Learning Log: Assignment 1: Building a Visual Vocabulary ; Drawing

PROJECT 1 : Making Marks

Where I'm at...

I have enjoyed exploring the different ways of making marks and was reasonably inventive.

Regarding my output, I'm not sure that my drawings are particularly expressive.
I have little confidence in my drawing ability and while in theory I appreciate the emphasis is on observing and capturing a response, in practice, I stray back to trying to depict rather than express that response.

But I do see this first project as a chink opened in a doorway...I'm not in yet, but the view is tantalising.
I will need to experiment and practice constantly to become confident in expressing myself and plan to set aside time for this as I work through the course. First step is to work through some of the techniques in "An Introduction to Mixed Media"  , which came through from the library this week.

I also appreciate that strength in this area will hugely inform my future textile work in terms of being able to capture and then effectively express my response to things.

Find it's taking me longer than the guide times to get through the material. That's fine -am happy to put in the time needed to get a good foundation.

Finally, very happy to have finished my first project... more confident now stepping up to the next one.

How it went...
I enjoyed looking at the work of some artists in terms of the variety of marks they made.

Van Gogh used strong swirling looped marks to great effect in" Cornfield and Cypresses"
 Paul Klee used scratchy thin lines, almost scraffito -like in "Fish Magic", Picasso's horse in "Guernica" is a medly of marks, while Rousseaus "The Snake Charmer" is a symphony of different textures.

At the beginning of Stage 2 - Making Marks in an Expressive Way, I found it difficult to vary my marks and many of the results looked similar.










I was happier playing with the different materials in Ex 3

Overall I felt I got best results from exercise 4 where I was able to experiment with a wide range of media and methods
I particularly liked the rubbings using bleach on tissue paper and the collage.

I do find that I tend to use the same few favourites eg watercolour pencils and wax pastels and will need to stretch myself to experiment more.

I was looking forward to starting Stage 3 - Using Marks to Create Surface Textiles
In general I got most enjoyment out of making marks in relation to the objects ..as most of them had emotional significance for me and I enjoyed trying to represent that.
Found I was more rational in how I tackled the visual sources.
In responding to the words, tended to take the word as a command - "fast" meant I drew fast etc

Two exceptions to the above

• got completely bogged down trying to represent the surface of a block of wood from the garden...still haven't cracked it despite numerous attempts. Will have another go later using collagraphy
• one of the visual images - burren rocks -had particular resonance as it was from a card I had sent to my mum who died 2 years ago and I seemed to respond differently to that than to the other visuals.

Really enjoyed using the viewing frame, both to help highlight interesting surface textures and to go deeper.

Favourite media: like mixed media best - gives me a chance to build up the texture so what I draw comes closer to what I wanted to express. Like using crayons, watercolour pencils, water soluble wax pastels acrylics and bleach. Particularly liked using resist techniques, collage and frottage.

PROJECT 2 : Developing Marks into Stitching and Making Textures.

Really enjoyed the weeks doing this project though progress was slow - not a proficient stitcher so working through took longer than guideline times. Have gotten a bit faster and expect this will improve with practice.

Used the suggested stitches from the manual and others (scroll, coral, feather, detached and twisted chain) from The Practical Encylopedia of Sewing - Dorothy Wood : the embroidery section has really good diagrams/ photos which show how to do a wide range of stitches. Tempted to try out all sorts but found I need to get confident using the core group first and can expand to more unusual stitches later.

Went through the first four chapters of Stitch Magic by Jan Beany and Jean Littlejohn. I found this great for showing how the stitches can be used creatively. It has great illustrations of stitches being used as marks to create fabulous textures and also gives good detail on the ground being used.. My favourites were generally multi-layered eg a piece by Valerie Quay which has rich sumptuous tones highlighted by detatched chain or a piece by Jean Littlejohn which uses "distorted bullion knots.. on a cotton ground with acrylic painted bondaweb ..to evoke a seascape" In both cases I like how there are restful areas and how the texture is heightened as you move down the pieces.

I'm happy with the progress I've made and feel I got more confident as I worked through the assignments: Stages 2 and 3 were painfully laborious whereas Stages 5 and 6 were much more fun.
I was happier working with stitch than I was with the drawing in Project 1, but this was probably because I had the source material from the Project 1 to work from and also I love stitch being used in textiles and found that practising the stitches made me think more about the types of marks and how to represent them.

I found stages 2 and 5 great in that they made me put in the time to explore the line and texture stitches and build confidence in using them. Because I'm so slow, these took much longer than I thought they would to do and I sometimes I got impatient to move onto the more expressive work.

Samples
Loved doing the samples at stages 3, 5 and 6 and feel they worked better in their own right as I went along - the Stage 3 sample is pretty meaningless without the drawing, the others stand up better.

I enjoyed using both stitch and yarns to create texture, but found them very different:

• Stage 5 : Using stitch was a much slower build especially as I chose to use white voile as the ground, but it was very satisfying to see the textures build according to the stitches used - eg cretan overlaid on herringbone and blanket stitch. I'd like the piece to have more impact , but don't know how to bring it out more.
• Stage 6 : Using yarns was more dramatic. I used a variety - torn fabrics, paper from flower arrangements, sewing, embroidery and knitting yarns, angelina strips, metallic threads. I had great fun with this and think the sample has more energy and impact, though it is more pictorial and I hope that's not a problem. I did find I tended to be too timid with the stitching....what looked bold up close had little impact at arms length, so I had to do a number of runs at it. I also think I should have put more areas of contrast in the upper third. Better next time.

In all cases, I had decided in advance on stitches and yarns to use to develop the drawing, but found I added to these as the work progressed.
I enjoyed working from the drawings for inspiration and found it stimulating to try to interpret rather than slavishly reproduce the drawings.

I'd like to experiment with more layered and textured grounds and also try some machine stitch samples ...

I tried a small bit of machine stitching but machine is old and soon ground to a halt. I used straight, zig zag and some decorative stitches but plan to do much more over the coming weeks. Bought a book to help (Beginners Guide to Machine Embroidery - Pam Watts) and bought a new Singer machine - a special today in LIDL today ! - which can do free stitching.

Other

Reading
I've started The New Textiles by Chloe Colchester. Enjoying her matter of fact treatment of the subject and intrigued by the openly female perspective. I'm on the Textile Design section, where most of the text is at the beginning, with the illustrations grouped from p 41 to 104. Will have to go through it a few times as most of the names are new to me and also need to work out which illustrations can be found where. Also will need to summarise what I've learnt as it's easy to read passively when studying on my own.

Also bought a book to help me with sketch book / mark making..as I'm struggling a bit here. It's called Drawn to Stitch by Gwen Hedley and I'll be using sections of it over the coming weeks.

Tutors Report