this weekend I've been trying to catch up on my printing for assignment 2 ACA. but was "distracted" by doing some online classes of Carla Sonheim's. one was a gelli plate printing class, so I'm waiting for my gelli plate to arrive. will try similar on other makeshift plates during the week (am home with my materials for a couple of weeks). the other one was a watercolour transfer class. these are some of the watercolour painted tshirt transfer papers so far. the work is still in progress...waiting for it to dry properly then add some other media, then do/test the prints onto paper & fabric. the watercolours react nicely to the coating on the paper. I hadn't tried this before. Carla does some amazing work - I've been really inspired and hope that one will turn out as nice as hers (one day). I've signed up for her 'imaginary creatures' class that's running this week also and have started reading her books (the kindle ones). the book speaks about footpath/cracks animals. I took some photos of water splotches on the footpath near home and I can really see some imaginary animals in them so hoping I can turn them into little prints for my niece & cousins kids. maybe a little zine of them. not sure yet. (I've taken pics like this in the path, often of the outline that a stray hair makes on the bathroom floor - my hair is long and straight but tends to make curvy shapes as it falls out).
I read about the "brushes" ipad app so I've been trying it out this weekend. it allows you to draw in layers. so far I've been roughly tracing photos from my photos collection to practice and get a feel for drawing lines and objects & people. I know we should do more freehand drawing, but i get quite disheartened that mine don't look like the original, that I don't feel like doing any more. with the tracings, i can see the image coming through and it's teaching me to see the shapes better, and to select which lines and shapes and shadings to include and which to leave out. i think this is half the battle of drawing - deciding what to include and what to discard that still gets your message across. I'm using my finger to draw with and still getting the hang of the app's brushes too, so even though I'm tracing, it's still not looking exactly like the original. but hopefully it's training my hand eye co-ordination a bit (more than not drawing at all). here's the first attempts.
yesterday, we went to the Piranesi exhibition at the State Library of Victoria. his work was amazing! such fine detail in his etchings and prints. there were around 100 works on display, but i found that I was transfixed by the close-up detail of his mark making in the works. when he was younger, the prints were lighter and later in his life he ran his own printmaking business and developed darker, denser prints of imaginative buildings, street scenes and maps. the exhibition included his visions of Rome etchings. most of the buildings did not actually exist outside his mind and works — they are imaginary buildings and cities. he showed amazing skill with depth of vision, fine detail in the clouds and architectural designs and showing darkness and light in the images. Giovanni Battista Piranesi lived from 1720-1778. a statement reported by one of his early biographers, via his Met Museum article shows his love for imaginary architecture:
"I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it."
I tried drawing some of the marks in my notebook but found the pen i was using didn't give me enough variation in the lightness and darkness of the lines.
Drawings showing different aspects of the marked off area of some images — surface textures, colours, the main shapes. Using a variety of marks and materials and techniques.
original images:
my work on the exercises. I used different materials to try capture the textures, colours and shapes of the original images.
some students are trying the "summer drawing project" from the distant stitch group on the OCA textile group page. I'll try some of it too to see how it goes — even though it's winter here for me :) (which usually means more fibre projects as it's nicer to knit in the colder months)
week1 — exploring "What type of mark do you make most naturally?"
repeating geometric shapes seems to be my most natural mark making. the first page was done using conte pencils and the remainder using a fine (0,3) ink pen. we had to fill the page with marks. so I tried repeating the shapes to see the effect. I could definitely turn these pages into stitches. though I think lace would be suited for the circles—I might have to learn how to make lace next ;)
I made a knitted spoon for the upcoming "Spoon!" exhibition at The Slow Club, curated by Kate Kingsmill. It’s called "A Spoonful of Threads" (original name was "nice and slow"). I was thinking of a slow / handmade theme – slow baking, stitching, knitting. I was going to do stitching but ended up knitting. it's using three stitches — knit, purl and knit-from-behind, in random order to give the holes some texture. the wooden spoon is made of birch wood and I used red embroidery thread. it was a short callout—so I made it over the weekend. the exhibition runs from May 12-24th.
The Slowclub has since changed names to The Snug.
here’s the flyer for the Spoons! exhibition (when still called The Slowclub)
testing the conductive thread. it's conductive, hurrah
I left the hoop on to stabilise it a bit whilst I had it connected to the computer. it's the tutorial on adafruit site, though I modified their circuit pattern into the circles & didn't have the clips to test it. checked it with my multimetre instead after stitching. one thing to remember is once the usb cable's connected it tends to flip the fabric. I need to play more & see if it really is now 'programmed' (I think so) ie will it run without the computer if I power it by battery/something else. but yeah, no soldering, only stitching. have to think of something else besides leds now - they seem to be the "hello world" of wearable tech
it's an adafruit flora processor + neo pixel v2 led & conductive thread. I bought some other things like a light/colour detector & flexible solar panel & more leds. will think of something to try them out
When I was in my early 20s I used to read many books about Andy Warhol. One is "Warhol" by David Bourdon. I picked it up again today and started reading / flipping through it again. I love Warhol's early commercial work — he developed a technique called "blottled line" printing. so, wanting to know more about it, I searched the net and found the following links:
"Choose a background fabric – white, black or a primary colour. Choose threads – perhaps primary colours of equal intensity. If possible find the same colour in different yarns or ribbons – matt, shiny and textured. Try working them together, mixing them and separating them. Make the knots very dense so that the background is not visible. Then work further apart so the background has its own effect on the colours. Add a third colour (different from the background or yarn), maybe a secondary colour."
This time we had to use pastel colours and "[m]ix the colours so that a gradual colour movement occurs across the sample".
I don't really like pastel colours much, but I was happy with the final piece / sample.
the photo shows both exercises:
review were you able to mix and match colours accurately?
yes, I think I was able to colour match the original colours after mixing the paints. I enjoyed the colour mixing and colour exploration exercises. it was great to see how the combinations of colours created other colours, and the variations you can create by changing the quantities of the source colours.
I've started doing an online stitching class called whispering hearts with Jude Hill. it's a really great class — I've read through all the posts from when the class was run live in 2011, and will listen to the audio "whisperings" and watch the videos in the next few weeks when I have a better internet connection. the theme is hearts. it's great to see Jude go through the process of doodling ideas in a sketchbook, make some small stitched fabric samplers and then stitch the final selections into a larger piece. this is what I'll have to do for my theme work for class (I think).
I like the hearts theme too — I'm not really into pink and girly colours and hearts but after seeing some that Jude made and some of the ideas around them I think it's good to try something out of my comfort zone of technology-based topics.
