Tex1 Ass 2 Project 5 Stage 4 Reflection points on printing

Do you feel you made a good selection from your drawings to use as source material for your design ideas? Which interpretations worked best? Why?

Yes and no. I am not sure I had the type of drawings in my store that suited developing repeat designs, which is why I tried out a design process on a picture of a rusty metal surface which became the stencil design. This worked well, and the negative images from the cut-outs from the stencil were even better, they were organic, fresh and felt quite balanced in the compositions I made.

Which fabrics did you choose? What particular qualities appealed to you?

When printing smooth surfaces work best. They allow the printing block, equipment or tool to leave defined marks, whereas heavier textured fabrics take print more loosely. That is also the case for painted fabrics when you have to pin down the surface before painting. I liked the shiny acetate for taking very fine detail, and its shiny surface was useful for reflecting light through the matt paint used in printing. If printing on pre-printed fabric I think you have to select a design very carefully to make sure the contrast does not clash and create an imbalance.

Is the scale of marks and shapes on your samples appropriate to the fabric? Would any of your ideas work better on a different type of fabric, for example, sheer, textured, heavyweight? Why?

Printing and painting on smaller samples seems to be just the first step, it does not always give a good impression of what a run of repeats for example would look and feel like if planned for use. I re-discovered monoprinting and this does not allow for repeats and tried it on different surfaces, a very light, almost translucent cotton, heavier cottons, a woven wool, the lighter (but not the lightest) cottons (and probably a firmly woven linen) were best suited for this.

The prints using foam blocks rendered only low reliefs so were best suited for very smooth fabrics, while painting on fabric can be done on a variety of weights. I like the calligraphic effect of painting with a dark colour, letting the brush almost dance over the surface like I did for the red silk samples. This worked well on lighter fabrics. 

Do the marks and shapes seem well placed, too crowded or too far apart? Were you aware of the negative shapes that were forming in between the positive shapes?

In the stencil marks the negative spaces were a bit too far spaced out. It was printed on a white cotton and so I felt something was missing and wanted to fill the white space with something, such as stitching. I have to admit I have not been looking at the negative spaces too much, although some of the better monoprints had an interesting balance between the location of marks and the areas that only reflected areas of dye, but this is not what is being asked for here.

There was more use of negative space in the large sample where I intentionally discharged some of the background fabric so that the varying shades would show through (negative) areas where I did not apply dye on the plate.

What elements are contrasting and what elements are harmonising in each sample? Is there a balance between the two that produces an interesting tension?

The design elements of softness (eg in stamping with foam, rolls of yarn, soft paper) contrasts with the stamps made of rubbers, lines painted or dragged with pointed tools. There are contrasts in colour - eg black lines on red, use of complementary colours and between coloured prints and black backgrounds.

Harmony is more achievable by using similar shapes such as round forms (in one print using different round tools such as toilet rolls and wine bottle corks), or similar dynamic lines (such as swirling lines in the red silk painting).

The sampling of the smaller work also definitely prepared this work, although I did not recreate any earlier designs. The smaller monoprints, the stamping, the painted bonding material all provided a bit of learning of how the prints would work.

Do the shapes and marks in your single unit sample relate well to the size and shape of the fabric? Do they make an interesting composition on this larger scale?

Yes, as I planned a seascape I placed the sea and sky on each half of the sample with a horizon line cutting through them. I wanted the image to fill the whole of the fabric space which is rectangular. Although I did consider whether I should make the sky the feature as I had done in a photograph.

The marks were free and loose to evoke ideas of clouds and waves, and I think this worked well. In the final sample I am quite satisfied with the sky. I have looked at it close, and thought maybe I should have sewn onto the sky section, but no, I left the print as it stands. The marks are painterly, but not painted directly onto the fabric ground. It might be thought that this could have been painted instead of printed – and would it have made much difference? I am not sure; I used the roller to create direction in the paint-dye, I scraped at the dye, dotted with a brush and then lay the fabric onto this. I think it gives a particular textiley surface rather than a painted one.
How successful do you think your larger sample is? Do you like the design? Have you recreated or extended your ideas from the smaller samples so that there is a visible development between the two?
I am glad I looked at Barbara Rae’s work for this one to take in a sense of mark making in a large way. I like the blues and greens, the sea and sky – the motif retains enough of a sensation of the air I felt over the summer by the sea.

