Chapter 5 & 6: Samples from your observational recordings

and a little more besides …

 

Chapter 5: Teach yourself some canvas stitches, covering small areas to see what they will look like in repeat.

I had bought Margaret Rivers' book „Working on Canvas“ and took the book, a piece of canvas size A5 (16 holes per inch) and a couple of threads in several colours with me on holiday. Keeping my old father company in front of the TV gave me enough time to try out a couple of stitches. The colours were chosen with the photograph of my wall and my colour studies in view. With the dark negative forms of my wall in mind I thought a dark background best for the sample and had painted the canvas with acrylics. I found that handling the piece during stitching rubbed off the paint a little, resulting in a mottled effect which relates to the stone surface.

 

I found the many variations of cross stitch most interesting, worked with soft threads that cover the ground evenly or with threads like linen that have a mind of their own.
Different degrees of transparency emerged when I worked with one or two thin threads. I like the combination of darning, tent stitch and more raised stitches on the lower right on page 39 a lot. The dull cotton and linen threads are more suited to the stones than the shiny cotton threads.

 

 

Back at home I read the instructions in the Taster Module again and found that I should have chosen one colour. As I had really enjoyed the stitching I prepared another piece of canvas and tried a variety of cross stitches and some others with off-white and greyish threads, bleached and unbleached linen and cotton weft threads, handspun silk,  a 4-ply viscose knitting yarn, a fluffy viscose knitting yarn,  cotton perle, chenille and handspun wool .

 

My chief aim was to cover areas rather than look at individual stitches, and I found it interesting to layer stitches, like herringbone stitch on tent stitch. The dark  background shows even through densely stitched areas and emphasizes the relief. The threads I had chosen worked well except for the 4-ply knitting yarn which wanted to unravel in all directions during stitching. The linen threads have a stiffness that relates well to the stones, they give a little irregularity to the stitched surface. The shiny threads like cotton perle make for a softer surface and catch the light nicely.

My canvas is rather fine, so I cut every other thread in the square below to the right for working with bulkier threads. A stubble of cut canvas remains in the holes and tends to fray the threads. It works however for a small area with short lengths of threads.

 

Chapter 6: A sample in one stitch, worked in small areas in many different threads in one colour

I decided to stay with my chosen colour range of natural off-white threads and choose oblong cross stitch for this sample. I also used the same canvas with 16 holes per inch, painted greenish-grey with acrylics.

I had looked around for canvas of a larger gauge, but shops of this kind have become very scarce. Ordering from the internet is of course possible but I decided against it as I only needed small pieces – and I also liked the stitching on the fine canvas and wanted to combine a smaller and larger gauge in one piece.

I crocheted a small piece of „canvas“ and, for a second alternative, took a piece of potato net. I painted both pieces with acrylics, which also stiffened the fabric a little and made stitching easier. Both pieces were easy to work with and easy on the threads. 

This is the crocheted piece, made with a size 12 crocheting hook and MEZ 40 thread. It is about 3,5 x 2,1 inches in size and has 8 holes per inch.  I used several woollen threads, chenille, raffia, a short strip of cut organdy which came apart after a few stitches and cut strips of a plastic bag which I like very much. They give quite a different character to the stitches. The raffia is also lovely, especially the French knots in the lower left corner, stiff and full of edges. I used Rhodes stitch to build up the bulky threads to a really high relief, also satin stitch and fly stitch. 

 

The potato net is 4 x 3,5 inches in size and also has about 8 holes per inch, but the grid is slanted, which makes for interesting shifts in direction. It needs a firm frame, so I inserted it in canvas with tent stitch, cross stitch and herringbone stitch.

I used mostly the same threads as in the crocheted net, but added handspun linen and especially a fine variety of cord for wrapping parcels. I tried some Rhodes stitches with that, and it is so stiff that it builds a structure of its own on the soft ground. Another direction for further experiment!

 

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In between I did a few things on the side to give myself a rest from stitching.

The shapes of the stones still intrigued me and I wanted to stay with them a little longer.

1. I tore pieces from an old calendar and arranged them on dark paper. Afterwards I overlaid them with two layers of light grey organdy to mute the strong colours a little. The organdy makes for a wavelike sheen over the whole piece. I laid an enlarged copy of page 26 of my sketchbook over the piece and stitched the lines on the machine with zigzag stitch. Finally I tore the paper away between the stitched lines. Two different recordings of the wall are combined here, but in my opinion it is not successfull. When I look at the piece I keep switching between the lower and the upper layer.

   
   

   	I chose the colours to echo the colours of the stones and paid attention to the edges. The torn edges from the machine  stitchery add to these white traces. size: about A4

   
   Later I played with the scanned image on the computer and got some interesting results.
   
