Working With Metaphor

Remember this piece?  I talked about how it developed here and here

It's called Spear.  I talked with my friend Ann Godridge about its meaning.  My original intention was to create a semi abstract tree, with a leaf shape and a rectangular shape that didn't seem to have any meaning at all.  And yet it ended up feeling as if it was a spear and a shield.  I talked about how that seemed important to me, because I felt I needed some sort of defense, mainly against the attitudes of other people towards my illness.  It's not easy, having a physical illness that is dismissed as 'all in your head'.  Or when friends disappear, for whatever reason, other than the illness.  Or when I become invisible in a wheelchair.  It all hurts, and I need some sort of defense against that pain, until I get used to it all, grow a thicker skin, get used to having no friends other than the virtual ones.

I think this is the ideal example of an experimental piece turning into an expressive piece.  Playing about with those elements in an experimental way produced an unexpected depth of meaning which pleases me, and helps me to understand things better.  So I started to play around with the spear and the shield, with the intention of making a series of linocuts.  I recently bought a load of softcut, expecting to teach a workshop which was cancelled under me,  so I had a lot of 'stuff' to use, and the shapes of both spear and shield seemed to lend themselves to linocut.  So... here are three variants on this theme :

I could have made the leaf/shield shapes solid, but chose to work them as if I was making a stencil.  I think it will add a little visual interest.  I think the triangles within the leaf shapes might be too solid, but I won't really know that until I cut them, or possibly until I actually print with them.  I think it's important to remember that I'm not making prints as prints.  Rather, I'm making prints as a base for stitch.  The stitch will ultimately be more important than the print, so I want to make sure that there's plenty of room for it, and also that no single element of the print will dominate the piece.  There's a danger of that with these triangles, so it's something to watch.

I had a hospital appointment, so that was the ideal opportunity to sketch some more.  I said that I don't usually use sketchbooks to develop work, but linocut is a definite exception.  This sketchbook is exactly the same size as my blocks, so working out how the different elements will combine is useful.  I find that marks on softcut don't erase all that well, so I like to work things out properly before I mark the design. 

I think I like the bottom one better...the top one may prove to be a little cluttered.  Nonetheless, when I've got the size of the shields right, it will probably feel more balanced (one side is clearly larger than the other). 

These sketches aren't perfect; I didn't have a ruler with me, so the division across the blocks is approximate, for example, not to mention the wonky spears...  I also discovered that it's not easy to draw in a wheelchair, even in a hardback journal; no flat surface.  At home, I have my legs up on a footstool, which makes them level; they are on a slant in the wheelchair.  Don't think there's anything I can do about that, other than work in a smaller journal, which would be easier to handle.  Lugging a work board around really isn't an option....but I digress.

You can see how straightforward it is to take a couple of elements and combine them in different ways to make different images.  I have at least one other to try out.  I did have a day of panic when I couldn't find my lino cutters, which, unlike the missing felting needles, would have been expensive to replace (they're professional quality, as I really couldn't get on with the wee cheap red handled things).  Fortunately, though, I found them this morning, in just the place I thought of at three o'clock this morning....insomnia has to be useful for something.

So...more development and some cutting.  Wish me luck.

Developing Ideas.

I said yesterday I'd talk about how I might use some of the images I took at Callender Park, so I'm going to talk about two of them, specifically.  The first is a rhododendron; there were a lot of rhododendron bushes, and a happy family clustered in front of them, so I couldn't take a range of photographs as  I would otherwise have done.  I did, however, get up close and personal with this one, at the end of the group.

This is the photograph I took, uncropped, au naturel, as it were.  I like the colours, the variation, the texture implied in those petals.  I thought it might be fun to tweak the image a bit...so...

Loud, man, loud!  I wanted to take a look at the way the colour is grouped, so fiddled a bit with the settings, to produce this... I rather like it, though I could live without the white, and could have done something about it, I suppose, but given this is a reference photograph, I let it be.  Besides, I love the semi abstract shapes that are suggested around those white patches.  It would be interesting to do a monoprint based on these shapes, or possibly an applique.  Finally,

Looks very similar to the first one, except... I've fiddled around with the colour intensity and the amount of contrast, to show up the texture a bit more.  Again, the shapes of the flowers are shown quite clearly in this image, good for applique reference, or painting, for that matter.  Flowers change almost moment to moment, so drawing from reference photographs seems a reasonable thing to do.

