WEEKLY ART PROJECT #41; SPRING ARRIVES

 My son's birthday often heralds the arrival of the first daffodil of Spring to my garden.  Sure enough, last week, a beautiful ray of sunshine opened up into bloom, gently bobbing on it's slender stem.  However, on Saturday morning, a storm was well & truly brewing.  Warm wind gusted in, rattling the branches & whipping up havoc throughout the garden. In the process that nasty wind knocked my poor daffodil to the ground, so I had to rescue it & put it in a vase.

Naturally, it is my muse for the weekly art project.

This was the photo that I knew I wanted to work from, but before heading to the studio to begin exploring design options, I went back outside...

... to photograph the strappy leaves & budded stems that are still insitu.  With these sources then printed off, it was time to get to work.

This week I decided to change my usual pattern of behaviour & instead of black pen studies, I got the felt pens out!  Drawing directly with colour in a variety of nib widths & often colour tones different to what the pen lid indicates, creates a different style of study!  I was heading for a simplified interpretation of my daffodil.

Having found a design direction that I wanted to pursue, it was time to see what fabrics  I had in my stash.  I also found a button & some beads, which I hoped would provide an interesting centre to my daffodil.

The background was where I started.  I wanted to reference the strappy leaves with their tendency to twist at the top.  Using a contrasting colour thread to sew the design in, I began.

I didn't cut back the background, because I had more sewing to do. On went the background petals.

And the final lot of sewing added a centre to the daffodil.
NOW it was time to cut back & this is how it went...

And then the finishing touches...

 I am quite pleased with the results.

Were I to do it again, I would probably forget about the length of the leaves & just repeat the 'twist' section to form a patterned background.  As for the daffodil flower, I like the irregularities that drawing something freehand produces & I'm pleased with the addition of the button & beads to the centre.

All in all, a fun little exercise to hail the arrival of Spring!

WEEKLY ART PROJECT #40; AGAVE LEAF

Over the past few weeks my usual first-thing-in-the-morning routine has been altered as I have been trying to complete one of my (many) projects.  This has meant that instead of doing the breakfast dishes at 8am, I've been doing them at 10am!  What has excited me about this, is that the garden I look out on whilst doing those dishes, has been bathed in a different light than what I'd been used to!  Consequently, as you can see in the photo above, there have been some lovely light & shadow moments seen in the agave leaves.  When it came to choosing a focus for my weekly art project this week, I knew exactly where to set my gaze!

I began by cropping (with a view finder) the image to this amount of visual data.  By restricting my options, I could be more economic with my time.

Out came the pens & paper to explore both the range of lines & the range of light & shade.  I was interested in the background where I had two different 'line' variations competing for attention; the strappy leaves of the plant behind the agave & the the brush fence beyond that.  Although I wanted to reference them, I had to be careful that they didn't detract from my Agave leaves in the foreground, and I had to also be mindful of a limited time in which to complete this project!  The paints came out for a little further exploration of ideas.

Finally I settled on a design that I felt could be translated into contemporary reverse applique & so proceeded to draw up a 'map' for myself to achieve this.

The fabric stash was rummaged through & I quickly painted up the stripey fabric for my background.

Once the design had been stitched through the whole 'sandwich' of fabrics, I used my white pen to mark out where my cutting lines would be.  For this piece, not all the outlines were going to be the same width.  I wanted variation in size to give a sense of shadow & depth, therefore drawing on these guide-lines was important.

It wasn't until I had cut the second layer that I realised...whoops...I'd put the greens in the wrong order!  That's what happens when trying to do more than one thing at once in more than one room of one's house!!!!!  Because of this mistake, I had to concentrate a bit harder on what I was cutting & where, and as a result...I forgot to take my usual quantity of cutting back photos!!

When all was cut back, this was the result.
The only change I'd make if I were to do this again, is to make the wider outlines a little more wide.  The contrast in widths isn't so easy to see here!
A fun project for me this week, even if I was distracted with other things. :-)

WEEKLY ART PROJECT #39; TULIP TILE

It's been one of those weeks!
For starters, I waded through Monday morning without a clue as to what I was going to do for my weekly art project, and then once I had found a starting point, life's little interruptions meant a stop-start approach to my working practice.  Something that doesn't put me in the best of moods!!!!  Oh the joy of a solid block of time in which to work!

Nevertheless...we are here & you are wondering why I have a stunning Iznik tile as a visual aid to the start of my blog today?!

An interesting article on the significance of the tulip in Ottoman design, led me to recollecting my wonderful visit to Istanbul a few years ago.  I was particularly wanting to see what 'tulip' inspired tiles I had managed to photograph.

Easier to view were my set of coasters!
AS you have probably guessed, I'd decided to have the tulip as this week's muse.  Even though the tulip is another plant that I have tried and failed to grow in my garden, each year I buy bunches & pretend that they have just been plucked from our own carefully tended soil!

Thankfully I had taken a few photos of my most recent bunch, so with the stylized  tulip designs of the Ottoman Empire in the forefront of my mind, I set about exploring the lines & shapes of the bunch I had documented before me.

