Themed Sketchbook for Final Project

The brief for the final project is to produce a series of four prints, of at least A3 size including the borders, based on a theme. I have chosen butterflies, inspired by my local area. I have a hut on Portland Bill close to a butterfly and moth conservation area, and we are getting to the time of year when my eyes will be constantly on the lookout as I walk. A friend has also given me a collection of ephemera used by an entomologist in the 1950s, together with a couple of beautiful lunar moths.

As a starting point, my preferred approach is to start with a themed sketchbook. I start by researching the work of other artists, and general sketches based loosely around the theme before formulating my ideas into more of a plan. A few pages of my little book are dedicated to Warhol, Hirst, Escher and Whistler. Damien Hirst is well known for using butterflies in a number of works, and he has also collaborated with Alexander McQueen on a redesign of his skull scarves as anniversary limited editions. I won’t go too much into the details of my research here, as I have already written in my sketchbook, and don’t want to duplicate work. I have also looked at vintage cocktail trays, which were decorated with real butterfly wings arranged under glass.

Having looked at lots of images of tessellated butterflies by Hirst and Escher, I started arranging diecut butterflies on coloured paper. I tried a less rigid design using colours from a Hirst piece.

 

The waste paper was looking just as interesting as the butterfly shapes, which led to this page arranged with tissue paper. It has started to look like a woven fabric – a design that I may wish to develop in another module.

 

 

A church in the nearby village of Moreton has etched glass windows by Whistler. One is a memorial to a war pilot, and has butterflies prominent in the design.  This is a sketch of detail from that window.

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Having drawn this negative image in pencil, I then drew a positive pencil image, and a number of other sketches in various media.

 

I took inspiration from various sources including the aforementioned collection, stamps and grocers collectors cards.

Thinking more about butterfly collecting, I made this sketch.

 

Amongst the grocers cards, I found a picture of a ‘map’ butterfly. I had an idea incorporating the map of the fields where my hut is situated. It is quite often that you see artworks with butterflies cut from maps. Perhaps an unusual paper for chine colle or a base paper?

 

This page was thinking more about chine colle possibilities. It is a pleasing looking page in itself, with echoes back to Warhol.

I saw a blouse with a heavily patterned design of overlapping butterflies that inspired this page.

There are lots of ideas here that could take me in a number of different directions.

India Themed Sketchbook

A moleskine watercolour sketchbook accompanied me on my recent travels to Jaipur. I spent some time prepping pages before I went, had chance to do a few sketches in the evenings whilst I was away, and have continued to work in it since my return, inspired by the many photographs and samples that I brought home. Here are a selection of pages from the sketchbook. I am finally feeling more confident in my drawing, although the odd mistake is still creeping in (such as the windows on the perspective sketch of the factory floor). I am pleased with the varied techniques and subject matter, from textures and colour to illustration and simply recording blocks from the block factory. I particularly enjoyed using the natural dyes at the woodblock factory to colour a couple of pages. The colours are so rich.

 

Clothing factory

Another day, another factory. We visited another printing factory, which was a contrast to the others demonstrating the difference between Sanganer and Bagru styles of block print designs. I was excited by the bright and bold colour combinations, and the very fashionable motif designs. I bought a lovely print with a small motif repeat, and contrasting kantha stitching in diamonds between the motifs. Fabric was available to buy in bundles sufficient to make up a tunic, trousers and a matching crepe scarf. The fabric for the tunics had a trim machine sewn for the neckline, and any extra detailing such as the kantha stitching was in the shape of the front and back pieces.

One thing that was particularly interesting was the block printing of a garment part way through construction, using newsprint as a mask. This avoided awkward placement of designs on the torso, and allowed complex construction with fluidity of pattern across the garment.

The pattern cutting was clever, keeping the arms and body as a single piece to avoid the tricky balancing of the shoulders.

This machinist was sewing edgings freehand in a number of ornate designs. I thought the padding and covering of the machine arm with the needle poking through was a good idea, protecting the work.

During our trip, as a group we decided to make a book for Jamie, who organised the holiday. We each had a page to work with. Below is my contribution, a sketch based on our experiences so far. I used some blocks bought in Sanganer, and a base of torn local newspaper layered with white acrylic paint. Colour was added with watercolour washes and Inktense pencils. I titled it ‘The Spirit of Recycling” which seemed appropriate given our visit to the paper factory. I was also reminded of the layers of torn posters on the walls of the streets visible in most places around the city.

iPad Sketching

After a discussion on a Facebook group page for OCA students to share their sketch work, I decided to look some more at drawing apps for the iPad. I have had Paper 53 for a while, which is good for watercolour effects. I invested a whole 69p in ArtSet, and have been pleasantly surprised with the results.  There are a choice of colour and texture papers, and materials including oil pastel, oils, marker, and pencil. There are also various blending options. I hae a Wacom Bamboo stylus, but have had some good results using my finger alone. In the art world, the iPad has had exposure as a drawing and painting tool, particularly thanks to David Hockney.