My eye was caught by lots of things in the park; the second one I'll discuss here, is a section of the wall of the main house.

This was cropped from one of the images I took yesterday.  I didn't particularly want to get up close and personal, so it was taken from a distance; often I'll photograph individual stones, or groups of stones, if I find them interesting.  I've always been interested in stone walls; that interest grew in Norfolk, with the incredible flint buildings there (I've talked about them on this blog before).  I like the variation in colour, texture and shape in this.  I photographed it because it struck me that it would make an interesting basis for a quilt.

So, once more, I played around with this image, cropping it again and playing with the intensity of the colour.  

Not a lot to choose between the two images, but when you look at this third one...

There's a distinct difference; much stronger colours, more contrast.  What this exercise has done for me, is to suggest how a series of quilts might develop 'about' walls.  I've never been interested in brick walls, because of their regular nature (the reason I don't make patchwork quilts is my dislike of regular pattern).  Taking a wall like this one as a template of sorts for a series of pieces, but varying types of fabric and gradually turning up the visual volume, as I've done in these photographs, would be an interesting way of exploring this form, as well as providing a challenge.  A bit like a crazy quilt, but in a far more regular form.

Will I ever get round to either of these possibilities, or any of the others I found at Callendar Park?  I don't know, to be honest.  My energy is limited, and there are plenty more ideas where they came from... I'll talk about choosing an idea to work with, tomorrow.

Changing My Mind, or Stitch Changes Everything.

So... remember that red velvet piece?  Yes, this one...

Remember I said that this was it?  Reader, I was wrong.  And why was that?  Well... it was stitch.  Stitch changes everything.  I started to assemble the piece, as you do, with that top left lutradur element.  It said, I want irregular stitches....and that's what it got...

And what's more, I liked it.  Most of the other elements, however, Just Didn't Fit.  Sigh.  So... I came up with this. 

I'm still using some of the elements from the last version, but somewhat adjusted, with that leaf or blade type motif added at the top of the long vertical, one of the shorter verticals removed, and a second, larger blade or leaf on the bottom left.  It now has a completely different feel.  And then I added stitch, which was the point at which I contemplated giving up...

...more random stitch, including a couple of renegade French Knots.  I always struggle with them, and whilst I think they add something, I'm not sure why I bothered, given the fuss and the time it took to do what really ought to be a totally simple stitch.  I'm contemplating some beads in that upper section, but that may continue to be a contemplation...not sure if I know where my beads actually are at present...sigh.

This looks better in real life, I have to say, but I'm still not convinced that it's anything more than a sketch.  Not a bad sketch, you understand; I feel that the tree/spear thing (I'm pretty sure it's a tree, in my head, but there is a definite reference to spears going on in there somewhere) is worth developing further.  I've always had a thing about trees...but that's another conversation entirely. 

So...what do you think?  Was it worth the effort? 

Odds And Sods.

So...despite saying I wouldn't work on this stuff, yesterday, I did, nonetheless, splitting it up into groups that looked as if they would work together.  All in all, I got roughly half a dozen different things to work on, with quite a lot left over to play with.  This is the first piece, and it has two different options.  The base is a piece of hand dyed red cotton velvet. 

The first option, as you can see, takes a small piece of brown hand dyed linen, slightly frayed round the edges, and a piece of yarn.  It looks to me like a kite, flying in a red sky, but it feels a bit clunky.  The brown is somehow too solid... I could cut a square out in the centre, which would lighten it somewhat, or put something semi transparent on top of it, probably lutradur, but even with stitch, I still think it's not quite right.

So, moving swiftly on...here's option two.

