Mark making ... with a difference

My 3 year old grand-daughter and I, we've cut and stuck, painted, made cards and crowns, and printed. Today, we made a puppet and a birthday card for her cousin. She loves it all and considers my workroom to be pure heaven.

Recently, I watched her sitting on her folding frog camping chair beside her parents' caravan 'sketching'. She was drawing in the little sketch book I'd given her, looking across the campsite on a warm autumn day. Dare I say it, there were recognisable and interesting marks - a shed (just) and grass, lots of it ...

I'm surrounded by scientists in my family. All of them - even the newly acquired son and daughter in-law and their parents - are biologists, mathematicians, engineers or chemists. I love them dearly but there's not an arts graduate among them.

Could she be the first, or is that wishful thinking?

Slad

I'm struggling to focus myself at the moment - far too many ideas jostling for attention and difficulties working out how to realise them so they look as I want - any of them ...

Right now, in an effort to think in a different way about the work for the series of pieces on the Cotswold Edge, I've been rereading that beautiful classic Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. It is an autobiographical account of Lee's growing up in the nineteen twenties in the Gloucestershire village of Slad which nestles in the hills near Stroud right on the Cotswold edge.

The language of the book is rich and poetic and describes in great detail the simple life of a working class boy growing up with his mother and siblings just after the end of the First World War.

I've found on the internet a photo of the cover of my copy - now lost, sadly. It was published by Penguin Books in 1962, before we went decimal and so cost the grand sum of 3 shillings and 6 pence - now about 15 pence.

I'd forgotten how much I had enjoyed it when I first read it in my teens whilst I was at school. On this reread, I have been especially taken with the lovely descriptions of the landscape, the people and the way of life.

Take this quote for instance:

"The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house. Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth; I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill's dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny's age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world."

It is certainly giving me something to think about ...

Adobe Magic

As time goes by, I seem to be becoming more and more of a textile vagrant, taking things from here and there, jumping from one thing to another and experimenting with all sorts of techniques.

This time, in an idle moment and using a photo of a favourite river taken in Scotland, I decided to explore further some of the features of my (very old) version of Adobe Photoshop. I used the liquify function (it seemed appropriate to the subject matter) and played with the colour intensity and hues.

These were the result and I think they could transfer well to textiles ... sometime!

... colour inverted and intensified ...

... and then changed and inverted again ...

What fun this is ... sometime, I must treat myself to the latest version of this lovely programme, though I think I may need a computer update before I do. Has anyone got experience of competitor programmes? I guess they might be even better ...

Doing surprising things

Sometimes I find myself doing surprising things - and today was one of those days.

I'm not a quilter as I've always thought it was too formal for me as a technique - too rigid and mathematical - so I generally avoid occasions when I might be asked to quilt. Today though, Great Western Embroiderers, the group I stitch and exhibit with, had invited the excellent Kate Dowty to do her Scrappy Collage workshop for us.

We had a lovely day - and I quilted along with all the others, and much to my surprise, enjoyed myself. Kate had brought along small examples of  her quilted wall hangings to inspire us. Her work can be found on her website and is well worth a look.

We were asked to create a layered and quilted representation of a hedgerow, a field with wild flowers or a flower border in our garden. I chose (approximately) the last of these.

Kate demonstrated the layering techniques and her informal approach - not a cut hexagon or formal quilting layout in sight. This is definitely my sort of quilting - layering and machine stitching I can do.

I have not finished my piece. I've realised that in workshops I'm a slow worker - in fact I get really flustered if I feel I have to rush - and there's no pleasure in that. I like to think about what I'm doing and try out composition and colouring at leisure.

Though I don't feel the colours work and there is still a lot to do, if I choose to do it, I'm posting what I've done so far to give some idea of what we were asked to do and of Kate's approach.

I've also asked Adobe Photoshop to get to work on the colours and I much prefer the results, especially the second of the two.

I think this, if nothing else, is definitely a technique and approach to have in my armoury, though I won't be using it in the pieces I'm working on right now, or probably for some while, though you never know.

If you get a chance to hear Kate talk or attend a workshop with her, do - she is very approachable and a reassuring and gentle teacher.

Creativity and Simplicity

"Creativity has more to do with the elimination of the inessential than with inventing something new"  Helmut John

Found on Donna Watson's lovely blog, Layers, was this golden nugget of a quote to ponder upon ... and, not least, to consider what is inessential.

I must remember this as I work. I long to be able to pare down and simplify but so often feel that I over-embellish and complicate.

It seems also to link so much to the work of Helen Parrott whom, somehow, I've missed. I've just acquired her lovely book, Mark-Making in Textile Art, published in August by Batsford here in the UK.

A quick skim before I settle down to read in depth reveals a host of simplified, pared-down images of her mark-making work within ... and the cover itself is wonderfully minimal (though perhaps in this post not shown to its best advantage).

I'm going to enjoy this book, I know and ... could this perhaps be the beginning of a new, simplified, minimalist approach to my work? Who knows?



I will post any interesting results as I try out her ideas and you can judge for yourself ...

Unfinished business in black and white

I'm not sure why I called this post unfinished business when, actually, all my pieces are unfinished in the sense that one leads into another and then another and so on as new ideas and developments come to mind. Perhaps it's because these drawings feel more unfinished than most things and are posted here while I think what, if anything, to do with them.

Once a week I draw, play with mixed media, talk and generally enjoy myself with an artistic friend in her small studio. The work I do there often has nothing at all to do with the things that are most motivating me at the time - in itself, a kind of liberation.

So these are the - definitely unfinished - results of today's drawing exercise stimulated by a still life of bottles, a jug and various boxes. I have included the whole drawing and a small section identified as I so often do using a card window and the crop tool on my laptop.

As always, I did my own thing. I drew initially without looking at the paper, purely studying the outlines of the objects - always a favourite technique of mine.






I have a lurking fear that it is the choice of laziness as it generates a quick, easy and - to me - pleasing set of shapes to work on ... or perhaps it's what I choose in order to circumvent that requirement lurking in my subconscious to 'get it right' in a literal sense which can be so paralysing.

Whichever it is, the morning was very satisfying and generated much conversation about the whys, wherefores and purposes of drawing.

I will go back to this exercise next week somehow ... It will be interesting to see what form it takes ...