I was particularly pleased with this close up photo looking INTO the tulip, & I hoped that I would be able to use that in some way.

Out came the pens & in the limited time I had available to me, I noted my observations.

I decided, at some point, that I was going to create my own tile.  Having to keep my goal of using contemporary reverse applique in each of my art projects, I then had to carefully consider what  size my motifs were going to be & how I was going to accomplish a tile effect.  The tiles generally had small motifs, with lots of additional small pattern components & twirly tendrils of line.  This was going to be an interesting challenge.

Once settled on a design format, I used the lightbox to help me trace it onto each quarter of my 15cm sq fabric block.

Before the cutting back began, I needed to create a background & wanted to use paints to bring the finer patterns to life.  I soon discovered that my paints are..ahem...a little dried up!  As were my fabric pens!  Out came the sharpies & wouldn't you know it...they bled! I cobbled together a 'painted' background with a water colour cake, fabric dye & various pens !!  By no means perfect, but it does look a little 'tile-ish' already....if you don't look too closely!!

Keeping a simple colour scheme, but choosing 3 different reds, led me to select these fabrics for my layers.
Under the sewing machine needle it all went & then out came the scissors.  Here's what the cutting back  revealed...

I am so pleased with the end result, especially given the stop-start nature of getting the WAP to this point.  The colours immediately transport me to the tiles seen lining the walls of Istanbul's Mosques & whilst my design is not particularly Ottoman looking, it is MY design & I'm pleased with it.  The test is in how it looks as a repeat pattern?

I don't need much of an excuse to use my layout app to find out!
Bold & fresh & lovely.
A good result from a frustrating start of week!

 

WEEKLY ART PROJECT #38; PANSY POETICS

When I woke up this morning, one of the first questions I asked myself was, "what am I going to do for my Weekly Art Project today?"

After my usual list of start-of-the-day chores, I took the camera for a walk around the garden & took a number of photos.  We have had a nourishing amount of rain over the past few days and the plants are showing their appreciation.  There are interesting buds popping out everywhere!

Then I came to my beautiful bed of pansies.
I love pansies....especially purple ones, and I was so happy to have a clear patch of garden that I could plant some out in this year.

As the photo above reveals, I'm not the only one who likes pansies.  I think the possums do too!  Almost ALL of them were patterned with tooth marks!

I RAGED (internally)!
Think wailing & gnashing of teeth.
Think screaming & pulling hair out!!
WHYYYYYYYYYYY??????

 There was only one thing to do.  I put my camera down and went for a long walk to calm myself.

During that time, I pondered whether I could turn this devastating experience into something positive.  Could I use the tooth-marked pansies as my inspiration for this week's art project?

Back home, I took a photo of every chewed-upon flower, sat down at the computer, chose my best 9 & printed them off on a sheet.

This was going to be quite a different exercise & would require an equally different approach.

A few years ago, I participated in a workshop with the British artist Gizella Warburton.  One of the exercises she encouraged us to try involved....

....using a variety of different mark making tools...

 ....and draw outlines DOWN a narrow strip of paper instead of our usual left to right across the page.

I took each photo & studied the line those toothmarks created, then copied those lines onto my paper strips.

 The end result looked like this.

It had been my intention to then sit down with each sample & 'find' words.

I had seen the wonderful Tent panel 'Ninety-Nine Names Of Allah' at the art gallery yesterday & whilst I cannot read Arabic, I am very attracted to way the written form of the language looks.

I like the idea of creating 'new' languages and have produced work inspired by that concept in the past.  This is a piece entitled 'The Manuscript of Hair & Now', in which both the 'language' AND the decorative borders have been designs developed by hair shed in the bathroom.  (Sorry if that grosses you out.... I have found it hilarious & fun & beautiful!!)

Therefore, it was with anticipation that I expected to look for the language within those squiggles of teeth-bitten pansy lines.

 

As you will know by now, I frequently use a view-finder as a tool in my design process.  This time though, my camera was still on, when I glanced down & saw close-ups of much smaller sections of the squiggle  notes.  I loved them!  Such fluid and beautiful dancing lines.  More photos were taken, then back to the computer I went for uploading, cropping and printing off  favourites.

As my weekly art project is in a square format & is a specific size (15cm square) and does require a design that I can execute using the contemporary reverse applique technique, I now needed to fine tune the possibilities.

I explored each option paying close attention to the essential lines, before making a decision about which one I would take further into fabric.

When I had been at the computer earlier, I had used some of the photo tools to 'play' with one of the images.  Whilst I am not good at directing a fine line with a mouse, I was quite excited by this little experiment & it influenced what I did with my textile process.

Here it goes...

I am so pleased with my finished piece!  I love it!  I realise that it doesnt say "a possum ate my pansies', but it does create something quite special from a negative observation!

This project has taken a lot of time & a lot of work today, but I have enjoyed every minute.  I hope it inspires you to value the beneficial & essential work of 'play' in your art making practice too. :-)