 The sampling of the smaller work also definitely prepared this work, although I did not recreate any earlier designs. The smaller monoprints, the stamping, the painted bonding material all provided a bit of learning of how the prints would work

 

Tex 1 Ass 2 project 5 stage 4 - a larger sample

Late July

I have been pondering how to finish off on a high with this assignment, having enjoyed the colour and design work, but struggled with the printed work. I have revisited Barbara Rae's work, as her landscapes are full of life, colour, energy, and I see her free improvised style as something that resonates with how I work as well. The book I used was Barbara Rae Sketchbooks, Royal Academy of Arts, 2011.

I went for a bit of a holiday to a place I feel strongly about and thought perhaps having Rae's work in mind whilst looking at the large skies over the sea where I was might inspire me.

 

 

 

I had also done just a few holiday sketches sitting on the beach, a couple at sunset, and one of the coastline.

 

 

So, having thought about this a while during my holiday abroad I decided to do a printed-painted landscape. I approached it a bit more systematically than I had the sampling sessions earlier in the project.

I thought perhaps it was better to think about layering various printed and painted mark making approaches, and started off by creating two bunches of small samples. The first one was using bleach to fade out painted areas.

 

This was useful, as it showed how different fabrics reacted differently to the discharge fluid (bleach) - some very well - the top two, which were respectively acetate and a poly-cotton, and less so the other two, below, a heavier grey cotton and a darkish green poly-cotton. The acetate bleaches almost instantly and the fluid runs quickly, so it is difficult to control the brush marks suing bleach on this fabric. A fifth piece was a wonderful piece of lining fabric I found in a charity shop (a small corner of it is showing to the right): a light-weight fabric in a good blue, made in Japan, which I thought perhaps might be silk, but it did not fade at all despite heavy application of bleach. So it is more likely to be a synthetic, but of a good quality. I had already decided I would probably use the acetate. It is has body somehow, whilst being a smooth and slightly precious looking fabric. It took print very well during early sampling, and despite being a pale green I think with prints in blue, white and blue-greens, and possibly a bit of brown, it will be a useful background for a seascape.

 

The second set of small samples were to test printing and painting on the same set of fabric types.

 

Here I liked the grey cotton, which was painted with blue and white mixed to varying degrees. Of course the sky would not be a summer sunny sky, but it looks good as a post-thunderstorm sort of sky. The pale green acetate still worked well, and the monoprint lay comfortably on all samples as they had smooth surfaces. I have not tried to print on top of the bleached samples and will just go for that for the final piece (I have a bit more of the acetate left if the print-on-faded-areas does not work as well as I am hoping. This is part of working experimentally, so it will just have to be tried, to see if it works.

 

In the end I printed three large samples, of which one was chosen as the final piece. First I bleached out areas on the fabric pieces for the two halves - one with waves the other cloudy:

 

 

The lower one shows how the bleach slipped off the brush and left the marks from the fluid - this would not matter too much as the print would be placed on top of this.

 

There were also two 'what was left on the pallet' prints, which I used to print the left-overs, ghosts, from the plates of the larger one. In printing first the sky, there was little to worry about with regard to registration with other printing, but when I came to print the 'sea' section it was much more difficult to hold the fabric to accurately place it on the plate. In one case there was a bit of overlap of the print, but this actually does not look too bad.

 

Once both the sea and sky sections had been printed covering the whole of the fabric, I fixed the fabric paint and left it a while as I needed to make the horizon distinct and needed to think about this a while. In the end I made a simple print on the horizon of two of the larger pieces, just using a strip of cardboard which I textured by scratching the surface.

 

Here's the final sample:

 

 

The final piece was then applied with waves in painted bonding material and embroidered waves of different sizes. The sky was left without stitching as the print was quite strong in itself, and I do not like to over-work the surface when it is not needed. Finally the piece was made stronger by ironing on Vilene and it was sewn onto a piece of blue cotton to bring out the blue in both the top and the bottom sections of the picture.

 

 

 

Hopefully this detail shows the bonded paint and the embroidery. Unfortunately photographic pictures distort colouring - I used greeny-blues and a bit of brown for the sea that was dark, but also gave it a warm feel, which is not so clear here, where the blue and brown dominate. The horizon line was a stamped section using distressed cardboard. This worked well, it created a clear line and with a little embroidery to indicate softer outlines of wooded land it evoked what I saw in the distance.

 

I also hope that the effect of the monoprint is visible - the plate is smooth, you roll out dye-paint, work in textures by scraping or some other way of mark making. When smoothing out the fabric over the print plate the dye may be pulled a bit, and that adds to the effect sometimes. This makes the printed marks very complex and in this case was useful as waves may at times be even but in the sea there is so many effects from currents, different depths of water that the surface is rippled and light fractures in different directions.

