LOOKING UP (Weekly Art Project 2020 #3)

This week's art project has been one of fits & starts. We had a public holiday on Monday, so my routine was thrown out by that & a few days of heat & humidity have contributed to the haphazard means of sticking with the plan. If I'd been a few more weeks into this renewed discipline, I'd have given myself the week off, but I REALLY wanted to get another piece completed!

So I did!

This week my inspiration came from the patterned ceilings of cave shrines along the banks of the Nile River. Our excursion took us to where limestone blocks were quarried for the building of Temples. We reached the site by boat & had to clamber over large boulders  to get there.  I remember it being a very hot day & how blissfully cool it was inside the cave.  Looking up we were surprised to see colour  when all around us was natural stone.

 Three specific patterns were still visible on the roughly hewn ceilings, each in the same colour palette of red, gold and white, with the addition of green in this pattern above.

I was contemplating how I could compose these patterns in an effective way within an A4 sized space & I was not coming up with any bright ideas!  Sometimes the creative juices just don't flow, so I went back to the source...my photos of that specific excursion.

That was when I came upon this photo.  High up on the rock face outside the shrines was this charming engraved boat.
Now I wanted to have this as my art inspiration!
Hmmmm...perhaps I could do something really crazy and try & incorporate them all!

It was time to do some drawing.
When it came to drawing the boat I also included lines to indicate shading.
I liked the graphic look they produced & began to think about how I might then move that forward into the design process.

This year I am trying to use more of my tools more often, so put that intention into motion by painting some fabric in two of the ceiling patterns.

I then layered them up with a black fabric drawn up with the boat design on top.
I stitched along the lines and then started to cut back.
Completed, I liked the little frayed edge of green below the horizon line, so decided to keep it.
Already I was having second thoughts about those bold patterns together! They are very loud!

The next part of the process was to layer another piece of black fabric on top of the whole design.  This one was marked with the shading lines & I had to be very careful to line it up accurately with the design edges below! It was then time to start cutting back.

This was how it looked  after all those skinny lines were exposed.
Whilst I was very happy with the black shape & lines, I felt there needed to be a stronger difference between back & foreground.

So I painted the white diamonds red, which was a tad fiddley, but worth the effort.

I'm very pleased with the end result, especially given that this was achieved in small batches of time over 5 days.  I dont find it easy to maintain any sense of flow working like that & in hindsight, if my brain had been functioning better, this  composition might have been more effective if the design of the background pattern had been a smaller scale to the foreground.

Nevertheless it was fun, reminds me of that trip and is bold and effective.

  I couldn't help trying it out in my layout app!  This was the result!

HORUS IN THE SACRAL TREE (WAP #2/2020; Inspired by travels in Egypt.)

From a tomb to a temple. This week's art project took me back to Edfu, where at dusk, we traveled by horse to the magnificent temple of Horus.

Walking past this large granite sculpture of the rather stern looking falcon god we entered what is considered to be the largest & best preserved Ptolemaic temple in Egypt.  Hard to believe it was buried under sand for nearly 2000 years!

Of the many photos I took of the incredible relief sculptures lining the temple walls, it is this that I chose as my source of inspiration for this week's project.  I don't recall reading or hearing what this panel represents, but from what we'd seen already in Egypt the imagery was not a common one.  What was this tree or bower? Was it some sort of Tree of Life?
With that question in mind, my day started with a scroll through Mr Google's fount of knowledge & from the little on offer, I'm making an assumption that this may have been the Sacral Tree. However, images of this tree seem to be shrouded in mystery.  This quote seems to sum it up;

"Portrayals and historical uses of these motifs remain an enigma to most historians and evoke little agreement with respect to their botanical identity and allegorical significance." (Atac 2008: Giovino 2007.)

Regardless of the extent of it's symbolism, I was attracted to the stylized lines of branches & leaves, so started to decipher how they worked together using pen & paper.
Because this was the temple of Horus, I felt it important to include him in some way, so flipped through my photos & made visual notes of the various falcon forms I saw.

How to take those few notes of imagery & try to create something fresh, interesting & achievable took a while to work out.  I drew thumb nail design options, not really happy with any of them.

As the clock ticked closer to lunchtime & my stomach began to growl, my executive-self declared that it was time to just choose one option & go with it!  So I chose the first option I'd drawn & worked & reworked it on an A4 sized sheet of paper until I was happy with my design. There was an audible sigh of relief when that point was reached!!

Whilst drawing up my design options I'd also been thinking about how I wanted my project to look.  What if I used ONLY layers of calico & cut some back to give the appearance of relief sculpture, whilst leaving other features just outlined in stitch?
This is the challenge that most excited me & so consequently choosing fabric options was the easiest  part of the process!  Eight pieces of calico were cut, ironed & layered up before my design was stitched through them all creating quite a solid wad!
With scissors at the ready it was time for the cutting back to begin...

I was very pleased with how effective this looked.
I wondered though, whether Horus might look better with a bit of colour added.
One of my intentions this year is to use my tools (ie; paints & print making equipment) & not be quite so precious about them. This was a good opportunity to put this intention into practice!

