Collaging the wall

I've been playing with papers this week. I've also done one stitch sample for the colour mixing exercise, but I'll wait until I've done the other two before adding those to the blog.

 Collage #1

 

 Collage #2

 Collage #3

Collage #4

Collage #5

I have found this exercise incredibly difficult for some reason - something I've never done before and I felt way outside my comfort zone as a result. Collages #1 to #3 are based on specific sections of the wall. Collage #2 uses part of a photograph of my actual wall for the background. For collage #4 image I went back to the shapes exercise and by the time I got to the final one I was hating them all and just tore the remainder of my papers into strips of varying widths and wove them together. 

On reflection I think maybe #2 is (to my mind) the best of a bad bunch as it is simpler and less busy than the other four but I may well change my mind once I've slept on it, and I also may have another try another day.

Stitch samples

Life has got in the way a bit over the last couple of weeks but I feel to be back on track now and have managed to make a start on some stitching.

I used two knitting yarns (one smooth, one more textured) and a perle 8 thread in shades of brown for my samples. The stitches I tried are long legged cross, oblong interlocking cross, squared and interlaced cross, gobelin encroaching, link surface stitch, rice stitch, milanese stitch, Victoria and Albert herringbone, small grounding stitched, whipped half cross, wheatsheaf and interlaced cross stitch. Many of these were new to me as most of the canvas work I have done in the past has been in tent stitch.

Stitch samples

Because they are stitched onto a canvas grid many of the stitches I tried have a very linear quality and I felt it would be interesting to see how they would react to being manipulated into depicting the more curved lines evident in the rubbings of my stone wall. Some of them, in particular the interlaced cross stitches, certainly gave options for adding height to the work, and there is a range of different textures to draw on from the stitches trialled.

 

Thread samples

For the thread samples I used cream threads of the following types: sewing cotton, linen thread, perle 12, perle 8, rayon thread, crinkle yarn, perle 5, six strands of stranded cotton, chenille, cotton tape, cotton/silk mix cord and double knitting yarn.

As they are stitched onto brown canvas, some of the threads almost disappear, but this could be a useful characteristic in some circumstances, though not, I think, for my wall. The thinner threads and flatter stitches can certainly be used for lower relief areas while the textured yarns which give a denser coverage of the canvas will be more suitable for high relief sections.

 

Rubbing

I chose to use this rubbing for my stitched sample and used the section in the centre as I was particularly drawn to the very defined lines running horizontally across the area.

Stitched sample

Because I had found when mixing colours in a previous exercise that grey featured quite heavily, I chose a selection of grey threads for this textured sample. The strong horizontal lines, which I couched on top of the other stitching, are the remains of ivy stems. I used some rayon threads to depict the areas of stone which have almost a 'metallic' sheen and randomly stitched rice and encroaching gobelin stitches in a tweedy yarn for the flatter areas. Randomly placed Norwich and Interlaced cross stitches in a variety of stranded cottons, silk and hand-dyed textured yarns reflect the higher relief and bumpy texture of other areas of the stone.

All in all I am quite pleased with the effect that offsetting the square stitches and using different sized squares has given to the piece and feel that it does better reflect the texture of the original.

Getting to know my wall

My first image shows a page of my workbook where I've recorded my thoughts on the rubbings exercise which I posted last week.

This week I've been working on the colour and shape observation exercises. I can only apologise for the fact that these next two photographs have turned themselves this way around. They are landscape on my PC - obviously a quirk of blogger I think.

I'm no artist and I did find this exercise quite tricky to do but the colours (especially the yellows) are far more subtle on the actual page than they appear here. As I was dissatisfied with the results from some of my initial attempts (those on the white page) I talked with an artist friend which resulted in me buying a pad of pastel paper on which I tested the chalk and oil pastels again. This is the beige sheet of paper, and this did result in a much more textural finish.
I found the closest matches came when I added a pale grey to the mix and I'm not really sure why this surprised me as much as it did. My wall is an urban wall and will have been subject to many years of traffic fumes, and smoky atmosphere.

I found the shapes between the stones in my shape observation at least as interesting as the shapes of the stones themselves. I make a lot of needlelace and I feel this might make an interesting design for that technique too.