statement has been written and Wensleydale thinks it’s OK [not that he’s biased or anything].

That was the first scary thing.

Scary thing #2

We badgered Sue for the summer home work –and she gave it to us. ‘Make 100 drawings’. Double aaagh! [Possibly aaaaaagh?] Fortunately it does say that a drawing can be stitch, sketch, painting, printing, collage, photography or mixed media, and I think the word ‘computer’ was mentioned, although it’s not written down.

I calculate that to achieve 100 drawings by the start of next term I need to average more than one a day. We got the good news on Wednesday and today’s Friday. So have I made 2 or 3 drawings? Course not.

Decisions, decisions.

I decided I needed a theme, otherwise I'd be blundering around with no sense of direction. [No change there.] Given the recent knitting activity, I did think about vessels. [ I thought ‘knitted bottles’ would be a bit too restrictive.] But 100 drawings of vessels? I might like Giorgio Morandi’s work but I don’t want to be him.

I decided on ‘Summer’. It might seem a bit obvious, but it does have lots of possibilities.

Funnily enough, ever since then, my thoughts have been running on flowers – which I have never really been interested in drawing or embroidering. despite the evidence of 100s of computer manipulations of passion flowers and dahlias …

I did flirt with the idea of recycling some of those, but I decided that would be cheating. I found some new flowers to play with instead. <g>. Shortly before W, strimmed them.

The homework sheet also includes the words ‘You can create your own book or use a purchased one’. That needed a lot more thought than an overall theme. Not, of course, about whether to use a purchased one or not. No contest. No, the thought was about whether to use one of the empty books which has been biding its time and awaiting its moment, or make a new one.

I decided using an existing one would be quicker – but of course that raised another problem. Which one? It had to be big enough to hold 100 items – which meant around 100 pages – although I don’t suppose anyone will actually count them …

I narrowed the choice to this one – which has lots of pages but it quite tightly bound, so sticking stuff in would be a problem

 

 

 

 

 

or this one, which has room for expansion but only just enough pages and is smaller than A4. This is the one I chose in the end.

The cover is a left-over from my C June Barnes inspired dyeing and shrinking experiments. Not particularly summery but definitely organic!

 

 

I decided that some of my ‘drawings’ would be collages. As it has been a lovely day and we had some wallpaper paste left over from when father papered the parlour – er – I mean when W. papered the dining room – I made some paste papers.

I got a bit carried away.

 

 

 

I was especially pleased with this one. Not a conventional piece of paste paper, it uses a technique from this book by Alisa Golden.

It’s too big to go in the book, of course …

Perhaps I need two books?

Excellent embroidery.

No, not mine – apart from the ‘Remember ‘ box [which Wensleydale insists on referring to as ‘the box of the dead’ – and that’s the improved version of his original name for it] – I haven’t done much. Nor would I necessarily describe it as ‘excellent’.

Today we had a Monday Meander, to see the work of two very different embroiderers. We started at Walford Mill, with an exhibition by Yvonne Morton. I am always attracted by work in muted colours – and her use of silk paper and black stitch, with occasional little touches of colour – is exquisite. Although her work is inspired by African fabric – and I can recognise that in it – some pieces also made me think of 18th and 19ht century estate maps - and I love maps.

Then, after lunch at the Walford Mill cafe – outside so we could enjoy the view – we went on to the Dorchester Museum to see Alice Kettle’s exhibition ‘Allegory’. I saw it when it was at Farnham, but Wensleydale didn’t, and he was keen to go.  It was interesting to see it in a different environment – the larger pieces in particular, hung lower and in a different light so it was easier to get up close and really look at the way she works.

There was also a small exhibition of ‘proper’ bookbinding – a couple of dozen bindings of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ and one of ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’. Interesting to see how real bookbinders work – and the different interpretations of the theme.

I am always amused in Dorchester by the blue plaque on Barclay's Bank, saying that the house is reputed to have been the residence of Michael Henchard, Hardy’s ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’. A blue plaque for a fictional character? Is there one on Elsinore Castle [OK, Kronborg] saying ‘Hamlet woz ‘ere’? [Never say I don’t check my sources.]

I may not have been sewing much – but I have been knitting – more bottles.

On these two I deliberately distorted the necks – with short rows in the felted one on the right, and uneven decreases in the yeti on the right.

 

The distortion on these is, however, not deliberate. Neither are keen on standing upright – the bobbly one would probably have been better worked on smaller needles, and the sea anemone suffered from over vigorous washing. I was trying to felt the stripes, but only succeeded in making the non-feltable bits go floppy.

Wensleydale made the mistake of saying he liked these strange objects – he pets the yeti when he goes past it – so watch out for more. And if Giorgio Morandi can spend half a lifetime painting pots, I can spend some time knitting them! [Thanks to teacher Mel for introducing me to Morandi.]

I have been remiss…

 

in not posting about the progress of my ‘environment’ in a Scotch box  - or rather, the contents of the Scotch box. [Not the Scotch – that went years ago …]

I left you with the impression that this was going to become a book.

I misspoke.

 

 

 

This is the book -  in situ. [The colour isn’t right, it’s gold not green!]

 

 

This is the book cover.  I decided that, as it was inspired by a poem about memory, and memory is patchy [well, mine is] I wanted something equally patchy and less structured than the crazy patchwork wannabe that had been developing in the workshop.

 

These are the contents of the book – unfortunately the pages wouldn't stay flat. These photographs of my parents were taken at the time of their marriage. I realised when I was scanning the originals that mum is wearing her little RAF brooch which I still have.

Sharp eyes may spot that Dad is in khaki, not RAF blue – that’s because the photo was taken in Iraq, where he served at the end of the war.

I am now trying to pluck up my courage to write under the photos.

The box isn’t quite finished – this needs a few beads before I add it to the sleeve of the box, to hide the word ‘Talisker’, which is still legible despite the spray paint. The gold bits fell out of my stash telling me they belonged together – again, it was inspired by the scrappy nature of memory.

 

 

I took some time out from box and book making to pay our first visit of the year to ‘Art in the Garden’. Perhaps because it was a drab day, I was a bit underwhelmed, though Wensleydale disagreed.

I did like these by Janet Schooley. You had to look twice to confirm that they weren’t natural …

 

although this was a bit of a give away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I liked this too. You can’t see the very nice carrot cake because I’d eaten it.

On a beautiful summer day…

like yesterday the last thing you want to do is sit in a classroom.

Fortunately it was the day for this semester’s college trip.

And even more fortunately the trip was to Roche Court. [No photos, unfortunately, as photography is not allowed.]

Can you imagine a better ‘lesson’ on a warm, sunny day, than a  guided tour of sculptures by Hepworth, Caro, Gormley, Long, Moore, etc. etc. etc? All set in the beautiful Wiltshire countryside, with the roses in bloom in the walled garden. And, as a special dispensation, a picnic next to this.

Today the weather is equally beautiful, but the day has been marred by an emergency trip to the vet for Quality Control, who appears to have been in a fight [not unusual] and come off worst [most unusual]. We think she is OK but she is being kept in overnight for observation – much to her disgust.

No photographs as she is not a pretty sight!

P.S. – I should make clear that Quality Control’s enforced incarceration is at home, not at the vets – she’s not that bad!