Cotswold Waterparks

I find having more than one piece of work on the go at the same time helps when thoughts run aground. I then have something reassuring and relatively undemanding to pick up on while the brain goes to work on new thoughts.

Drawing plan for
Cotswold Waterparks

So while I experiment, I've been thinking about the next piece in my Geology Series that I had thought I'd leave for a time. Now seems to be one of those times when I need something to get my teeth into - something I have confidence in as I've worked in a similar way before. 

This afternoon then, I took out my sketch book with the preliminary work I did last autumn and looked at it afresh. The first thing I did was add pencil stitching lines into the plain strip across the work so that these would suggest strata as they did on the first piece. The plan is that each of the pieces will have this feature to tie them together.

Gravel Stones pen and ink wash

Then, as I will have to work in a different way on the main part of the work in order to suggest round gravel rather than linear strata, I played with applying spots of colour and adding some round shapes drawn in pen on drawing paper.

I then painted a square of cotton fabric with patches of silk paints in a possible colour range, ready to  start sampling how to stitch the gravel shapes. I'm thinking to make them more random than on the drawing plan, but with the same variation in size as this gives a pleasing sense of scale and great scope for changing tonal values.

Sample fabric
Setasilk silk paints on cotton

Now I just need to choose the threads for machine and handstitch ... and start work on my sample.