Finally back in Qatar after a lovely Christmas in the UK. Spent too much money, both on presents and on crafting stuff but also spent a lot of time with the grand daughter, who's first Christmas was a massive success!

I was given a nice healthy gift voucher for Amazon which was soon spent on kindle books for the Ipad. I invested in some books to get me more involved with the sketching that is so desperately needed on the textiles course. Desperately needed by me, that is. I haven't been able to commit myself to it, I'm not sure if it's because of a lack of inspiration but I was finding it easier to do anything BUT sketch and draw. One book that I've loved reading over the past week or so, was the Artist's Journal Workshop by Cathy Johnson and it has really been beneficial to me.

I have to say tho' that it is yet another book/site/group to add to my feelings of inadequacy. There are some really talented people out there and I really need to get over the thoughts and feelings that I'm not good enough. My journal is scruffy. Two pages in and I'm close to ripping them out and starting afresh. But I am telling myself that I need to keep them. I need to see myself develop and grow and I know I won't see that if I keep removing things that might not please me in some small way.

One of the pages I'm really pleased with, is my 'Rain' image. It rained non stop while we were in the UK and I loved it. Living in Qatar, we do get rain and thunderstorms but it's just not the same, nor as frequent. Last night,  I sat down with my Moleskine (got a few of those for Christmas presents - LOVE THEM!) and some acrylics and a palette knife and went wild.

I love this picture. I am noting this down as one for a future textiles project as well. It just makes me feel cold, can almost imagine the rain drops hitting my glasses and hear the cars 'swishing' past.

Have I broken my sketching duck? I hope so :)

Back to my course in the next few days, I need to find some amazingly snazzy fabric to do some colour matching with..........wish me luck :)

Using Marks to create surface textures

Firstly I had to find some images that were rich in surface textures to work from. These could be from the internet, magazines, photos, anything really. I chose 3 very different works of art from 3 very different (in my opinion) artists.

The first picture was 'The Kiss' by Gustav Klimpt - and I used the frame around the area of the hand resting on the head of the female subject. The main reason for this, was the small circle shapes, the patterns and the flowers surrounding her head. I already had in mind some methods for putting colour and shape to the paper.

The orange circles with the smaller circles inside them, were the first thing that came to mind when I was looking for various ways to make those marks. I used small round clay cutters which I had already used in a previous making mark exercise for 'Happy' to create bubbles. The inner filled circle was another print effect of a small flat round ring setting from a jewellery making kit and the blue flowers from a piece of scrunched paper. I liked using 'The Kiss' because the colours appealed to me and seemed to give me more inspiration with regards to the shapes.

The next picture was Calla Lillies by Georgia O'Keeffe. I love the purity of this painting. The clear and bright white against the bright sunburst of the orange and yellow but with a darkness to the inside of the flower.

The first attempt was with paint and a palette knife, easy enough to portray the swoop and curve of the petals. With the texture of the paint, it almost didn't need the extra black paint to highlight the petals. I should have left that out, from a certain light, the texture of the paint did a good enough job of that. My favourite interpretation was the image to the bottom left of the photo above. This was all about using the lines to outline the whole flower but to have some lines closer than others to signify the darker shading or the colours.

Exercise 2

This was a similar exercise but it involved using real objects in my home or garden. I took a couple of photos of our conservatory furniture (this is bamboo type wood) and some photos of plants in our garden. I really enjoyed this much more than I thought I would and I've never considered doing this before, in relation to my sewing.

The first photo was of a leaf from our courgette plant, the leaves have been infested with some kind of tunneler worm/larvae - pretty to look at and use for inspiration but not good for my courgettes! The first image was with water colours. I thought that this put across the wishy washy texture of the leaf but it was with the neat acrylic paint that I tried to recreate the tunneler effect. I didn't feel as happy about this as I thought I would. But it did give me the idea to use some embroidery thread (the 6 threads skeins) and stick this to the page. I didn't feel that it needed the colour of the leaf beneath it. To me, the simple swirls of the cotton gave me the visual and physical textures that I needed. It seem to capture the texture better than any other of my methods.

The bamboo furniture was an easier base to work from. Not only in terms of using it to do 'rubbings' but also in relation to the patterns themselves. It became a weave in various ways. When I used the other piece of furniture, made from the same materials but in a different style, I felt like I  was seeing more things but somehow felt as if I was losing my way a little. I could see plaits but it was harder to convey those than I thought it would be.

The final object/image that I used was from another plant in my garden.

Quite a spiky plant and so the obvious choices were going to be sharp and pointy. But my favourite interpretation of this was the one above the photograph in the image above. It's quite dusty here in Qatar sometimes (sand and construction and wind.......) but our plants are watered every day and the combination is usually the little dried spots of dusty water that you should be able to see on the leaves. I really enjoyed using the vivid greens and purples but dotting the little droplets around.

These exercises have really changed the way I look at everything and how I try to interpret them now.