   

   The third image reminds me of an illustration for a fantasy novel but I do not remember which.

   
    

2. I wanted to explore the edges of the stones a bit more. I tore an acrylic-painted sheet of paper to bits, taking care to leave broad edges of torn white paper. The bits were glued like jigsaw pieces to form the shapes of the stones in a chosen area of the photograph. I followed the structure of the stones whenever possible. I worked over the glued page with watercolour to soak the torn edges within the stones and applied several layers of white and coloured pastels to emphasize the texture.
   
   

3. With the reverse image of one of my tracings before me ( sketchbook page 26 in my former post)  I applied bleach to an old piece of cotton fabric in broader or finer strokes, trying to recapture the striped effect.  I tore the fabric to stripes, rearranged them and ironed them on bondaweb. I like the frayed edges with their thin threads spreading out. I have put it away for now and intend to come back to it later on.
   
   

   	I used the nozzle of the pipette to apply the bleach. The effect took a few minutes to show, then the lines and blotches spread out. For the fine lines I tried a glass nib and found it worked very well. It moves smoothly over the fabric and leaves fine scratches.

A small piece was stitched with contrasting threads to give crispness to the smooth fabric. I also tried textile pastels on it and added it to my colour studies (page 32 b).

Finally I reassembled my sketchbook. The book was spiral-bound and had become so bulky with all the material that I could hardly turn the pages any more, although I had already taken out a couple of sheets for more space – and the stitch samples were still to be added. So I removed the spiral and glued two strong strips of paper to each page, made holes and now keep the pages together with a ribbon. This way the book can take in as much as I want to, I can add pages anywhere I like, and it opens easily. That is how it looks like now.

 

 

And here my little helper. I am always working under supervision .

 

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Chapter 6 continued:

I chose oblong cross stitch to try out, using cotton and linen weft threads, machine sewing silk, metal embroidery thread, cotton perle, knit tube, handspun silk and linen, raffia, wrapping thread, plastic strips, Danish flower thread, knitting cotton/linen yarn.

	I worked in regular rows horizontally and vertically. The vertical rows are more brick-like. The stitch also lends itself well  to lines and irregular areas. I like the lacy texture of the metal thread. I liked the backside of the regular stitching on the left so much (see photograph below) that I worked the stitch backside up (middle right).
	It took me some time to figure out the logic of that.
	I also tried half Rhodes stitch. Here again the stiff parcel cord gives a very  interesting result.

Trying to figure out  the ways of working oblong cross stitch backside in front on paper. I found two ways to do it with very different results.

Chapter 4: Shape observations

 

The task is to explore the shapes of the wall with ripped or cut paper shapes in contrasting colours or black and white.

The photograph of my wall compared to page 36 in my sketchbook with cut paper shapes. I used acryl coloured paper on a ground with a pastel tint. It took me some time to get the size of the stones approximately right – a very good exercise!  

 

The gaps show a nice geometry of triangles in various shapes – a pattern using these shapes comes to my mind.

On page 38 I assembled shapes I had torn by hand. The result is less accurate but in a way it feels closer to the wall. I like the rough edges of the torn shapes.

 

In both studies the large quiet areas contrast with the areas where the stones are broken into smaller pieces, although this contrast is clearer in the study with the cut paper. I think this gives a good idea for the strip weaving in chapter 9.

 

Page 37: Again I asked myself if the same information could not be got by using the computer. So I reduced the colours to almost black and white and reversed them. Fine lines and textures appear in the gaps and connect the stones. Otherwise the visual information on the shapes is similar, but by doing it by hand I have come to know them much better than if I had only looked at them. Some of the leftovers from the torn sheet were just too delightful to throw away!

Chapter 3: Make a colour study of your wall

 

I played a little with colour before, but now the task is to record the colours of the stones as accurately as possible with any paints, crayons and pencils available.

 

First I made a list of my materials. I did not want to use everything on that list or tick it off. The idea was rather not to forget anything. Perhaps this list will grow … In the end I found I used the paints I am most comfortable with, as I had to squeeze the work into small amounts of time. Otherwise I might have been more adventurous.

Page 32 upper part: Pencils, partly water soluble, cross-hatched and overlayed

Page 32 a: Soft pastels worked in layers. I like the areas where the colour blend into each other. Lower part – soft pastels and watercolour layered, with hard pastels and pencils on top

 

Page 33: Layers of soft pastel and acryl gel on grey paper. The dark edge helps to enhance the light colours. The paper has a fine stripey texture. The piece makes me think of long stitches in close shades of colours combined with strips of transparent fabrics.

 

Page 34 Watercolour/ oil pastel / watercolour, suggesting layers of threads

Watercolour / water soluble wax crayons

The numbers on the pages refer to the stones (the tracing on page 15) – it helped me not to get lost among the many colours and shades.  