 

As a sample this final thing is reasonable, it does not claim to be a finished piece and was a useful exercise for showing how printing-painting can work with the substance of the fabric surface.

 

What was left on the print plate?

 

Three sections of sky 'ghost' prints were printed on top of each other. I then added a bit of painted sea and printed a coast line using distressed card.

 

 

The other was a sample with three levels of 'ghost' prints of the sea sections:

 

 Both these samples will be used for further work at some point, not yet sure what for though.

Exhibition visits during assignment 2 – Spring-Summer 2014

June

Matisse – Cut  outs at Tate Modern

This was one of those blockbuster shows that Tate Modern puts on that draws large numbers of people. The exhibition space was very busy and hot, but there was also a lot to be studied and looked at. Thankfully the works were mainly large so you could see them fairly well at a distance. Matisse worked with large scissors, cutting into gouache painted paper sheets. In a film shown in the exhibition he was seen chopping this paper, with an assistant holding the paper as he went on with his work.

Apart from the wonderful colours, the lively and life affirming shades of green, yellow, red and blue and fantastical oceanic or lush paper verdures and flowery collages, what struck me most of all was the energy Matisse seemed to have to get all this work done. He was elderly at the time of all this work, he had been very ill, and still looked unwell, sitting in his wheelchair, and nevertheless he managed to create one large scale work after the other, almost frenetic with work and energy.

This was what amazed me most. Of course the work was interesting: here were those images you see in poster sales at universities, but here there were pencil lines and piercings from pins apparent on the paper, not necessarily visible on cheap posters. These lines and pin holes showed how he had worked on composition, and again in a film footage you saw an assistant holding up strips of paper against a design for a cope; she was looking at him whilst moving the strip in tune to his demands for accuracy in where it should be placed. The work was very colourful and aesthetic, organically fluid shapes suggesting leaves, flowers and human (female) bodies covered large areas of wall. You came out feeling light and as full of summer as the weather was on the day I went. It was a fine exhibition with much to ponder….

 
Contemporary Ceramics gallery, London

Just briefly – I went to this gallery before going to the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum across the road. I love ceramics, the variations in glaze texture, colour of glazes and the clay or stoneware material, and the sense of a material handled and formed. There were many fine things there, simple, minimalist style vessels, pots that aspired to Japanese glazed aesthetics, and sculptural things. Whether large of small, many vessels were fine. I have a preference for the Far Eastern aesthetic and like to see how the ceramicist works with the glaze material, the events developing the finished object in the kiln, and was pleased to see pots by Margaret Curtis, who works in this way. In contrast Kyra Cane’s work was fine, almost transparent in its simplicity. Her vessels in the gallery were very pale, with a drawn line, but inside, in the bottom of the vessel you found a bright yellow glaze, as a little gift or surprise to anyone looking inside it.

Vikings – life and legend - the British Museum

Although not showing much relating to textiles in this exhibition, I was looking forward to it very much. At times I seek out some of my Scandinavian roots in Viking mythology and Icelandic sagas, which are fascinating tales of lives lived in harsh conditions and wildly fantastical imaginations. And the exhibition was very good - there were many artefacts from Scandinavian museums, German and various Russian and Ukrainian collections. One problem was the large amount of people blocking sight of some artefacts and labels in the early parts of the exhibition. The display was thematic, showing objects devoted to for example trade, the idea of the warrior and the culture of travel and conquest (a large boat had been lent by the Roskilde Viking ship museum) and religion. There was a small ‘meet the ancestors’ section, and plenty of pieces, including large gold jewellery items, that showed Viking designs and how they transformed in encounters with other cultures.

I was particularly interested in the small section on religion because this was one of the area that explicitly involved women's culture; a couple of metal staffs were explained as belonging to spiritual women, who may have been sorceresses. The Museum showed items found in such a woman’s grave, where plant stuff had been found that could have contained hallucinogenic properties.

Surprisingly I also found that a silver object I had seen photographically reproduced on the Internet possibly of Odin and his ravens, Hugin and Munin, was a tiny little charm sized object. The craftsmanship of the Vikings was amazing – the level of skill and insight into materials was quite outstanding in some of the objects on show. If there had been fewer visitors and more time to stop and ponder objects I would have gained more from the exhibition, as it is I was still pleased to have seen the objects and will continue to dip into the Viking culture and wold view for inspiration.