Two pieces of lutradur, over a narrow offcut of evolon.  Looking at it, my immediate feeling is that the evolon is too heavy, and needs to be narrowed down, or possibly replaced with a piece of darker yarn; come to think of it, it might be better to replace it with lutradur.  The lower piece of lutradur, though, is interesting, because it is actually two pieces, stitched together, as you can see here:

I wanted to see what happened when two semi transparent pieces were combined; this was the outcome.  My original thought was to use them for a brooch, but I think they work quite nicely here.  I think this second option is the basis of my first little piece of work from the odds and sods I showed you, though clearly the centre piece needs to be rethought.  It's not quite as white as it looks here, more of a creamy beige, but it is just a shade too heavy... no time to work on it now, though.  As well as changing that central column, I'll want to add quite a bit of hand stitch around the figure, but not on it; I'll fuse it down using bondaweb, I would think.  

More tomorrow.

Carrying Further On...

...with the felted piece I showed you here.  Reader, I succumbed.  I did not wait to find the box of felting needles I know is somewhere around in the rest of the stuff...rather, I bought another box of felting needles.  Only three, admittedly.  I'm hopeful that this will be the only duplicate I have to buy...sigh. 

So, today, I did some further work on the piece. 

To me, it's a huge improvement on what it was.  I rather like it, though I don't think it's finished.  It reflects the kind of work that you might see in my sketchbooks, these constant curves.  I've been drawing like this since my teens, but up until now it has very rarely ever put in an appearance in my textile work.  I think that needs to change.  

The curves are partly designed to reflect the curves in the felted wool, but also reflect the machine stitching already in the piece.  Here are a couple of close ups, as the general views don't really show you the stitch, in light and dark metallic threads.  

Looking at these, the stitching also reflects my drawings.  I've said for years that stitch to me is about drawing, about mark making, rather than about creating pattern.  And yet, there's pattern here.  Something to think about; but first, I need to think about how I'm going to develop this piece further.  

Sketchy Patterns

So...I said yesterday that this was calling my name... 

By lunchtime, it was a dull roar...so I thought I'd do some sketching.  What's interesting me are the curves in the central part of the image, so I thought I'd play about with those today.  What they suggested to me was a repeating pattern...it could be for fabric, or even for a patchwork block, were I to be so inclined (let's face it, I've not been so inclined for about thirty years, but hey, you never know...).  These days, repeating patterns are doubtless created using computers, but when I learned, it was still a pencil and paper job, so until I teach myself how to do this on the computer, I'll be playing with my sketchbook.  Besides, how often do you get to look at bad drawing... 

The really interesting thing about a repeating pattern is not so much the centre of the pattern, but rather the edges; how does the pattern integrate when you repeat it?  A repeating pattern succeeds or fails on that basis....so... here's the first draft.

You should be able to see quite clearly how the shapes on the initial photograph have translated into the sketch.  From the centre, where I've changed the anther into a heart shape, looking upwards, you can see the main shapes from the photograph, and those are mirrored on the way down.  I've then repeated the curving shape from top and bottom, on the sides, and filled in the space in the sides by repeating that same curving shape, and added some leaf shapes.  And...it doesn't work.  Too long and thin, making the whole thing feel unbalanced.  So, next came this... 

This time, I've actually measured the page size, and used a ruler (yes, shock horror...but you know I can't draw a straight line, even with a ruler, sigh...), so that I can have some sort of idea as to the balance.  I've taken the areas I'm sure about, but this time, I've echoed the entire structure of the top and bottom, to the sides.  This confirms my earlier suspicion, that I really want this pattern to be a square, not a rectangle, but I've got enough imagination to allow myself to continue as it is, for now.  The four dots in the centre, however, probably want to turn into smaller, floating leaves, but that's a minor detail.  I've also varied the size of the dots on the areas that, come to think of it, look like vases, just to give a bit more visual interest.  I'm a lot happier with that, and now start wondering what to do with the remaining corner areas...those circles I've lightly drawn in aren't doing anything for it, so I need to come up with something else.  

This is better.  Not hugely, admittedly, but it has potential.  The leaf shapes have turned into semi abstract flower shapes, reminiscent of magnolias, or tulips at a pinch.  They need to have more detail, certainly, but this is much closer to what I had in mind.  Now, I need to rake out a few larger pieces of paper, and I also need to reflect on the centre, now, which is diminished by the rest of it.  That may take a while, given the state of my workroom...but at least the idea has some flesh to it now.