Mon 25^th – Fri 29^th Sept, 2017

                For the past week I have had a large focus on digital drawing. It isn’t something I attempted over the summer, and since I enjoy doing it, I thought I would come back to it. However rather than refer back to something I am comfortable with I tried to venture out and adapt it to something that is quite new for me. This began with mark making motifs and compositional drawing (as opposed to patterns). In my PDP with Lesley, she appreciated that you could tell my drawings of flowers had come from the real thing so this is something I would like to extend and work on since I am also beginning to get sick of looking at my current motifs. She also suggested that I begin to unpick my digital drawings to develop them more into qualities of weave e.g. warp – And start to think about the qualities of yarn. These are things that are fairly new to me this year since I now need to be much more selective and decisive of what I am going to weave. As daunting as that sounds I know it will help to develop my practice and I hope it’s a skill that develops well over the new couple of years.

 

 

                Considering these points, I began with working on warp ideas. The paint stripes created from my drawings do look good and represent the drawings well, however I am concerned about how overpowering they may be. I have previously worked with both a busy warp and a much more neutral one and I found I preferred the latter. Nevertheless, I would also like to create checks. This caused a problem. So far, the solution I have come up with is to have changed in colour in my warp but in very subtle shades. I would also like to create something quite mesh like which will require very thin yarn, which I will probably need to outsource.

 

                I have also since returned to digital drawing from the beginning of the week to create more repetitive patterns. This is to give me an idea of what kind of patterns I could make on the loom and hopefully having more visual representations in front of me will help guide me to the next stage of the weave process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RHS Tatton Flower Show

                Prior to the Tatton Flower Show I had already established colour schemes, but completely changed my mind (and am still continuing to do so) after seeing what the artists were producing. There was a strong sense of rust and wood mixed with other warm tones. I found that I preferred these colours and so changed my colour palette.

My colour scheme has since changed and developed even after the show but I think I may have swayed too far away from it and need to bring back some more of those rusty elements. The geometric shapes that were in the show gardens were also very interesting. The buildings were strong and structured with an industrial, contemporary element.

 

 

Summer Work, May 2017 – September 2017

                Over summer, beginning this project with only ‘Floral Geometrics’ to work with was more challenging than I initially thought. This is due to how literal it is. I have always struggled with thinking in ways that aren’t literal and so decided to work in baby steps and start where I knew I didn’t want to end up. My first thought was to do with tattoos, since I have a floral tattoo myself and had considered having geometrics combined. Unfortunately this didn’t provide me with much inspiration to work with so I quickly moved into paint which I don’t normally use. I also had the idea of using acetate quite early on because of its transparent nature which I decided to continue to use in other ways to link with floral geometry. These worked quite well and I continued to use it throughout my drawing.

                One floral geometric artist stood out more to me than the others – even though the idea I had from her was very small. Julia Wright uses lots of floral geometrics in her work but I used her for reasons not to do with her usual practice of jewellery; but photography. The raindrops in the photographs were so perfectly formed that I found a new way to bring geometric shapes into my floral drawings, while also venturing into mark making (which is another area where I struggle).

 

                I think a common theme with my summer work was trying to develop areas that I enjoy but struggle with. It was something I wanted to do while I had the opportunity of only focusing on drawing.