too busy to write

I know, I know: I haven't posted a thing for a couple of weeks now. This doesn't mean I haven't done anything. On the contrary: I've been too busy to post.

Last weekend I worked on two things: one was to teach myself to knit entrelac (at last! I've been wanting to do this for ages). I succeeded and here's a picture to prove it. This was knitted with Noro Kureyon yarn which I had left over from a jumper I knitted last year. It's ideal for this sort of work as the colour changes and makes the entrelac effect stand out.

Marks from images

I also worked on making marks from images. I aimed to use similar colours on the marks to those of the photographs/objects I used as reference. This was not from a desire to emulate them but because I believe the feeling of some things has a lot to do with their colour, at least that's the case with me. I'm very influenced by the colours around me. For example in the first image, the Spanish landscape sunset with the bull's silouette wouldn't be the same without the harmonies between the blues/violets and the fiery reds/oranges in the sky. The sky colour gradation is very soft and nicely broken with the fluffy fiery clouds. I expressed this with pastels, scrapped them and rubbed on to the paper with cotton wool. I felt it needed the sharpness of the bull's horn and did this with a stencil and black pastel - it could have achieved a sharper effect with black ink but it could have been too much so I decanted for the stencil effect.

Note about colours: having realised how attached I am to colour I finished the exercise with a little activity where I aimed to express the feeling of yarn using only graphite pencils.

Flower postcard: I wanted to express the texture of the petals, which reminds me of the little rivers of water left over in the beach after a wave has come in. I used watercolours to re-create this effect. I couldn't get the water and pigment to 'stream' in the way I wanted so I creased the paper to create texture within the folds for the watercolour to play with. This worked to a certain extent. On hindsight I could have used cheaper and more creased paper to take on the effect a bit better (I used Sennelier smooth watercolour card). The result was a little too soft so I added the yellow and black and the contrast brought up the violet, which is what I wanted.

Peeling door: This picture comes from a book about Indian decoration although it could be a peeling door anywhere. I've always liked this picture. I aimed at achieving the texture of the peeling door, showing its different previous 'reincarnations'. In the first interpretation I used wax resist working in reverse time order, that is firstly the most recent colour layers with the wax crayons and then the oldest colour with watercolours.

The second interpretation was done using gouache and a spatula to try to reproduce the process of paint over paint and then distress it. This could have also been done using dyed gesso although it could have looked a bit too much like a plastered wall... there's an idea for another effect.

Looking for resources I found some pictures I took years ago for a friend's cookery book. They had interesting textures so I represented them as follows:

Lemons: white crayon to create a resist for lemon yellow watercolour. I was also interested in their regular shapes and started using stencils for the individual lemons. I felt it started to look too tidy, too uniform and almost 'institutionalised' so I moved away from the order and 'messed them around' a little. I think a bit of chaos worked well here as it represented better the lemon peel texture.

Tomato, peppers, and spiky yellow/green mousy things: Three different textures for which I used three different techniques. Tomato: smooth, soft and shiny. I used cotton wook soaked in white spirit and rubbed on to oil pastels and then applied to the paper to create that smooth texture. Violently red peppers: The lovely colour and shine attracted me to this image. I expressed this in two ways: the initial soft shine was created by rubbing the pastel redness out and the strongest shine with white gouache straigth from the tube.
Small green vegetable things presented a different challenge. They have a 'prickly' feeling and bright colours. I went for an almost puntillistic effect of greens on a lemon yellow background. I moved the pointy bits to create a bit more disorder to express the sharp and rough texture.

Marks from objects

I included in the sketch book photos as a way of referencing the objects I worked from. The marks though, correspond to the actual objects.

Tree trunk: Two very different textures came from this tree trunk. One of them is the 'fluffy', alive and 'happy' moss, softly textured and scandalously green. I used a sponge treatment with gouache of several colours on the greens range. Then it was the actual trunk, rough, woody texture, which I expressed through the use of thick gouache applied directly from the tubes and spread on the page with a spatula. The little flakes of lychen reminded me of small butterflies, fragile and in a way different from the tree although living in it, so I did use little bits of tissue stuck to the paint to achieve this effect.