July

Dansk Gobelinkunst, Trapholt (design museum), Kolding, Denmark

Dansk Gobelinkunst is a group of Danish tapestry weavers who work on and promote contemporary tapestry art. The work they do is very varied and spans images from the abstract to the more illustrative. They concentrate on wall hung pieces and in the exhibition I saw there were no free hanging pieces, and neither were there any that used 3D forms.

There was much to admire in this exhibition though; I really enjoyed looking carefully at some of the work, and seeing them in the flesh rather than in pictures. I have a number of catalogues and monographs on tapestry artists, and in photographs this type of textile work loses a lot. In real terms the tactile nature of wool, silk or linen is more apparent, the subtle use of colour or certain techniques becomes much clearer.

I have a personal preference for abstraction, and the graphic in textile design, and there were really good pieces here that looked at thematic ideas and pulled out essences of things, such as Anet Brusgaard’s Tatouage II, which was a black tapestry with a design inspired by body scarring and tattooing from African tribes. The black was a matt and receding wool, but each ‘scar’ was a dot woven using gold and coloured metallic threads. This worked very well and cannot be appreciated from any photographs I took.

Other work I enjoyed very much was Anette Graae’s the heaven/sky above me (Himlen over mig) Anne Marie Egemose’s The Barrows at Høje Bjerge (Jordspor-højene i Høje Bjerge) and Hanne Skyum’s Black Crows (Sortkrager). All the tapestries in the exhibition seemed to follow a craft tradition of engaging with the material of fibre and colour, but they still engaged interesting themes and symbolism, and the three mentioned here looked at ideas that I have been exploring myself (crows and barrows) or used the warp as well as the weft in the design (as does Berit Hjelholt, whose work was not in the show, but which is worth mentioning because it follows a similar Scandinavian design language of something spiritual in a symbolic visual language). This use of the exposed warp and weft in design was taken to a further level by Anne Bjørn, whose work was an open weave using white and yellow linen that was mounted some distance from the wall. This allowed the thread to throw shadows onto the wall behind the work. I wonder how this type of work is kept stable in transport and moving the work, the lacy effect makes it look quite fragile and vulnerable.

Relating tapestry weaving to assignment 2

Tapestry is a slow and deliberate process that deals with construction and the structure of the fabric. This is a technique being covered in a later assignment and contrasts very much with printing, which is a surface process (part of ass 2). Printing and surface design is a particular process which requires planning and consideration of lay-out, but so does tapestry. What differs more radically between the two is the purpose of these disciplines: printing is potentially a surface technique emphasising pattern, for fabrics to be used in furnishing or fashion. These fabrics will be cut up and shaped into a final object, whilst the tapestry is the final thing, often painterly, it is a means to combine the artistic idea within a structure.

When sampling for tapestry or other constructed techniques a relatively long time is spent on just a single sample. whilst I found in sampling for print that you have to work fairly fast (as the paint dries up), and you can make 10-15 samples in a couple of hours once all materials and tools have been set up. This may have something to do with the modernity of print as we now experience it. Tapestry weaving is a very old technique, more than a 1000 years old, and although there are technical routes to faster weaving techniques (I am thinking of the jacquard looms that make up Grayson Perry's tapestries, less of cloth weaving machines), the traditional technique is slow. Printing on the other hand, although maybe also old - wood block printing has been used in Asia for centuries - in the West much printing is now done by machines, for fashion and furnishing use. There are of course other printing styles, more artistic endeavours, using layering and various techniques, however this is still fast compared to some tapestries that can take a year for a weaver to make.

I guess this is an unfinished discussion, as I feel there is more to say about surface decoration, including batic, shibori and other means of bringing pattern to the surface of cloth, however that is perhaps for another time.

Tex 1 Ass 2 Project 4 Design, textile print and painting

Having had a good and full day of printing I returned to a design exercise I had worked when I had exhausted some of the derivations from selections of drawings. I interpreted a small selection from a photograph and reflected on it in different ways:

 

Drawings of positive and negative shapes in pen and graphite. Here the focus was on shapes, as I interpreted some of this exercise as wanting us to do this - make a selection of something that might be repeatable. I also made a small collage-type assembly of paper shapes for this one:

 

 

I made up a stencil for this and tried it out on some cotton fabric in a couple of colour ways. These look unfinished and would need some embellishment in the white areas - I thought I might do some machine embroidery perhaps, or do a watery paint to soften the lightness of the ground - the contrast is a bit too stark here:

 

 

I also used the cut-out sections as a negative stencil, which worked very well, I like this very much, and here the left one is shown as a 'tree' although that was not the original intention, it was purely a test:

 

 

 

A couple of reflections on this little exercise

 

Print is beyond my comfort zone, although I enjoyed the spontaneity of the monoprinting and working on the rubbers to make blocks I found the discipline of the design exercises difficult. They didn't seem to harmonise with the pictures I might have in my head, and the design process leads the design result more than the outcome I had ideas for.

