The Oa

Wit ha forecast of drizzle coming in for the afternoon we headed down to the Oa...

Some very placid Highland Cattle....

Less so when you have a dog and there are calves ....

After giving the cattle a wide berth ...cracking views ...

..and zooming in to the Golden Eagle.

Super Goats ...and below..

The American Monument.

A spectacular coast. 

Cuckoo and Whinchat.

View from the Singing Sands on the way back....

Shelley Rhodes workshop

What a great couple of days! As part of Context (Contemporary Textiles) we were lucky enough to have Shelley Rhodes run a two day 'Fragmentation and Repair' workshop. 

Unusually for me, I didn't make a record and take photos of everything I did, as I wanted to emmerse myself in the process ....I now come to write it up and can I remember everything we did? That'll be a no...

But here's what I can remember. We started off discussing the ways that you can manipulate fabric and paper and then made a series of samples where we chose contrasting values eg light and dark and joined them together in different ways. Other sample pieces were created and Shelly kindly showed us examples of her original works. 

For our final project, we painted a piece of calico with gesso and then used one of our samples as a design source, colouring the calico. I used acrylic inks and Inktense pencils. I then tore up and recombined the pieces of fabric in a different order - added hand stitiching and machine stitching. To be honest I didn't like the result - it was far to fussy and detailed, so I cut it up into inch squares. These were then dipped in paraffin wax and arranged as below - now we were getting somewhere! Each one is a small piece in it's own right and could be used for painting , collagraph or textile inspiration. The parallels with Anita Reynold's abstracting the Landscape course that I did ages ago, were clear. So the photos below are of the finished piece - unless I move things around again! 

Absracting Norfolk!

So I started off gelli printing and get a couple of what I would regard as good images...and several not so good. I took one 'not so good' and rolled acryllic paint on it, added oil pastel, and some ink. I then put a masking tape grid on top of it and added more ink before removing the grid and cutting out the blocks ...I like some of them ...what to do next is the question! 

The starting point ...

The final piece before chopping up...

Some of the cut up blocks - and below ...

High Pike - Abstract gelli printing

Taking the photographs from the previous blog, I began to experiment with my gelli plate - first on paper and then fabric - to be honest it was hard work - out of my comfort zone and as always you have to work through the feeling of wanting to give up the idea as the first few prints were rubbish! They did though provide paper for collaging, which infact I found most useful as they may form the basis of a quilted piece...I then photographed them and have printed a couple onto fabric which I put through my home printer - we'll see how that develops as an idea too. 

Collaged ...

...and printed onto fabric ...

 

Pushing myself!

 I'm trying to develop ideas towards a piece of work - I have no idea what form the work will take, but it is going to be loosely based on Carrock Fell. So I started by playing around with manipuating photographs - this led me to find the three things I tend to focus on are - the iconic silhouette of the fell; the rare  'Thamnolia' lichen click here for more information - otherwise known as the white-worm lichen; and frost covered Nardus grass.  This then led me into a printing session - using a gelli plate - that will form  the next blog....where that then leads me - who knows? 

Sketching icebergs (1)

Well this is a challenge - I thought I'd research sketches of ice and the arctic prior to our 'big' holiday later in the year. To be honest I haven't found many images I like or aspire too as I don't want to do anything too representational. These are my first attemps - based on images from when we were in Iceland. A good critic pointed out that I had to decide if I was concentrating on patterns or realism - typically I want to do both - so I shall keep battling on! The artists I find most inspiring for this are Lizzy Myhill and Sandra Meech (so far - more research required) ...as I say there's a lot of room for improvement - but here are a couple of sketches and bits of sketches using oil pastel and watercolour. I've put a label on the blog as abstracting the landscape course - although the course finished ages ago I need now to apply those ideas.