Chapter 3 - Design development

This chapter was all about making patterns out of the stars I'd found in the last two chapters.

 1: some rough sketches

2: Design sheet A

The designs on Sheet A were relatively easy to manage though I'm not sure how successful the distortions into other shapes were. The star has fitted into the triangle but I wouldn't personally see this as a star shape any more, but as I was no happier with my other attempts (in picture 1) these are what ended up on my page.

3: Repeat patterns

4: Design sheet B

5: Design sheet B ctd

I am trying to follow my two main strands of inspiration within these sheets - the Islamic tiles which I saw at the British Museum, and the asymmetric starfish so I tried out border patterns using both sources.

 6: Design sheet C

7: Design sheet C ctd

 

I found some of the suggestions for patterns difficult to get my head around - particularly when it came to the complex counterchange for Design sheet C. For this one I started by trying to replicate the example in the course notes but even found this tricky to do for some reason.

 

Although the Islamic tile design at the bottom of image #6 is a complex one consisting of several different 8-pointed stars, I'm much happier with the patterns that have resulted. I also think that some of the patterns made up from the negative space pieces left over from earlier designs (in image #7) are quite interesting.

Stars in Your Eyes - Chapter 2

 2-1

Image 2-1 shows the papers I coloured for this chapter, including the 'recipes' used. Along the bottom edge is a row of images made with the stamp I cut, though I've not included images of the papers which I printed with the stamp.

 

2-2

Image 2-2 shows the star shapes cut and torn from my coloured papers. The cut stars were made using scissors, a craft knife and a cutting wheel though I do not own a wavy cutting wheel nor a pair of pinking shears old enough to use on paper.

Stars in Your Eyes - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Research on stars or crosses:
The basic difference between the two shapes is that a cross has four 'arms' whilst a star has five or more.
Dictionary definitions:
Star = a graphic design having five or more radiating points; an emblem shaped like a conventionalised star often used as a symbol of rank or award; asterisk
Cross = a structure or symbol consisting of two intersection lines or pieces at right angles to one another; an emblem of christian religions.

I have decided to base my work for this module on stars, and did a bit of a brainstorm which produced the following ways in which stars are used in everyday language -
stardust, stargazing, shooting star (all relating to astronomy); starry-eyed and star-crossed (relating to love); star-studded, superstar and starstruck (with connotations of celebrity); star fish, star of Bethlehem and snowflakes (in nature); stars and stripes, star-spangled banner; seeing stars; star of David; star chamber; wish upon a star; star sign (astrology).

I split my research images into two categories: hand crafted stars and nature's stars

 1-1

 1-2

 As you can see from image No. 1-2, the images of hand-crafted stars were taken from my own photographs, magazines, the internet, cards and papers, and include the following:
part of a textile machine at a local museum; the base of a basket; the gates at Hampton Court Palace; a biscuit tin lid; a ceiling in Edinburgh; a stained glass window; a motif from the wallpaper in my hallway; an advent biscuit; hanging ornaments and Moroccan tiles in the British Museum. I found the latter particularly inspiring as in real life many of these tiles were bright turquoise and terracotta in colour which brought me to choose my colour scheme for this module.

 1-3

 1-4

The flower photographs in my Nature's stars collection were taken in my garden and at Kew in London. The starfish were found online and I loved the asymmetrical starfish in particular so they may well show up again in later chapters.

 

 1-5

 1-6

The line drawings were taken from a number of books as you will see from the list in image 1-6 above, and I can only say I am very grateful to Jan Messent!

The rubbings were made with brown charcoal on white tissue paper of the base of a basket (the same one photographed above) and some snowflake shaped pastry cutters.

 

 1-7

 The colour wheel took a long time to complete as yet again I found mixing the colours really quite difficult to achieve to my liking. The two complementary colours I have chosen to use are turquoise/peacock blue and reddish orange. Turquoise is one of my favourite colours though I've never used it with orange before. I've ventured as far around the colour wheel as lime green and purple in the past. In fact orange is not a colour I've used much at all, so this choice will ensure that I stray some way outside my comfort zone.

Finishing line

 Colour mixing exercise

Sample #1 above is stitched in rice stitch worked mainly in stranded cotton, though as I worked I became curious about the effect that perle thread would give as the second step of the stitch so the lower half of the sample has a grey perle 8 thread used to stitch across the corners of the base cross. I felt that this was very effective at changing the base colour, especially when the whole stitch is worked in stranded cotton.

Sample #2 is Milanese stitch, again worked in stranded cotton. I mixed several different colours in my needle (six strands in total but in varying combinations of colours). I felt that this was probably the most effective method of mixing a shade, though it does give a slightly less textured effect than the rice stitch.

Sample #3 is double elongated cross stitch in perle 8 threads. I used a different colour for the second half of each cross and found it was more effective when a pale colour was used on top of a darker one - especially when worked on white canvas as the paler thread seemed to get lost against the background.

Resolved samples

I had felt really unhappy with my collage attempts at first, as recorded on my last blog entry,  but the following day when I returned to them I was actually much happier and long before I had received feedback I had decided to take a smaller section from Collage #1 as the basis for my two resolved pieces.

 

Section of Collage #1

I chose this composition because I liked the range of colours and the juxtaposition of the different shapes.
 

Resolved sample #1

My first piece was worked in canvas work and a mixture of some of the stitches and shading techniques I had discovered in my various samples. The canvas was first coloured with a mixture of greys and green so where the fine grey thread is used to depict the mortar, which surrounds the coloured stones it doesn't look too stark a contrast. I achieved texture by working the pink section in a variety of square stitches in different scales and mixtures of threads, and on the greenish stone by working wheatsheaf stitches on top of each other in different directions.

Resolved sample #2

For my second resolved piece I decided to work in needlelace - a technique I have used a lot in the past few years. I first monoprinted a piece of calico using fabric paints in green, black, white and yellow, then used hand dyed threads to make my lace. I stitched the lace in a completely random fashion, adding a second layer to some sections to depict the textures and the shading on the actual wall. As the calico was not really strong enough to hold the final piece of lace once it was removed from the frame, I bonded it to a piece of pelmet vilene. With hindsight I should probably have done this before beginning to stitch as the action of pressing the fabric to bond it to the vilene has flattened the stitching somewhat.

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.