Textiles Week

A selection of the work I produced in the textiles 'taster' week.
We did a lot of drawing exercises that were supposed to make us consider shape and line over accuracy and realism. In the textiles room we worked at easels making drawings based on two large tables full of random objects. 

We were emphatically warned away from the deadly 'sketchy line'.

So,  I drew the following two pictures using my right hand (I am left handed) and without looking at the paper. It's also two drawings on top of each other (if you were to flip you're entire computer upside down, you might be able to make out a horribly shaky outline of a sheep skull. It probably isn't worth doing Completely worthwhile).

 Close-up:

I used a graphite stick and started to draw using my whole arm instead of just my wrist which made the lines much more dynamic. I also discovered the magical world of varying line weight.

From those pictures (specifically from the close-up), I made a couple of mono prints:

 This first one focusses on line and basically trying not to make it look horrible and experimenting with the technique. 

This second one I tried layering two colours (orange and blue because they're fairly complimentary) and I also used some handmade stencils, i.e simply placing little pieces of paper onto of the print. 

I really did like how the lines were so crisp and neat and thee was something fun about almost working blind. BUT, as logic usually fails me, I did really struggle with the planning aspect of mono printing - you've really got to go into it with an intention and a method. 

Just to clarify, intention and method are two things I usually lack in experimental work.
Moving on.

For the following we were encouraged to make a ground for the work, and after ann initial five minutes of drawing with ink and sticks and in all manner strange ways, we were asked to then work into them 

This is one of my favourites, drawing just a single object multiple times, in multiple ways, in different media and in different orientations whilst keeping an eye on composition and colour. I rotated my drawing 180 degrees each time i drew it and the end result was a picture with a very busy centre but a strong overall shape.

 In the close-up the quality of the lines and the contrast between the different media make it quite striking.

And finally, moving on to the final piece(ish) of the week. I took a shine to this particular continuous line drawing of a starfish, liking the shapes and composition - the way it divides the page horizontally into four sections (or at least it does for me). 

I also liked it because it wasn't too busy, whereas most of my other drawing shad been. 

And from that, I drew together everything I had learned.

 I realised that if I don't like a piece of work I've done, it isn't finished yet. I really persevered with this one, completely restarting sections again if they didn't look right. 

And the pile of work at the end of it all...