Page 35: I used this sheet as a notepad to try out colours.  As I said above, I might have been more adventurous combining paints. Still I think there is plenty to work with here. I am a little surprised that the colours are for the most part light and delicate.

Chapter Two continued

 

After three weeks holiday I am now back to my wall, posting the work I did before I left.

The task in chapter two is: Record your observation of the wall. I did that while taking the photographs, so I now have a lot of rubbings in my sketchbook from pieces of wall I did not choose to work with.

First there is a look back to page 5 & 6 of my sketchbook with a little drawing added of the prints left by fossils in the stone.

I used conté pastel in two colours. I find the marks interesting, but the stones do not offer the material I need for this project. I included them – like everything from page 1 to page 8 – because I like them and for other ideas they might spark off.

 

Here on page 9 is the piece of wall I finally chose for further study.

I like the irregular shapes of the stones, the interesting spaces between them and the lovely colours. The stones also have distinct surfaces and little features like the break lines on the right or the grey-white streak in the middle one. This photo has been taken in full sunlight (and I have manipulated the colours perhaps a little too much).

Rather than manipulate the photo further I took another photograph in cloudy weather. Fortunately I could keep the camera still and have a much sharper shot now.

The colours are more subtle here, lovely shades of grey, grey-blue, rust, ochre, lavender, dark blue and more. The spaces between the stones are more than just negative spaces.There is colour and texture fading back into the dark. I like the idea of translating this into stitchery.

I took rubbings from some of the individual stones with tissue paper and a 6 B graphite mine. I used a lot of pressure and rubbed intensely in an attempt to feel the texture of the stones through the paper. The result is very detailed, sometimes too dense, like the one on page 12 below.  

Page 10 - 14 The result is very detailed and sometimes too dense, for instance on page 12. My favourites are page 11 for the suggestions of stripes in various textures, and 14 for the many little circles appearing in the rubbing.

I traced the negative spaces from the photograph to sandwich paper and numbered the stones (page 15 upper).This was not yet intended as shape observation but as a way of keeping order.

The print with the tonal reduction done on the computer (page 15 lower) was made for comparison – do I have to do it all by hand? It seems so.

Another little sidetrack on page 16 lower: The print gave me the idea to spread viridian ink and a layer of black oil pastel over a ground of reddish and brown wax crayons and scrape the layers away. The viridian ink was not a good idea.

Page 17 + 18: One of the initial rubbings of “my wall”, done in black an silver wax crayons. The marks are loose and airy in comparison to the graphite rubbings. I could not resist the temptation to flood it with watercolour.

My wall in clouded weather with torn leftovers from papers I had coloured for further work (see pages 29 to 31 below).

First rubbing done in conté crayon on copy paper.

Page 21 + 22

I was curious to explore the texture caught in the graphite rubbings (this one from page 14) a little more. So I made enlarged fotocopies. I coated a sheet of drawing paper with black oil colour, placed a blank sheet of slightly lighter drawing paper on it and the copies on top. I traced the features that seemed important to me with a ballpoint pen. The lines of oil colour (page 21) are a bit blurred and have a textural feel.

While doing this the zigzag motion of my hand reminded me of a sewing machine doing zigzag stitch. Perhaps an idea for machine stitching on soluble fabric?

 

Page 23 – left A copy of page 21, the little circles were burned with a soldering iron. The sheet was washed with water soluble graphite. Page 24: I intended the coloured paper as a background for the piece on page 23, but there was not enough contrast.

 

Page 25 + 26: Same method, tracing over oil-coloured paper, done with the blunt edge of a bone folder and the rounded tip of a brush. Both were taken from the rubbing on page 11. I like the suggestion of stripes in different textures.

 

Following Sians suggestions I worked with rubbings on coloured papers. (I should have read the instructions in the module more carefully!)

 

Page 28 + 28 a: Rubbing taken with transparent oil pastel washed with watercolour on copy paper

 

Page 29 + 29 a: On acryl coloured tissue paper (feels very interesting, thin and supple but resilient), made with a wax crayon using very light pressure.

 

Page 30: Wax crayon on acryl coloured wrapping paper which was already rather crumpled, giving additional texture.

 

Page 31: Definitely the last rubbing! Done on acryl coloured copy paper with a fresh wax pastel stick which gives off colour generously. The marks look like eddies in water, separated by quiet spaces.

I spent a lot of time working with the rubbings and exploring the texture. It was a lot of fun, also the experiments helped me to clarify my ideas of what I could use for further work in the module.

Still I could have saved time, I think, with a little organisation. It might have been useful for instance to make a list of suitable colours and papers. I will try to keep that in mind when starting to work with colours in the next chapter.

And: read the module carefully – read the module carefully – to be repeated.