Creative Sketchbooks Module 1: Harvest Festival – Chap. 1 & 2

After a long pause - going on holiday, saying goodbye to one job and starting a new one - I have finally come back to a daily rhythm to do the course work for Module 1. So I hope it will not take me quite so long until I can post more work.

 

Chapter 1: Painting basics

I included gouache and acrylics in both a cool and a warm colour set in my basic kit. Until now I have not done much with these colours (I like watercolours, oil and pastels),  so this will be a good opportunity to get to know them better. As a start I painted them all on the first page of my sketchbook.

 

This is not a book but an A4 sketchpad for mixed media, the paper is 300gsm. I found no sketchbook with adequate paper so I chose this alternative. I will have to buy another pad for the course, but the paper is very good to work on.

 

My folding pin board with some of my fruit and vegetable photographs and sheets of paper (discarded flyers) which I use to wipe the brushes or clean the paint tray.  The “exhibition” is always changing – since I started taking photographs for the course, more and more colourful details in everyday life catch my eye.

 

Activity 1.1: Create a range of marks on your page

For this activity I used large sheets (A 2) of leftover flipchart paper, wrapping paper, Kraft paper (brown), watercolour paper, a tube of gouache crimson and a range of mark making tools: brushes in all sizes, a baking brush, foam brush, foam roller, glass and metal nibs, a bamboo nib, a small twig, a dried sage twig with leaves, credit card, a toothbrush, a painting knife, a pocket knife, a wooden wedge, natural and man made sponge, a comb, cardboard rolls, cork … I may have forgotten something.

 

Some of the tools are good for bringing a quantity of colour on the paper, like large brushes, foam and sponges, others do not carry a lot of colour, but are good for spreading it around on the paper and create patterns, like comb, twigs etc. I filled 8  large sheets with marks and still feel that I only just started exploring the possibilities. So this “library of marks” seems to be a lifelong work in progress.

 

Activity 1.2: Observational painting of a lemon

 

The outer edge of the lemon was dabbed on the paper with a piece of bamboo, other tools are a wooden wedge, a painting knife and several brushes. I used brushes to wash the colour away in some places. It was fun to use all these tools and render the lemon in a way that felt more free than the usual way of painting.

 

Mixing colours

Activity 1.3: Combine two primary colours to create a range of secondary colours

These pages were all done with gouache, using warm and cool colours.

I often found that I mixed in too much of the darker colour at a time, so sometimes I “retraced my steps”. The transition from violet to red on page 4 is not rendered well in the scan.  On page 6 the first square in the upper left corner was done with too much water. Again a potentially endless activity …

 

Activity 1.4: Mixing with black and white

 

The tints of carmine above remind me of all sorts of ice cream and fruit yoghurt, the shades of blackberries and eggplant. In addition to the shades of yellow I diluted the paint with varying amounts of water.

 

The colour wheel

Activity 1.5: Paint a colour circle

 

	Circle with gouache – warm colours
	Circle with gouache – cool colours sheets with excess paint fixed to the page with masking tape
	Circle with acrylics – cool colours Here I used only tiny amounts of black for the shades.

In every colourway there are one or two colours which are more transparent than the others and have to be mixed with care or else they are totally overpowered.

Since I painted the colour circles I get back to them again and again for reference. So the time was very well spent.

 

Extra activity: Making a colour circle with found objects

	I assembled this only recently, much later than painting the colour circles. It was a lot of fun! I collected a lot of photographs, painted a few colours and used a blue bag, a green oven cloth and a few real vegetables, nuts and fruit, among those a rotten apple. All this is spread on my kitchen table.

Collage of details in my sketchbook page 21

 

Chapter 2: More Colours

 

Activity 2.1: Use complementary colours to paint patterns

+ Extra Activity

	My first template (see above) is the shape of a bell pepper. On page 13 and 15 I left a lot of space around the shapes. I made another template of an onion and painted on an A3 watercolour sheet, using tints and shades as well (see left page 14 + 15).

Painting these shapes reminded me of filling in shapes in painting books as a child. I did not have to worry about “getting it right”, but could concentrate on the colours. A very meditative experience, I liked it a lot. It also took quite a lot of time, more than I had expected. I always set down painting as fast work in contrast to time-consuming textile work, but I find I am mistaken. 

 

Activity 2.2: Optical colour mixing

 

	The effect of this exercise, the optical colour mixing,  is much more pronounced in the scan than on the actual page. I love the spacial effect of the grid variations in the pepper shapes.
	On the next page I tried the colour mixing effect with an even smaller grid and different colours. The onion shapes on the right belong to the next activity , the blue-violet to blue-green wedge in the cool gouache colour wheel.

 

Activity 2.3: Use analogous colours to paint harmonious patterns

 

This is the red-violet  to red-orange in the warm gouache colour wheel.  I also used tints and shades. On the right I mixed a little black into a tint and a little white into a shade. The colours get more grey and lose contrast.

 

Extra acitivity: Overlapping shapes and grid in complementary and analogous colours

	My bell pepper shape in complementary colours with tints and shades. I like the contrast between the larger areas of colour and the delicate curves of the stem.
	In analogous colours, also with tints and shades. I overlapped the pepper shapes more to break up the rectangles, but now I find it looks almost too regular.

This is a fun exercise! There are details which make me think of knitting or cross stitch.  I already went over the two pages with a frame viewer to isolate interesting areas. A red to violet colourway would also be nice to try out. And – and – and …

Chapter 10: Resolved samples

But first a rest of chapter 9, woven paper designs.

