Permanent

The start of year 2 of my Artybird course has a lot of drawing assignments. This is doubly challenging for me as I am a beginner in drawing and as my theme is river edges, they are not very transportable. While approaching these challenges I started with the warm up to music exercises. Charcoal in hand blindfold on music blaring I scribbled away . My two choices of music Hallelujah sung by KD Land and You overtake me by The flaming lips. If you know these tunes you will be able , I hope to identify the drawing which goes with which music.

Next more music , eyes open , draw what you hear in white wax . This is of course virtually invisible so overall you are nearly as blind as before. I did learn from my first attempts that less is probably more , as if you scribble in time to fast music for 4 minutes there is no white space left.

Next wash with diluted ink to reveal the masterpiece and then add lines to bring it all together. So far so good. I was quite please with my piece so far.

 

Finally used diluted bleach to remove lines in the wash and ink as a final layer of detail. Well ok , I give it a try , still playing the same piece of music by the way , nothing happens. Can bleach stop bleaching , age and stop working????? I don't think so. Then it came to me, permanent ink . I had used permanent ink . I had not really thought about it just used a bottle of black ink. Totally impervious to fading naturally or with bleach. So it's back to the drawing board and the music.

 

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Sculptures 2 of 2

My first attempt at a sculpture was not so successful. I took a large sheet of white card , cut some curved and some straight lines on it with my craft knife and then connected edges together using staples and double sided tape. It looked OK to begin with but keep unravelling itself and collapsing . So I began again. Same idea but now on smaller sheets of thick cartridge paper and using staples instead of tape.

This is more successful I think. The disadvantage of the staples is that they are quite visible, but the advantage is my sculptures are likely to look the same tomorrow as today.

Photographing them is also a challenge for me. White sculpture on white background, gave my a kind of grayish cream blob of a photograph. I am advised this is all to do with the white balance , and a complex colour averaging that our sophisticated cameras perform without us knowing. So I looked up my camera instructions and tried to override the averaging then turned them into black and white. It's not perfect but here my white on white sculptures.

 

Next in this complex process is to draw the sculptures and draw the photographs I made of the sculptures. If you are still following this story you might be wondering the purpose of all this. I think it's purpose is to help me develop good designs for three dimensional objects. I am keen to be able to make better three dimensional felts so I am sticking with it.

So finally I draw my sculptures .

Overall an interesting exercise . Finally here's another interesting living sculpture from the Kroller muller park.

I wonder how many years it will take for the tree to fill the hole in the hammerhead

 

 

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One year on

Today is the anniversary of the first blog I wrote over my adventures with ArtyBird.

What an voyage of discovery it has been, always something new and challenging to think about and to make.

I have drawn and painted . I never imagined I could draw at all. I have dyed fabrics and yarns and even experimented with making my own colours by mixing dyes together successfully.

I have made lots of felt and started to explore the world of different fibres with their different properties. I can even name quite a few different sheep breeds.

I have made and given felted gifts and have requests for slippers, hats , pictures and bags waiting until I have more time to do them.

I have written 45 blogs, nearly one/week and have more than 1000 views - mostly my mother.

But I think most amazingly I have started to look at the world around me in a different way and to explore with my eyes the texture and patterns in nature and in man made objects. To record this I have taken many photographs , often times looking into the micro landscapes that I year ago I would not have even seen . From this I already have a wealth of ideas I would like to use in designs and I see more all the time !

Here is just a few examples of ideas for the future.

 

 

 

 

So overall it's been a fantastic year of discoveries and I think I will continue my journey by signing up for the next course , which will give me the excuse to continue this blog which I have also really enjoyed writing .

 

 

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All packed up

Well I have spent the last few days packing up items to send to Kate for assessment.

It quite amazing how much I have accumulated in the last few months.

I have been making boxes for my paper manipulations.

 

I have been sorting through masses of sketches some I remember drawing on the train.

I have collected together all my felted items showing texture and dying techniques.

There is a collection of needled felted items.

My 3D objects

Finally my scarfs. I am very happy with my green scarf especially as I made the green dye myself by mixing the turquoise and yellow. I would happily wear it. But the hooded scarf, it might remind me of the beatiful waters of the Hebrides , in its colours, but in terms of style , My god its a disaster for me and it is something I would never wear!

 

 

 

 

This lot all needs to be packed up safely and sent off to the UK. Though bulky they are all very light so the costs should not be totally excessive. Thank goodness.

And the big question is now , what am I going to do with myself?

 

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Transformations

In 1882 John Constable painted some cirrus clouds using oils. The original is in the V&A, Heres a link. 

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82649/oil-painting-study-of-cirrus-clouds

In 2012, only 130 years later,  I attempted to copy this painting using pastels. Not quite my first time using pastels , but I am a real novice.

Then I made a felt picture using merino batts. I have used merino tops many times, but never batts before. They are very fine short fibres randomly mixed,like fluff, rather than lined up neatly as they are in a top. Interesting different, one I need more practice with !!

I then photographed this felt picture and printed this using my ordinary printed onto silk. I never even knew this was possible. 

It is not as clear as it would be as a photograph but recognizably,upside down, I think.

Finally, I felted the silk using some merino tops , yellow , white and blue fibres. I mixed some white and blue fibres together with my carders for the background. The shrinkage of the silk gives a wonderful crimped effect - unfortunately some of the colours have been lost.  

Transformed from oil on canvas,via the V&A website, to pastels on paper, to felt, then via the computer and an inkjet printer to silk and then shrunk into a small silk and felt picture, 130 years after the original was made.  

Bizarrely this small size felted silk is almost the same size as Constables orginal oil!

The perfect storm

January is here.  Gone are the bright orange and blue sunsets, and the warm sultry skies. Bad weather has taken its place and not just ordinary bad weather but a deluge.  I am now trying to draw very bad weather using Leonardo de Vinci Deluge as inspiration. What a good match for the grey January skies, and the current  lashing rain and the gale force winds.                                                       


Options for drawing are extensive as long as they are black . Felt pens, charcoal, ink, pencils , paint . I can ever add water and smudge it all.     

I would have never thought I could draw anything , but I found I can make black marks on a piece of paper. I can draw straight lines , swirly lines, and make shade and dark. I can use candle wax to keep part of it white.  Then the only snag here is  I can't see what part.  I add water and turn it all grey and then I can imagine the rain lashing down outside and the rough sea beating on the shore. Grey on grey, and black on black- all a bit of a scribble really.

Perhaps I can imagine the perfect storm