 

That is probably why I reverted to the free experimental day of just trying out techniques. I am much more versed in constructing forms, three dimensionality and large scale things. The print work seemed to call for smaller scale and two dimensionality. The focus on surface stands in contrast to my previous and continuing interest in structure. I will be on more steady ground with the next assignments.

 

A detour: To get inspired I looked at some print work by the Omega workshops, Wiener Werkstaette and Sonia Delaunay. The turn of the century design work in Vienna was great, I love the clarity of design they developed, it is quite defined and a precise. This stands in contrast to the looser work of the Omega workshop, which sometimes looks unfinished next to the Viennese work. Delaunay came later and is more definitely modernist in her expression, colourful, geometrical shapes. I also looked at some contemporary work by Marimekko and Klaus Haapaniemi. Haapaniemi's work is very different from the stylised geometry of modernist simplicity; it is narrative, illustrative and very detailed.

 

Nevertheless I still had to attend to my own print work and during this short exercise it became clear again, that I used a painting style with the stencil. The open areas of the stencil were large and needed to be covered, I used a dabbing and painting style, thought about whether a roller would have covered the surface more evenly, but then I like the uneven spread of marks and colour created here.

 

And in the end serendipity had a role in this work too; with the benefit of the negative shapes being used for smaller samples that have a organic aspect to them they were not planned or designed for but made pleasing pieces in themselves.

 

Tex 1 Ass 2 Project 4 Printing and painting on fabric

I had a great Saturday of just experimenting with printing, stamping and painting on fabric. It was almost as if I needed to get something out of my system, having felt blocked at times during this module. On that day there was no ties to designs, but just spontaneous mark making and impulsive compositions. In no particular order, this is what came out of that day:

A sample using the stencils I had developed for the printing on paper exercise. The design is open although I superimposed one of the stencils onto itself and turned it slightly. The thickness of the paint was important, too wet and it bleeds under the stencil, too dry and it would not paint smoothly enough:

Using bleach to remove dye from a dyed piece of linen - very effective. I also bleached a sample of black heavier cotton, which had an interesting effect. For this one I just painted with a brush (for the black sample not shown here I used a foam pad to make squares):

 

I had printed some relief patterns onto a heat-sensitive block. This did not work so well on paper until I discovered the dilution of the paint necessary. And it needs a smooth surface to print on so I used some cotton with a smooth side (thanks to all those charity shops out there that provide endless supplies of great stuff). Here the print is respectively some random jabs and lines marked onto the block (left) and some coarse linen lace (right):

 

 

Here a print using a large-scale bubble wrap, using a variety of colours and managing to catch the registration of the first print when printing the second run to make sure some of the colour lines would sit naturally next to each other. The print was made on a piece of cotton stained in tea using browns and greens:

 

Here a sample using small bubble wrap and a rubber printing block. I tried to balance the rectangles across the surface, making sure that where overlaps would cause densities in the print or asymmetries developed that they were counter balanced by the smaller blocks in blue over the orangey-brown print. Note that I chose a black background to work out how this looks in contrast to the lighter fabric used in the majority of the samples. The black ground creates a more subtle effect and colours become more luminous, interesting.

A painted background with 'fish' prints from a foam block. More of a doodle than anything

Some more painted fabric, this time a dyed cotton doily, cut in half. Swirly painted lines with prints in yellow and green stamped on with a cork top.

 

The other half of the doily with bubble wrap print and circles from a toilet roll tube. In these case the colours and dimensions of the design elements create the tension and dynamic relationships that make the samples more interesting. Where prints from bubble wrap sit with no over printing it makes for a static effect (as in the above).

 

These two samples had fairly random background made (failed prints/stamps and dabs) with lines of block prints from rubbers running at angles across the surface.