Here are a couple of quick sketch studies I have made of my cats. As I hope is obvious, they have very different characters, and was pleased with the feeling of each sketch. The first cat is black, which based the decision to make most of the marks in the negative space.

Blind Contour Sketching

To improve my drawing, I have invested in Mack Maslen’s book on Experimental Drawing, which includes a number of exercises as well as examples of artists work. A number of the exercises are variations on the theme of blind contour drawing, where the drawing is made without looking at what you are drawing, but rather the subject you are looking at or feeling. I have done a few of these, and moved onto to starting the sketch in this manner, and refining or highlighting details at the end. Below is a sketch I made in the pub (hence it is on the back of a quiz sheet with other doodles infringing on the border!) and another of a dressmaking model in my basement. I like the free quality of the drawings, and think the portrait worked particularly well. I struggle with noses, and approaching the nose as a contour map was effective. I was also particularly pleased with the ears and hair, that were all drawn blind.

Final Textured Monoprint

I have continued to work in my little sketchbook, which has taken on a rather nautical theme, with most of my work based on Chatham Dockyard and my weekly walks on Portland.

For this final print, I thought I would work from an idea based on HMS Gannet at Chatham. I had started looking at the patterns caused by oxidisation of copper on the hull, and in later sketches combined this with silhouettes of windows and fixtures in other parts of the dockyard.

I come up with an idea for a composition, and did a couple of goauche sketches to make final decisions on placement and proportion of the elements. I then made a couple of small test prints of the techniques I hoped to use to see how it looked. Here they are posted onto my pinboard.

I am using a textured heavy watercolour paper with deckled edge for this print, as I felt the added texture would be interesting, and convey a feeling of rust and weathering. The turquoise and a lighter shade were brushed onto the glass plate with the brushstrokes all in the same direction mirroring the watermarks on the boat. This was then overprinted with a layer of burnt sienna, which was rolled thinly onto the glass and manipulated with a credit card-type piece of plastic. The texture of the paper meant that parts of the print were more sparsely printed in turqouise, allowing the red tones of the burnt sienna shine through. I enjoyed the contrast of turqouise with it’s near-opposite reddish-brown, and the interaction between the two when layered.

The black circles were printed onto the glass plate with a jam jar lid, and transferred onto the paper. I then inked up the plate in a very thin triangle of black, and used backdrawing for the chains.

Overall, I am pleased with this piece and think that the composition works well. It felt quite brave leaving such a large area white, but I think it balances with the heavily coloured and textured element. The high contrast between the colours also works against the black and white, with few grey tones. I can’t decide whether I was disappointed with the turquoise ink bleeding to the left of the print. Part of me likes to embrace it as part of the fun of monoprinting as opposed to more precise disciplines like block printing.

Sketchbook

I made a start on some landscape sketches from some of my photo collection in my usual way on loose leaves of A5. I was pretty disappointed with the results, and not really happy with any of them enough to post pictures here. My way of working has been to sketch and rework sketches multiple times, and collect loose leaf sketches together to bind them in broadly themed sketchbooks later. Part of the reason I have always done this is a fear of working directly in a book and ruining it as an object with less successful work. I feel that now is the time to take some risks and enliven my work. My other problem haas been that the sketches lacked depth, and I felt that my use of light and shadow was very limited.

I have been contributing to a small group of OCA students on a closed Facebook group for sharing multimedia sketchbook ideas. Via this group, I was directed to some useful resources and ideas on starting a sketchbook. I also had some sage advice from my mother that a less successful page can always be painted over in white or collaged over. I have made a small A6 hardback sketchbook with 40 pages. I started to alter some of the pages by a variety of techniques including collage with thin paint over the top, pasting in pages of various textures, and washes with diluted inks.

I also read “Keys to Painting Light and Shadow” edited by Rachel Rubin Wolf (1999 North Light Books, Ohio USA) which focussed on principles of reflected light, frontlighting versus backlighting, and how to approach a sketch by simplifying the light and dark families in the composition and connecting areas of similar tone. This has the effect of creating a more organised and flowing piece. The suggested approach is to do a block sketch of light and dark areas, arrange elements with sketch lines, fill in the lights and refine the details.