 

After feeling very much at a dead end when posting my last entry I decided - with the help of Sians feedback - to have another go at paper weaving without even looking at the photo. And it worked. I realize now that I had been looking backwards to the starting point of the whole creative journey when I should have looked at what I had in hand and where it pointed to.

In the second of these two final paper weavings I aimed at more irregularity, variety and a sense of movement. My first choice, the image on page  56,  still appeals to me (and I intend to do a sample based on it later on outside of this project), but for the resolved samples I chose this section:

I like the colours and the open spaces and the torn edges of the paper.

 

Chapter 10: Resolved samples

 

a) using stitchery

Preparations: I took dark blue hessian as stitching ground. It provides a grid but is more bumpy and irregular than canvas, also softer. Recently I got aquainted with needle felting. I enjoy it very much as a means of drawing on cloth.

The delicate lines between the stones had interested me when I worked on the shape studies. They kept coming back to me. So I tried to include them into the resolved sample by using needle felting.

 

That’s me stitching away. My friend Eva took the photographs.

Under the table you see my “yellow” drawer. It is a part of an old library catalogue case that stores my embroidery threads.

My finished sample. I concentrated on building up coloured and textured areas. I thought that additional features like working on several layers of fabric, transparency etc. would cram in too much.

	Work in progress: The first layer has been stitched in bulky threads: wool, cotton and tubular knitting yarn. I have begun to add the second layer. The stitches are mostly variations of cross stitches, plus chain stitch, cretan stitch, darning and the preparation for raised chain stitch on the left.
	More layers are worked in Danish flower thread, embroidery cotton, sewing thread, sometimes with several threads in the needle, altering texture and colour. When stitching I noticed I used the thread more like a pencil making a mark and all but forgot about a definite stitch. For the white felted lines I used wool fibres picked loose from a handspun knitting yarn. On the left is a view of the back side.

A few details of the finished piece. Size: 8,8 x 7,2 inches Cost: 3,25 € for hessian Time for stitching: about 10 hours

The sample fulfils my expectations for colours and texture,  I like the distribution of warm and cool colours, light and dark.  The materials work well, and I am glad I decided to use hessian as the fabric to work on as it allowed me more freedom in stitching than canvas. I might have used a wider range of threads, including material like plastic, raffia etc, and might also have varied the size of the stitches more to get more contrasting textures. But still I like the finished piece.

Next time I would attach several pieces of hessian to a loosely woven background fabric with more open spaces between them and try to express the ragged edges with stitching.

 

b) resolved sample, taken from the same area of the woven paper design, using any skill I might already have

Design source: I like the open space. So I chose a part of my  design for the second sample, with the window as a more prominent feature and placed it at a different angle. I hope this is still in keeping with the assignment.

The choice of a method was more difficult. I have done a lot of knitting, so I did this little piece for fun, aiming for a less than perfect look.

 

A look at both sides. The knit side conveys a sense of movement with the linear texture of the stitches, it looks as if they are whirling around the window – which turned out to be smaller than I had wanted it to be. The purl side suggests a more gritty texture. Size: 7,2 x 6,4 inches, stretched on kebap sticks.

Machine stitching has always appealed to me, but I have little experience. Still I decided to have a go and did a few trials in preparation.

 

I darned and stitched five strips of different fabrics with simple machine stitches: curtain fabric and net (both on water soluble fabric to make stitching easier), hessian and canvas.

	I was pleased with the stitched strips. But when it came to putting them together I did not want to repeat the arrangement of the paper weaving and began to move them about. I ended up with this  geometric arrangement. I put the strips on a piece of painted canvas and added lines in running stitch.
	The finished sample has a background of heavy watercolour paper painted with black acrylic. I painted the unstitched canvas with acrylic, gel medium and pastel and added a few stitched lines in grey.
	Size of the whole piece: 15,2 x 12,8 inches Cost: none Time for stitching, colouring etc: about 8 hours

 

A few details:

Left: stitched lines on the canvas and across the painted canvas (dark grey). Below left: the window. I cut away the canvas behind it. Below: I painted the curtain fabric with silk dye (should be fixed with steam), but did not fix it. When I washed out the water soluble fabric the whole stitchery was dyed! First I wanted to make a new piece, but I came to like it and only added a little stitching and darning.

A photograph of the whole piece – it could only be scanned in two parts.

The sample turned out quite differently from what I had planned – although I must admit that I did not plan very much beyond the paper weaving and the idea of machine stitching. The element of surprise was very exciting. Yet I think that ideas I found interesting in the design are expressed in the sample. There is a sense of stability in the densely stitched pieces and the geometric arrangement, but the lines make for a sense of movement from on edge to the other and across the window. I like the loose threads across the window and around the stitched pieces.

I could not say what I would do differently next time, but the sample itself and the work I put into it suggest further exploration. For instance add pieces of coloured fabric to the initial darning or instead of it, explore my “accident” with the silk dye – I am sure there is a lot more.

 

Looking back to chapter 7: the extra texture sample mounted on a piece of fine wire mesh. And the sample in sunlight and shadow.

 

 

Finally: my sketchbook. 70 pages full  of surprising ideas – if someone had told me in advance “You will make this” I would not have thought it possible. A wonderful product of the great experience this module has been for me. Thanks a lot, Sian!