Pottery: I used three of my favourite pots as I felt that, although made from the same type of material (clay) their feeling and texture are quite different.
1. Glaced, smooth pot with 'craters' created by exploding bubbles on the glace. I used wax resist to represent the shine on this pot with the addition of gouache mixed with dishwashing liquid. I was expecting to create exploding bubbles from the washing liquid, but it was not to be. I tried to get the roundness of the bubbles with some stamping but I didn't succeed in expressing the 'craters' the way I wanted.

2. Raku bowl. The interesting cracks of the glace at the bottom of the bowl caught my interest. I used a rubbing effect of turquoise oil pastel over a brown watercolour background. I also sprinkled some silver powder to get the shimmery effect of the bowl.

3. The little pottery box has a lovely deep velvety quality to it, complemented with the smooth copper patterns in a traditional Spanish floral motif. To capture the matt, velvety effect I used pastels by scrapping different greens and applying them repeatedly over the page, spraying fixing liquid between applications. When I was happy with the intensity of the green background I used copper dust and water to express the feeling of the decorations. I also used the copper inkpad with the paisley stamp. Other thing that could have worked would have been copper nail varnish.

Ms Cuddles: This is an older photo of my son's pet rabbit. As she's grown into adulthood she has developed a beautiful long coat. The texture is soft and sensuous and has been expressed through the use of pastels scrapped roughly to create little pebbles and then rubbed into the paper with cotton wool. I used different colours on the cinnamon range.

Entrelac knitting: I was so happy with having learnt to knit entrelac that I had to express its texture in mark form. I saw many ways of doing so and I chose two of them: one was to focus on the detail of the change of direction of the knitting and the other on the actual blocks of colour it forms. I used block printing (different blocks) for both of them to best reproduce the regularity of the patterns.

Colourless exercise

In order to focus exclusively on the texture of things I drew a quick representation of some of my yarns using only pencils. I chose yarns because it's one of the things I tend to buy just because of their different colours so I thought  it would be interesting for me to concentrate on other things, i.e. shape, texture, thickness etc.

I expanded on this exercise by making marks based on the different stitches I've been knitting, again using only pencil/graphite.

What have I achieved - answers to the questions

1. I have always drawn from a slightly different point of view. More often than not aiming at achieving some sort of realism - as a graphic designer/illustrator that's what the job requires (usually). As a painter I have experimented a bit more when painting landscapes or abstracts but my main focus tends to be colour rather than feelings or textures. I found these exercises very freeing and fun although a bit frustrating at times when having to wait for paint to dry so that I can get on with something else.

2. I have thoroughly enjoyed opening my mind and using my imagination, looking around for materials and utensils to make marks and experimenting with different types of paint. I have also started to look at things with different eyes and seeing possibilities for artwork pieces where before I wouldn't notice any. I'm also photographing all sort of things, mainly greenery, leaves, plants, ivy, moss...

3. As I usually work in black ink and liquid watercolours (for cartoons) and oils/acrylics (for my paintings) I have purposely avoided these media and concentrate on other things I'm not so familiar with, hence the use of pastels, oil pastels, gouache and different techniques. I have enjoyed the opportunity of changing my usual 'toys' and the freedom of mixing and seeing them interact with each other in different ways.

4. I'm pleased with what I've been doing. Although I haven't always achieved the results I was planning I got some interesting effects and no doubt this experimentation will help my with my future drawing. I certainly have gained a lot of value from the exercises and look forward to doing more.

5. I've enjoyed all the mark-making exercises. I believe there's a strong relationship between all the sources of inspiration in that the objects generate images and inspire feelings and sensations. We use words to label those feelings and sensations. Words are also used to describe things that cannot be seen as such, but with the marks in this exercise we have been representing those 'concept' words and translating them into images. So I don't see the different parts of this exercise as entirely divorced from each other.

6. Media I enjoyed using the most at the moment are pastels because their softness and their versatility of use. Watercolours for a similar reason, also because I'm relatively familiar with using watercolours and for the lovely surprises they give you when we leave a few pigments to interact with each other through the water. I enjoyed the 'neatness' of stencils and block printing and I'm looking forward to printing and dyeing fabric - I intend to enrol in a week's summer course at Central St Martin's on textile dyeing techniques this summer (finances permitting!). No doubt all the work I've been doing is closely related to my future textiles work and I'm looking forward very much to what will come out of it.

That's all for now... tomorrow more. Phew!