International Threads Sketch - Anavriti Blue

One of the  recent 'International Threads' group challenges  was set by Gillian Travis - to base the 40 x 80 cm quilt on a sketch. Having enjoyed putting together the change of scale door piece, I thought I'd base  it on one of my   many watercolours of  crumbly Greek doors. This particular one was done in 1998 in a village at the top of the Anavriti Gorge near Sparta.   I've long wanted to use this particular drawing as inspiration  - it was one I  also worked on during an Elizabeth Barton masterclass - simplifying the shapes and looking at it tonally was a very useful exercise.  

 

 So I've spent the  last few days trawling through my stash, sewing together strips.

 I've just finished the piecing and am very pleased  with how it's turned out.
Question- should I include the blue grey scaffolding pole on the left or not? It wasn't in the original sketch but when I saw  the same doorway again a few years ago on a return visit in 2006 , there were poles in position that I thought enhanced the composition.  Interested to hear what you think.

Quilt University Virtual Quilt Show

Red Boats - Shades of Red Journal Quilts

I'd forgotten until today  that I'd submitted photos of  work completed  in online workshop on Working in Series with Elizabeth Barton to the Quilt University Virtual Quilt Show!  For some reason it's in the applique section (although mainly  pieced) - you've still got a few days to vote.......



Red Boat Journal Quilts

Finished quilting and binding my red series of boats for first 4 months of CQ Journal Quilt Challenge - Jan to April below,  bonus above.  Rather than being pieced , the 'bonus' is a digital print on fabric of a photoshop altered watercolour and as it is  a bit smaller than A4 proved a useful sample for Margaret's Narrow Binding technique. By the time I did the 5th I was  getting the hang of it - saves so much time to do the whole thing by machine. I'll stick to facing for larger pieces but rather like the red 'frame' and will do something similar when I move onto yellow boats and blue boats in the months ahead.
The bonus sample already  has a potential home- Ian pounced on it for his office when the last stitch had barely been put in.  

The Grey Side of Life

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It started with turning 50 and the increasing numbers of silver hairs - as I only get my hair cut  short 3 times a year, the 'Mallen Streaks' ( remember that? ) are more becoming  prominent. Then 12 x 12 chose grey as their current colourplay theme. I've gone through grey quilt phases myself - for the series of honesty pieces but also 'winter trees' , an enlarged version of my first ever journal quilt in January 2003

In Elizabeth Barton's masterclass at FoQ and more recently Quilt University class'working in series' the importance of tonal studies was emphasised - something I'm really bad at sticking to as my love of colour means I  jump right in.

The final straw was  mixing greys from tiny dollops of primaries in Jo Budd's workshop at CQ summer school - a surprisingly absorbing occupation

 For those that asked about the pigment dyes used - they're selectasine screenprinting inks available from George Weil.  I thought at first that the acrylics I have already would do the job but  I doubt I could achieve such wonderful monoprinted marks as these without the acrylic drying too fast. (See how easily I get distracted by colour!)

So it was  with a sense of inevitability then that  I signed up for Sketchbook Project 2012  with theme ' The Grey Side of Life'.  A marked contrast to my 2010 Sketchbook ( which has just been digitised)  where I swapped the horrid Moleskine paper for colourful Khadi!!

Sometimes things come together in a surprising way and the elements from workshops and classes that stick are not necessarily the most obvious. I'm off to fish my greys out of my stash ,which is not small!

PS I can now hear properly again having had the remains of an earplug hoovered out at ENT outpatients. A bit sore and sensitive to noise, it's foam earplugs from now on!   

Some Colouring-In

 Apart from cooking, shopping and ironing , this weekend has been mainly spent Colouring-In having selected several potential ideas  for Brentford Boat series

 Some of the materials used - watercolours; neocolour crayons; grey pitt pens; inktense blocks and pencils. First time trying the inktense blocks (I love my pencils!) and I'm not hugely impressed - even with a gripper they're very crumbly, like conte. Nice colour range though - must add indigo and olive green to my neocolour collection.

