Textiles: Week 2, Sketchbook

This week we were looking at the industry of textiles, which not only involves fabrics, but also wall paper, furniture and any surface which has texture or pattern.

Trying different ways to use our materials, to get different qualities to the line they created. Here I am using pencil, pen, Soft Pastel and orange, blue and brown ink on sticks as well as brushes. The sticks in particular were difficult to work with because they held very little ink, so you couldn't do long continuous line with them, and the ink often dripped onto the rest of the page.

We began by looking at still life's which were set up in the room. We used these to create a composition, again  working on the qualities of the lines we produced as much as the objects themselves. Initially we focused on pencil for these drawings.

Once we had a feel for the still life, we began to add colour; to add texture and blocks of colour.  The emphasis here was not exactly what we saw in front of us, but the general idea of the view: the colours, shapes and objects, they didn't have to be portrayed the exact way that we saw them, so that we could make our composition as interesting as possible.

We also made 'grounds' which we then worked on top of from envelopes, newspaper and lines paper, using masking tape to ensure everything laid flat. These pieces were very interesting because of the way that the different surfaces took the materials in different ways, making it darker, or lighter in different areas.

 We also looked at several textile artists during this week. I looked at 4: Timorous Beasties, Claire Coles, Donna Wilson and Louise Baldwin.

We also looked at using negative shapes to create an image, using both coloured  paper and blocks of ink. We also began to use more materials in our work, to layer up texture. Here I have begun to add string to my work, to represent the wires pf a basket. However, this type of wool was very difficult to work with as it kept unraveling and sticking to me rather than the paper. It was easier once i switched to a cotton thread, as it was thinner and easier to handle.

Lastly we moved on to working with material, and trying to portray the still life using material and black cotton. These were very interesting to create because of the limitations of the cotton, and the way that different materials laid on the materials.