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

Monoprints in Green

This week I've been concentrating on two things ....

Completing  the stitching on a pair of small monoprints in green .....

 I'm really pleased with the subtle quality of these prints and I'm enjoying the stitching!  

The second focus for this week was the opening of our drawing class exhibition today .....  I helped with the hanging of the exhibition yesterday and was very interested to see how our class teacher,  an exhibiting artist herself,  approached this task.  There was a wide variety of art works to hang and the end result is a terrific display and it all came together very nicely ... here are a couple of photo's from the day .....

So its been a good week.  Thanks for dropping by ..............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 .....