Magnolias and New Work

Late July/Early August is still quite cold here - well cold for Berry, and especially so this year … yet the garden is starting to stir and that sense of the seasons changing is tangible.

The days are lengthening and the fat buds of the Magnolia’s in my garden are opening with masses of pale pink flowers.

It’s not a long lasting display, especially if winds or rains arrive but it is spectacular … and it fills me with hope!

I am just starting on a new set of stretched canvases so how could I resist starting the canvases with Magnolia’s!

Some blind contour drawing (concentrating on the subject and not what is happening on the surface!) using charcoal and then a little of the dreamy pink! Most of this will be hidden as the work develops.

There will be more drawing at the later stages using water colour pencils.

The finished works will be abstract but I hope they will feel like a late winters day with the warmth of the soft pinks, hinting at what is to come.

To help keep freshness in the work I have decided to limit the number of layers, it is so easy to think I’ll just add a little more pink here or change that shape a little which inevitably means that something else needs to change! …. this way I’ll stop and let it be …..

And that is where I’m at …. liking this piece and the direction of this work …. there will be more to come!

Thanks for reading, I appreciate your time and support ….. CC

Soft pink winter buds

Petals scattered by the wind

So it begins!

Always

Experimenting with Leaves and Landscapes

This last week I have been playing with ideas for my Leaf Series,  in part prompted by the drawing class challenge I shared last week (I'll show you how I'm going at the end of this post).

Decided to try combining a simple landscape with one of my favorite leaf designs and to make the leaves using a 2 step reverse applique to give a line effect.  I wasn't altogether satisfied with the result.  I think it would have worked better if I had used a darker tone for the line element?

This seemed like a good opportunity to try our another idea for adding a dimensional effect, by using what I might describe as free form applique.  In this case I stitched the leaf shapes to the piece along the vein lines so the edges are free to lift and curl.  

I have also been adding some hand stitching for texture to complement the machine quilting which is less dense than my usual style (the hand stitching is  nice work to do in front of the fire on these chilly evenings!!)

And now in a completely different style .... I've added another layer of dark tone to the drawing class challenge piece from last week.   I've used "shards" of dark turquoise silk and covered the piece with some wedding tule to keep it in place. 

I'm still playing with it and there is still the stitching to be added .... what do you think.... an improvement????

Thanks for reading ......CC

A New Sort of Inspiration!

As part of  drawing class,  we went to view the 'Now Contemporary Exhibition'  at the Shoalhaven Art Gallery a couple of weeks ago .... our task was to pick one of the artworks and write a review. The challenge was then to develop an art work.  The brief was to .....

 "Consider the formal aspects of the art work, how elements and principles were used to make the work, in your own response, make a work that has been guided in some significant way by the study you have undertaken.   The work you make can be any subject, size, material, technique and approach you choose"

So I've been working on this project for the last couple of weeks ....  I chose an abstract painting 'Untitled' by Sivan Agam in blues and greens which has a wonderful sense of depth .. made me think of mangroves ...  so I decided to make a work inspired by the value placement  to see if I could achieve a similar sense of depth.

 I also wanted to try out using some silk in this project ....

Here's a photo of the original inspiration painting  and where I'm up to with my piece .... just the first stage ...  more work and stitching to do yet!! 

It certainly is a challenging exercise ... I'll post a photo when finished!!  

Thanks for reading ....CC

A Question of Background ....

The most recent pieces in my Grevillea series have used strip pieced backgrounds ... a mix of hand dyed and hand printed fabrics to add some variation.  

This approach worked nicely but what if I 'push the boundaries'  a bit ...

Artists often create compositions from small areas of detail in a drawing or painting, scaling up the size to create and new composition.  We used this approach in my weekly drawing class recently.  

We started with a still life drawing and then using a small area of detail from that drawing created a new composition and then added tone and color ......

From one of my Grevillea drawings I made a number of detail sketches looking for compositions with 5 to 7 shapes.  I picked  3 to try out and made them up this week .....

I'm pleased with the way they look ... the shapes and the color combinations.  The plan is to stitch my Grevillea flower drawing onto these backgrounds ... so I'll need to work out the color and weight of thread and the best way to place and mark the design.   

I'm hesitating a little bit about the stitching so I keep telling myself I can always make a new background piece if I mess it up!!!!  

I'll let you know how I get on......