 Started off with watercolour which was fun but decided really needed tonal studies. So printed out traced sketches onto thick copier paper  and tried some schemes out. Next step collage.

Working in Series - Boat Traces

 I'm getting so much out of Elizabeth Barton's online workshop at 'QuiltUniversity'. Apart from the copious detailed notes, exercises and examples, the discussion forum is thought provoking - its interesting to see what influences other have and the ideas they come up with. In a 'real' workshop, you're so intent on your own work you don't tend to notice what other participants are up to!

I've currently got lots of tracings of potential compositions up on my design wall - I love this technique for simplification, I get so caught up in the detail and particularly the colour in my photos and watercolours ( nothing new there -I've  always skimped on the drawing phase and launched straight into painting!). If something works with just line then it can only improve once tone and colour are brought into play.  

 One of the exercises was to look back at previous work and see if there are themes. I already had it in mind to develop a series on boats ( from all my 'Boat Friday' walks along the Thames) and I had made a quilt over 10 years ago based on a watercolour at Pinmill.I also  found boats had crept into other pieces of work like 'Serifos Storm' and 'Gythion Glow' (above)

 Another exercise, looking at series of artists you admire, sent me looking through the book on Barbara Rae that I received as a Xmas present. Look - wonderful abstracted boats!! I had tried to give a link to Barbara's website on the discussion forum but the site was down. I found out why - she's just published a book on her sketchbooks and you can look through the whole thing here. Fabulous! I'm itching to go to the RA Summer Exhibition to see some of her work in the flesh again ( and buy that book!)

Masterclass in Composition and Thoughts on Colour

Among the preparations I made for Elizabeth Barton's Masterclass was ( as instructed) , files containing images that inspired me, copies of 'good' paintings by artists of the same subject. I had a folder of waves, another of vases, a portfolio of images at speed from a train. I settled for using the one on doors as being more graphic they seemed easier subjects for the exercises. Given the plethora of pictures I had, it was surprisingly easy to choose an image from the village at the top of the Anovreti Gorge in the Peloponnese. It hadn't changed much from when I did a watercolour of it 8 years previously apart from peeling a little more and that particular Greek blue has stuck in my mind for decades Laying tracing paper over the photos, drawing then photocopying and cropping resulted in this image which got the thumbs up during the critique process from my peers. The combination of diagonals and wonky lines is particularly appealing.

On day 2 we discussed the importance of tonal studies, not something I've done much of but potentially very useful. I only had time for one stab at it so not quite balanced but definately worth pursuing. It also came in handy for my painting course!

Interesting thoughts from Elizabeth on colour - on using ones that sum up the emotions associated with the subject rather than being representational. Something I definately need to work on in helping me move towards abstraction. Co-incidentally, a post on this topic today from Robert Genn in his Painters Keys. Also an apt quote from 'Bright Earth ' by Philip Ball which I'm currently rereading

"The seventeenth -century French writer Roger de Piles clearly felt that painters re-created the landscape to suit their own vision- to such an extent that this 'imagined reality' impinged upon the artists very perception of nature:'Their eyes see the objects of nature coloured as they are used to painting them.' "

That's me! Seeing purple in everything!

I digress - talking about colour always does that for me. I argued for using 'Greek Blue' for this piece because it is so much about the colour itself but it would be interesting to try a different palette of colours eg reds- that's where Photoshop comes in handy.

A useful part of Elizabeth's class was the the one-to -one attention and opportunity to get another opinion. As part of the selection of artists intepretation of doors I'd brought along this newspaper clipping about Prunella Clough. Following on from our'homework' looking at artists and quilters we admired, I was more able to articulate why I like this piece - the bright fine detail inserted on top of a looser , larger scale painting, the interest this generates.

This made me think of how I could combine texture of peeling doors with image of the whole area without having the same level of detail all over. With Elizabeth's input looking at my photos, we combined a photo of the door area with a photo of frayed sample done for QuiltWOW workshop on distressed doors. Definate possibilities!