Drawing in the British Museum and birthday postcards

Our tutor is very keen on everyone getting over their nerves about drawing in public, so we all went to the British Museum today.  I'm still struggling with relative proportions as seen in these first two A4 pages from the Mexican gallery, supposedly of Huaxtec female deities .

I tried to enjoy the whole experience, including having a couple of Buddhist monks looking over my shoulder, and overhearing the following exchange: " Have you ever been to Mexico?"  No……….  " Do you want to go to Mexico?……………." ………..No.  If I was a decent painter I would be tempted to include these observations in my final works, as does Kurt Jackson.

After a coffee ( and a very good salted caramel and apple cookie),  I found a more straightforward subject, the sculpture of  "Mother Earth" by Mona Saudi.  After another painstaking attempt at clean lines and shading

I had a good talk with the tutor about my lack of patience and wanting to draw more quickly and spontaneously.  He was very understanding about  "finding my own style of drawing that fits with my personality and way of working" so suggested a more dynamic approach.  I'm happier with these.

4B pencil

Charcoal pencil

I haven't done many postcard swaps this year,but have kept up with the birthday swap.  Unfortunately the Yahoo group where the swap is posted seems to be losing its momentum, so I'm not sure ho much longer it will continue.  I think several epode have been put off by the difficulties with the Yahoo upgrades this year, particularly the difficulty of loading photographs. I wonder if there is also a reluctance to spend 62p  time on posting cards to up to 6 people at a time every month.  My birthday theme was feathers and fronds, and everyone has interpreted it differently.

The Narnia postcard is now edged and ready to send off

More tone and value…..

….. on cloth.  Not much spare time this week, so stitching has been limited to postcard - sized pieces.  The first on a theme that I always love, boats and the sea, using a few precious scraps of a favourite fabric.  Damp stretching this one, but not as rigorously as it should be done.  First in black and white to examine the tonal contrasts, then in a blaze of wonderful colour.

The daughter of a good friend is in a local professional production of " The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" and her first night is very soon.  I've taken one of the images by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes, and simplified it for stitch.  Some holographic thread added by hand for sparkle, and silver paintstick for background tone.

I hope she recognises the image when it goes through her letterbox.

Tone and value - on paper and cloth

I started a new job last week, hence the gap in blogging.  All well, but everyone in the household is adjusting to a revised routine.  

The Morley class this week was about tone, and capturing a likeness of an individual using only tone.  I really understood this, mostly as the tutor was very helpful and started us off with very pixellated black and white photograph, so no 3 dimensional issues to contend with.

( The sketch in the upper right corner was me trying to capture the design lines on a dress that one of my classmates was wearing).  

As this was charcoal, I tried to protect it on the way home and got another faint, inverted impression of the same photograph.

This was a useful lesson as it also showed me where I had not included enough contrast of tone in a couple of blocks made for the round robin challenge this month.

Not enough  contrast of tone

Better

Best

Adventures with pencil and thread

Continuing explorations and sampling, I played around a bit this week with putting colour on cloth using watercolour pencils and Inktense pencils.  I'm still undecided about the Inktense, as the colours are so bright - and I usually like bright.  

As you can see, I am not a tidy worker.  Initial trials were with freezer paper stencils with water-colour pencils and ink pads.

This gave quite accurate and pleasant results.

The on to using Inktense on some of the quilted samples from the Philippa Naylor course, following the instructions here. I experimented with water only, water and textile medium, and textile medium on its own.  Water causes a lot of colour bleeding, could be good in some contexts, and the most refined results came form a mixture of water and textile medium - petals 1-6 in the flower on top right.

I needed some stitch work after that, working at my mobile sewing station.

Some postcards appeared for a swap next week.  The metallic threads on these proved very temperamental but isn't that fabric appropriate for this week?.

I have forced myself to get down to more drawing, I'm Ok with these results.

I've called this, " Will I keep them?" as I am still undecided about these shoes.  They are Clarks, and have actual Linton tweed in them, so I would be supporting two aspects of the British economy by keeping them.

Drawing dried up buddleia - and Grayson Perry at the NPG

Today's task at Morley was drawing dried out buddleia flowers, using three different methods of drawing - outline with pencil, shape with small circular movements of the pencil, using ink and a brush.  I was Ok with the results of the pencil drawings, less happy with the ink and brush.

Pencil

Ink and brush

I restored my artistic sanity with a visit to the Grayson Perry exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and the pieces seemed very familiar having watched the first two episodes of his current series on Channel 4.  I particularly liked the way the pieces are placed on a path through the existing collection in the National Portrait Gallery, rather than all placed together in one exhibition room. This made me look at some of the permanent collection in a different way, particularly the collection of black busts in room 21, the display of suffragette photographs and articles in room 31, and the portrait of the Bronte sisters.  As ever, I did ponder who does the embroidery on Grayson Perry's hand-embroidered pieces.  In this exhibition, the number of French knots on the piece about the Ulster loyalists, " Britain is Best" is mind-boggling, and I don't think these can be done by machine.    The Scottish pedant in me couldn't help but notice the mis-spelling of Hogmanay on the tapestry " Comfort Blanket", but perhaps this is deliberate.  On until 15th March 2015 and,  perhaps because the pieces are distributed throughout several galleries, not too crowded, and it is completely free.

Grids and trapunto

I've been exploring grids in combination with the trapunto technique.  My first attempt was a wonky grid with no trapunto - made in error by trying to follow this tutorial, but quite a useful sample to make, as it seemed to be very difficult to match up the corners of each wonky square in the grid.

The second attempt was much more successful, as I had the tutorial on screen as I cut and stitched, and I now need to work on making longer strips.  The setting-in of a sleeve at the pattern cutting weekend certainly helped with stitchings these curves.

I was experimenting with taking the grid in to the background and emphasising it with corded trapunto and blocks of quilting, this worked well.  

Not working so well at the top, was extending the grid lines  with quilting - not sure what to do after the point where the lines meet.   It doesn't help that I quilted one of the lines completely off where it needs to be.

The trapunto under the checkerboard strip shows up really well on this sample.