I chose Jo Sonya's acrylics because they wouldn't run & I felt sure I could also get a dry-brush effect with them.   The colours have dried stronger than I expected, but I'm still happy with the outcome.

The big question then was, do I add some colour to connect the Sacral Tree with Horus?

Throughout Egypt the painted reliefs are old & worn with many parts having no colour at all or tiny splinters of colour that hint at what it might have looked like in a by gone age.  With this in mind I got out my embroidery thread & did a little colour matching.

This is the end result.
I'm very happy with the outcome & particularly like the sculptural look of the tree branches. It was a new variation of using contemporary reverse applique & it honours the temple visit.

The piece feels wonderful to touch!  I realise that that is not often spoken about when talking about textile art.  There are so many times one must refrain from reaching the fingers out to stroke the cloth!  But with my own work, it's an added bonus to the experience of making.

Almost instantly I wanted to try this technique style again with a bigger art work.  However, on pinning this small piece to my pinboard & stepping back from it, I realised that it doesn't take many metres of distance for this to fade into next to nothingness! From across a gallery the colour might draw an audience closer, but not much else would.  Any larger piece would need a lot of consideration given to the coverage of dense cutting back & the percentage of paint.  All good for the ongoing learning curve.
Until next week...happy creating!

YELLOW OWL (Weekly Art Project #1/2020)

I'm back in the blogosphere! Yay!

Having not completed a weekly art project for several months, I recognised that I had a perfect opportunity to leave things as they were, accept the natural progression & not resume the practice at all.
However as I sat down to review my art making in the past year & look ahead to this year I realised that I missed doing this each week.  I missed starting my week with art making that was inspired by wonderful travels rich in memories, yet was purely about practice with the added challenge of writing about the process.

So here I am again.

Last year my weekly art projects were inspired by travels in Egypt.  Due to a death in the family I wasn't able to complete all that I wanted to, so have decided to resume with the Egypt explorations this year.

This first 2020 project takes us to a site up a dust track through farmland, past camels, buffalo & sugarcane into the cave tombs of Al-Kab. These tombs are unusual because they are on the EAST bank, usually tombs are on the west, because the sun sets in the west. The ancient Egyptians believed in eternal life. They believed that man was like the sun; weak when it arose (born), strongest in mid life & getting weaker again as it sinks into the west (heads towards death). The analogy continues, that as the sun rises again to a new day, so too does man. Al-Kab chose to put their tombs on the East bank because their location was very susceptible to flooding & they wanted to protect the tombs.   We were able to see four tombs of Noblemen and each was exquisitely decorated.

In one of those tombs was this wonderful yellow owl with red outlines.

Art making is, in part, about decision making. 
It was all very well for me to decide that I wanted to try reimagining this owl using textile processes, but what was I going to put with it? 
How was I going to frame it within a meaningful context...or even a decorative one?
And then how was I actually going to represent this owl using contemporary reverse applique?

When I'd entered this particular tomb, my mind had been overwhelmed with information.  Not only were my eyes trying to take in the motifs in hieroglyphs and relief paintings, I was recognising the images that hit my own personal 'Wow' factor & I was also trying to listen & inwardly digest the information the guide was giving us.  That is a lot to take in within a limited time frame & in low light!  I took quick photos of the parts of the tomb that made my heart sing, but didn't necessarily take photos of the bigger picture of how & where they fitted with everything else.

Therefore I had minimal data to inform me about this owl. Eventually I decided to keep it simple & just use the ^^^^^^ symbol on the bottom left of the photo.  It represents water, which is appropriate for a tomb trying to avoid flooding!!

One of the aspects I wanted to try & represent was the sense of age .  I was attracted to the deterioration of the plaster wall & wanted a textural background to represent that.
I chose to use a loosely woven curtain sample, which I then applied printing ink to in a random fashion.  The sponge roller gave a gentle coverage, which I really liked.

It needed stronger areas though, so I applied more with a brush.  This created the effect that I was looking for.  With temperatures heading towards 35 degrees celsius, I knew it wouldn't take long to dry!

I found fabrics for the other parts of the design, ironed them & then stitched the design through the lot!

I cheated a little!
I didn't have enough of the darker blue to cover the whole A4 area & no other blue would do. So, with careful placing & separate stitching I made use of the smaller pieces to frame the top & bottom. I was now ready to start cutting back.

It might be hard to believe...but I felt nervous!

The red was cut back to reveal this wonderful mottled goldy yellow.
I loved it just as it was.  Surely it wasn't necessary to keep cutting back? 
But I did!

I held my breath as I started cutting back to the background.  Would those solid colours be too strong against the textured background?
I was very pleased with the owl, but felt that the water  frames were just too strong & to be honest...they were boring.

It was time to get the embroidery threads & beads out!

This is the finished piece & I am very pleased with the results.
The embroidery definitely makes the water more interesting without detracting from the owl.
I'm delighted with most of the decisions I made about the owl. When studying the photo closely I'd spotted the pale blue hidden within it's features & am pleased with the way I've used it here to connect with the water.
A very pleasing start to the new year & a new week!