I finally managed to upload my photos of Portugal to Flickr. We had a lovely time in Aveiro staying with Palexa and she took us to some beautiful places. Some of the photos are mine and some are by Alan. I tend to focus on details and he on vistas but occasionally it’s the other way round… Looking at them makes me want to be there again! Such wonderful sun and light. Thanks Palexa for lending us your camera 🙂
The last week has been mad, work-wise, so not much happening, art-wise. I worked in my sketchbook a little, and got round to watching a very interesting ITV1 programme – Harry Potter: The Costume Drama. Ben Shephard was talking to a range of people in the wardrobe department about the way they created the costumes for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They even have a ‘breakdown department’ where people spend their whole working day distressing the garments after they’ve been made or bought. Why did no-one ever tell you about that kind of job at school?
I was particularly struck by the head of the wardrobe department, Jany Temime, and her approach – how the costumes themselves contribute to the acting – fascinating. She also said – never let your ideas be constrained by what’s practical – you can always find a way to do it. Though I’m not quite sure this can be extended to everyday wearable art (the really wearable kind, I mean) since she also said later on that many of the costumes can’t be washed (they make several of each instead)!
[Here I edited this post to delete a link relating to the programme, for copyright reasons.]Part of my work week was setting up a gallery for all the entries to a competition run annually by the UK Embroiderers’ Guild for its members. The 2007 theme was Water, and the brief was to create an original design, primarily hand stitched, though the work could include any technique. Working with all those lovely watery images was very soothing… If you’d like to immerse yourself – the gallery’s on the Embroiderers’ Guild web site.
I’ve been painting some colour wheels for OCA Textiles 1 – they didn’t turn out quite as I expected, though. I was using Brusho inks and I don’t know if it was the way I mixed them but the lemon and the golden yellow were so similar in hue that I didn’t get all the variations I was expecting. I’ll have another go with some gouache paints. Then I spent a bit of time mixing tints and tones in acrylics and experimenting with mixing in touches of a complementary colour. I could do this kind of thing all day long – I just love it.
I’ve also been painting silk organza and pongee for my appliqué hanging for City and Guilds – one piece of each in reds, one in greens and one in purples. These are fronts and backs to go with these felts. The next stage is to machine quilt the three layers, incorporating shadow applique, then cut back into it to expose some of the felt. The organza will be the top layer.
I found this picture on the camera as well – it’s the sky from my office window, one evening a few weeks ago when it wasn’t quite as wet as today!
I was really interested to read an article on whipup about morsbags – ‘sociable. guerilla. bagging’ – it looks like a brilliant way to reduce the use of plastic bags, make a statement and have some fun.
the idea is to get together with people in your local community, drink wine and make reusable cloth bags (from old duvet covers, curtains from charity shops etc) and hand them out to the unsuspecting public for free on specified dates outside different supermarkets.
It’s a funky web site too! Now I just need some more time….
We got back from Portugal late on Saturday, and I spent Sunday packing up my first assignment to post for OCA Textiles 1 – it took ages to label everything and write an evaluation of each project completed so far. The writing is much harder than the art work! I don’t think I’m keeping enough information in my logbook – which is partly this blog – I need to review the books I’ve been reading and get better at annotating my samples as I go along.
These are the last couple of pieces I did to explore texture in stitch. In the first one I was trying out different ways of stitching with tension adjustments to create contrasts of texture. It looks a bit like an allotment, though that was unintentional - it’s interesting how the work sometimes goes in a direction all of its own.
The other sample is intended to show proportions of colour and texture using different yarns, and is based on a drawing I did using a feather and Brusho inks. I like the way the colours turned out but it’s not very feathery!
Although my camera wasn’t working, I managed to take a few pictures in Portugal on my friend’s camera (where they still are). I’ll upload some of them as soon as I get them.
A lot of work seems to have mounted up while I was away so I’m playing catch up before plunging back into the quilting. I’ve got a couple of packages of silk to paint and dye – so I hope the sun will still be shining in a couple of days’ time!