Thanks for reading  .....CC

"Draw" Exhibition Invitation

The drawing class I go to is having an end of year exhibition at the local Regional Gallery.   We've started planning and getting our work ready .... a great learning experience for me.

I volunteered to put together an Invitation/Flyer for the group.  This week,  I worked out 4 designs/layouts and the class members voted .... 

This is the design that they chose.....

I am very happy that my teacher is going to let me include my Mangroves textile piece in the exhibition ... it was inspired by trip the class made to the Mangrove walk at Huskisson  and the drawing work  we did.

It will be fun seeing how it all comes together .....

Thanks for dropping by .....  CC

Translation to Fabric

Its the end of Term 3 of drawing class and I've been looking over the work we did.  

Two classes stand out because they lots of fun and because I am thinking the approaches used could translate into fabric and make very interesting backgrounds

The first involved an excursion to a local creek and walking track ....

.....  here we collected natural materials from around the site .... grasses, bark, twigs, stones and seedpods ..... whatever took our attention and these were laid on our paper ... to act as natural stencils.  We sprinkled them with graphite powder and then sprayed with acrylic inks and then left them to dry before drawing the landscape using just charcoal and sanguine.

This dual connection between the found materials and the landscape produced some lovely results.  Here is my effort .. doesn't look too much like the actual landscape!!! 

The second class that offered  translation potential involved 4 panels and 4 compositions made up of shapes and inspired by  foliage of our choice .

Each panel had to work as a composition as did the combined panels.  

Dark and light tones were added and then combinations of color to provide the mid tones.

This process produced some very interesting abstract compositions that seem to have the potential to translate easily into fabric.

I  chose Magnolia leaves for the foliage and was very pleased with the composition of shapes in the 4 panels.  Here is my work so far..... although not happy with the colors however I can see potential ....

I'm keen to try some more  combinations and variations of tone and color and over the break  will experiment with these ideas and see where it leads....... 

Collage Possibilities

I often use a collage type technique to make my art works,  cutting shapes and fusing them in place,  but as I discovered this week, collage can be so much more! 

Wikipedia defines collage (from the French:  coller "to glue")  as a technique where an artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms to create a new whole.  At last weeks drawing class we made 5 quick drawings of coats, shawls and draped fabric forms,  some using ink with a calligraphy brush and one using a permanent marker, to create a set of source material.

Our task .... to tear or cut up these drawings to create a new work with a variety of tone, shape, texture and line.  Here is my effort   .....

This was a very fun project and the results so different from the subject of the source material. The process was to start by gluing down a couple of torn  pieces and then seeing what was needed without any image or specific content in mind ..... very liberating!  

Now I'm contemplating how I could  use this type of process in my textile art ... and  it seems it might offer some interesting possibilities for my recent monoprints .....

Drawing the Mangroves!

For last weeks drawing class we took a trip to Jervis Bay and to the board walk at the Maritime Museum.  This was a first for me ... the board walk winds it's way out through the mangroves at the edge of the bay ... its like entering another world, quiet and a little mysterious with wonderful reflections on the water and yet looking down you can see the mangrove shoots, the currents of water as the tides change and even the odd fish!  It was so easy to loose track of time sitting on the boardwalk sketching .....

The project for the day was to try and capture the feeling of the mangroves.  We started with a pale wash over gesso and then added some quick sketches of the mangroves with sgrafitto and wax followed by another wash thrown over the work ... good fun!!   This provided the background for a more drawing.  Here is my piece .... I've  started on a sketch of a mangrove branch and it's reflection in the water .... 

While there is a lot more work to do on this drawing, I am intrigued by these ideas and how I might translate them into fabric!  I'll let you know how I get on ....

Color Wheels ....

We  painted a color wheel in art class this week ... a first for me.  I've dyed a fabric color wheel but that was more of a formula type exercise .... mixing the paint colors is much more of a challenge!   Color is such a big subject and while I've covered the basics a number of times in various classes,  there is nothing like the practical application and actually mixing the colors.... 

As well as the color wheel we also painted a 7 step value scale and chroma (intensity) scales ....  I have done these with dyes too but mixing the paint was great fun although I'm still not much good at painting between the lines!

We learnt to describe color in terms of hue, tone chroma/intensity, value and temperature and our homework is to use these characteristics to analyse its use in an artwork  !!

So now I'm looking for some good study references on color.....