Studio Space

I have had a bit of a break from blogging whilst our basement was converted for use as my art studio. I’m delighted to say that it is now finished, and I have felt very inspired when down there. We hae rigged it with daylight bulbs and lamps, and the results are really good. I have covered most of the wall facing my work table with self-adhesive cork tiles, and am getting in the habit of pinning my most successful sketches and inspiring images and colour bags.  Here are a few pictures. The photo of my sketches looks a little washed out due to the flash on my camera. I couldn’t keep stiill enough without!

I have spent the last couple of weeks concentrating on my sketchbook having posted off assignment 4 for tutor feedback. I got that back this week and feel encouraged by her comments. The criticisms of my final project are bang-on and I feel invigorated to develop it further.

This weekend was the Knitting and Stitching Show a Alexandra Palace, which as well as an opportunity to bolster my stash, filled me with inspiration from looking a some of the work on show. I also had a really useful and interesting conversation with OCA tutor Pat Hodson about my current project and the course in general.

In other extremely exciting news…. I am going to Jaipur on a textiles holiday with Colouricious!! I’ll be travelling with a friend, and we will be going December 2013. Plenty of time to get prepared!

Neocolor II Watersoluble Wax Pastels

This week I have been experimenting with a new medium, and I think I have a new favourite! In my handbag, I carry a travel watercolour set and some oil pastels. I am not overly comfortable with watercolours, but do find the results really pleasing when I do get it right, and the ability to layer can be really useful. It is als easier to work with ink pen over the top which is a technique I enjoy. I like the strong likes acheivable with oil pastels and the intensity of colour, but find they can be quite messy and difficult to blend when away from home. At home they are great used with Zest-it, but I the results can still be quite thick and unwieldy.

I therefore decided to buy a small box of Neocolor II watersoluble crayons. I have discovered that they can be used on wet or dry, used as a watercolour wash and make really good monoprints.

I ook this photo of an aquilegia flower at our allotment, and tried a few sketches based on it. I tried drawing on wet  and dry, and applying brushed water over the top of dry marks.

In this sketch, the yellow flower outline was drawn in oil pastel, then the blue watersoluble crayon drawn on top. Water was washed over the top, and when wet the orange and yellow marks added with watersoluble crayon.

I wanted to explore the crayon used for monoprinting, and by applying a wet page to the dry drawing, a really faithful mirror image can be produced, leaving the original fairly intact. I moved this on by applying the technique to a folded page. In this sketch, the original is on the left, the right was washed with water and folded over. Extra lines were then drawn over the wet paper on both sides.

For this sketch, I used a card stencil which I drew over with the crayon before applying to the page (ie covering the uncut areas). I then applied the stencil to the page and brushed water from the stencil to the open areas. The resulting stencilled image was quite soft, with a strong line marking where the edge of the stencil was. For me it looked similar to an aquatint etching. I then drew into the wet page, rewet, blotted with kitchen paper and redrew in sequence until I was satisfied. I worked this sketch a few times to get the shape right. The final sketch is being gifted to a friend as a greeting card, but I have several similar sketches as a result.The green marks are reflecting the flight path of a swallow.

Bauhaus

I have been reading ‘Bauhaus Weimar: Designs for the Future’ edited by Michael Siebenbrodt (Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000), learning more about the teaching techniques and ethos of the Bauhaus school of art. Amongst others, Klee, Kandinsky and Itten taught the basics of mark making, colour theory and design, followed by workshops in architecture, weaving, bookbinding, ceramics, sculpture, theatre production and dance. I have been looking particularly at Klee’s colour theory and Itten’s textural studies in mark making, rhythms in line and principles of design. The main thing that I have taken from it for this project is that areas of interest in a composition usually involve high contrast, and that contrast need not just be tonal, but also in colour, shapes and quality of line. In Klee’s students work contrast is created by juxtaposing the three primary colours, with more muted hues used in other areas. Effective use of contrast in composition is well illustrated by this colour study ‘Ancient Harmony, 1925 (no 236)’ by Klee.

Reproduced courtesy of Bridgeman Education

I thought I would look at tonal contrast by redrawing one of my watercolour and ink sketches in graphite on A3 paper.

I have used repeated shapes and similar rhythms in the lines throughout the composition to hold it together. Using a combination of building and blending layers of graphite and erasing lines I have created varying levels of contrast throughout. I think the result is very satisfying and it would be interesting to develop it further by creating a colour version.