Thursday, December 10, 2009

November ATC swop


Another varied group of ATCs arrived this week from the November "Tis the Season" swop on Facebook. I was especially pleased with the reference to the Archers in one as I am a hopeless addict. The organiser Sue has posted pictures of all of them on her blog Crafters Corner so you can still see the ones I made.

Module 3 Chapter 9 Continued

This next batch of work is all about enlarging and taking sections of the drawings to come up with new designs. When I looked again at the drawings, they reminded me of some images from my module 1 sketchbooks, the first is a newspaper advertisment and the second one of my photographs of electricity pylons. (I always think these coils make them look as if they are wearing dangly earrings) so I have included them for reference.


Above - the couched gold threads could represent the lines of pipes, and the drawn lines in gold pen (on the A4 sheet in previous post) could be sets of wires. Below - similar spirals.

Third Stage and Fourth Stages - Take A Long Thin Portion

First I took slices from a photograph of the 2 drawings and original image at different sizes.

Then I took a close up of a small portion and printed an enlargement (by printing on A4 sheets and taping them together). This is roughly 25 by 30 inches - to show the scale there is a 10p coin (1 inch) on the bottom left corner.


I then cut this into strips and played with different combinations.

I like this second one - possibly enlarge to make a set of hangings?

Or this could be a single very long hanging - floor to ceiling.

I also thought about vessel shapes. After a bit of folding, looking and muttering, I decided that because the design is busy, it would need a simple, clean shape. I taped 3 of the sections into a triangular arrangement - if I were making this, I would probably make the body in the black and blues/mauves and have the gold lines represented by something wrapped around the vessel (eg wire, stiff cords).


Stage 5 Take An Extremely Small Portion
For this I took some even more close-up photos of the A4 drawing.

I chose the second one and enlarged and printed it as before, this time on 9 sheets of A4. At this magnification, it shows some lovely scrunchy textures from the pastel marks and the pen lines look like thick, glittering cords.

Here it is with the original so you see just how much bigger it is. I didn't think to mark it when I took the picture, but the spirals in the enlargement are the tiny ones immediately to the left of the small portion stuck onto the a4 design.

And finally, I cut it into squares and rearranged them to make 4 linked designs.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Module 3 Chapter 9 - First stages.

For this design exercise, I chose to use a fragment taken from a photo of one of my module 2 metal thread samples (above left, it is the top sample in the sketchbook). The sample is very small so the photo already enlarges it. Above right shows my first try at continuing the design onto A4 paper and below is the second. Both used oil pastels and the second used gold pen.

I used the second design to take it to the next stage, changing to Markel sticks to make larger marks and reflect the texture of the original stitching. The blues/purples on black relate back to the colour scheme used in my research project in module 1. The photo below shows the fragment placed on the A4 sheet which is on top of the larger design.

Making Christmas Shopping Fun...


...by buying lovely handmade things. The insect lavender bags came from Fig in Bristol and the brooches and books are from Jackie Cardy's Etsy shop. If you haven't already found it, take a look at Jackie's blog DogDaisyChains to see more of her work and better photos - lush. Now to figure out who gets what. Hmm, one for you and one for me, one for you and one for me...