Album/Journal

At the end of September we were so lucky to have a warm and sunny week in Swanage in Dorset, warm enough to swim in the sea and to take a trip on the steam train to visit Corfe Castle.

  I took quite a few pictures of the holes in walls, gaps to look through and old window casements.  I have put some of these through apps on the ipad and then am gradually adding them to a sort of album/journal. Drawing on and around the photos is influenced by Lisa Congdon’s line drawing and the work of Duane Michals.

Starting some sort of journal like this is highly to be recommended, you can doodle in it when you have a ‘down’ time or just feel stuck and it really is therapeutic. Don't forget that you are able to click on the images to see them in more detail.

Reading

I am currently reading two books, one is ‘Playing with Sketches’ by Whitney Sherman; it flew into my inbox in one of those cleverly timed emails, those that come before you are thoroughly awake, from Amazon which are so hard to resist. I am pleased I did not, as it is a book full of ‘drawing callisthenics’, new ideas and links to the work of those who have contributed to the book. I thoroughly enjoy books like this which are so packed with ideas that they are an exciting read.

The other book is ‘Mark-making in Textile Art’ by Helen Parrott; I managed to get this book by ordering from my local library, although it involved a long wait. It is a well presented book, with some pages showing textures and colours which are lovely. On the whole I would recommend it as an interesting read, but am pleased not to have bought it as I don’t think it is a book that I would keep going back to, but it may be a good one if you are starting to gather ideas for how to collect and use marks in your textile art. I liked some of her ideas for using straight stitch and reef knots as marks. I am working on finishing a few pieces which have literally been hanging around and I tried out her idea for radiant stitch and knots on my black and white waxed and discharged piece.

I have been taking some square photos to make some new cards using Moo.

I hope you have a few good books to read, a pleasure hard to outdo; perhaps leave a note with your suggestions, textile or fiction.

Play time.

My month’s subscription to Creative Bug is about to come to an end; I have enjoyed playing along with a few of the workshops and have discovered some interesting artists, including Lisa Congdon , Jody Alexander, and Courtney Cerruti.    I didn't find any difficulty in unsubscribing and will keep a look out for any workshops which may tempt me to dip in again. I particularly like the sets for the videos and on their blog there is a section describing how they are set up. The only problem I had was that there seem to be some bugs in the Ipad app, which is awkward to use and does not have some of the features that were available when I logged in on my PC.

I never thought I would be interested in having a go at Iris Folding but apparently it was initially done with the security paper from inside envelopes and started in Holland; with the addition of old book pages it appeals to my liking for recycling.

I posted on the Sketchbook Challenge blog some altered photos I worked on following the line drawing workshop.

I had a go at packaging tape transfer using some magazine pages and an illustration from an old book, and combined these in a page of collage. So plenty of playtime.

Finished

These days I find that I need some incentive to finish a piece of work and now that these two pieces have found a home I have found the energy to complete them.

If you like the artwork visit  HERE where you can view more of my son's work.

This piece I visualized hanging horizontally but it will be hung vertically so I added some more lines of stitching, although I prefer it my way!