 

Some silk painting using swirls (I held the paint brush at the very far end and let the circles almost create themselves). I think this calligraphic effect is great, with thicker and thinner lines of dye. It reminds me a bit of those 1950s designs that used the hand painted effect in flower designs for fabrics. The colour here is not good in the photograph -  the red is in fact very rich and has a soft sheen to it (cut from a shirt).

 

 

At a later stage I had a go at silk painting using a water based gutta resist, with some effects created by adding salt to draw out the dye, and letting shades of dye merge.

 

 

I used an old silk handkerchief for the sample and wanted the colours to merge where the tree outlines were kept open. I am not that fond of this type of silk painting, but it was interesting to try. Being water based the gutta let some of the dye slip through in places, and that might improve with practice, as would the control of the gutta so that widths and evenness would be better handled.

 

And then I re-discovered monoprinting! When I worked on the A level textiles I had bad experiences with monoprinting. No-one explained about consistency and spread of the paint properly, and I worked to make representational prints which failed miserably. On this wild printing day I just let rip, had a much better sense of the application of the paint and mixed colours. I think some of the result are very good - on the second day they were less so, and will need some work to be done to embellish and work with the marks in a different way.

Let's first get the failure out of the way: a sample printed on wove wool, obviously not good - wool is hairy and will not take the paint very well. The other sample was on a tie-dyed piece of old cotton, fine with the smooth surface, but the print and the jaggedy tie-dye background do not really cohere.

 

With monoprinting a smooth fabric is needed and I used mainly cottons but also tried thinner viscose and acetate. The acetate was quite effective, as the shiny, yet quite heavy fabric took the paint well and contrasted with the matt paint (second sample below).

 

 

The direction of the paint, the depth of the scrapes into the paint affect the final design. I tried the looser liens I have come to enjoy making, but also had a go at slightly more controlled marks and concern about colour mixing:

 

I really liked the top one here (green with a circle design) - in fact that was the first of the many, and as I said on the second day I must have wearied of the printing, which had been fairly high energy work the day before, and so the designs weakened. However the circles are quite good and stand well alone as a decorative piece - see a second version in black below.

The second piece was weaker in the print as it was a second or third impression, and I tried with a second impression of a new layer of paint onto the first at one end (left).

 

Here's the black version, I am quite pleased with this one. It is subtle, shows the colours and pattern and scraped lines in soft tones.

And this one also is quite effective, here I have scraped in a rhythmic pattern that suggests sails of some sort. It is quite loose but ordered somehow, and the direction of the paint in diagonal motion helps direct the lines of the scraped areas.

A very different technique is heat-set print on synthetic fabric. The dye is painted onto paper which is then ironed onto the fabric. I quite like the effect but I am still learning to assess how much dye to apply to the paper, and which fabrics may take the dye the best. For this assignment I applied some to a piece of acetate, which did not work well, probably because I was worried about the stuff melting under the heat of the iron, and I also used a large piece of synthetic satin style fabric (form the charity show so not sure what the fibre contents is). This worked fairly well.

I am not sure whether the pattern is showing up well on the photograph - to the right are two sections of flower designs using blue and red dye. The bottom one was the first print, the one above, the second. What the second one shows is that firstly the dye is of course weaker in a re-used impression, but one also has to hold the paper still under the iron, otherwise the design moves and leaves shadow impressions.

To the right, below, is a print where I laid some string on the fabric and ironed over it with the blue. This could be used to interesting effect, perhaps over-printing with another colour, adding and removing resists. The top left section is a faint ghost impression of a block colour over which I placed cut out circular disks of dyed paper; again an effective method, where complex shapes could be applied, although too complex might be difficult to control when ironing.

Tex 1 ass 2 Project 4-5 Starting to Print

Project 4 seems to have a transition stage from the design exercises to the print/paint stages. This is the experimental section for printing on paper before getting onto fabric properly.

I did not spend much time designing for this experiment, for me this was about getting to know the tools, the stuff that would print and what it could do. I only used acrylic paint, although to various levels of dilution, which at times caused some problems, especially when it was too wet, or when it was drying towards the end of the process. The reason for staying with acrylic is that firstly I have good volumes of it, it has good consistency, can be diluted, mixed and is opaque.

Tools and equipment

Here are the main print and stamping tools I used: spongy foam, corks, engraved rubbers, bubble wrap, a ball of yarn around paper, various packaging.

 

My technical set-up is pretty basic; to be able to print I work in the kitchen, using the ironing board as a table which then supports my drawing board for a firm surface. To enable monoprinting I on top of this place an old glass fridge shelf, which is very handy with its smooth, easy to clean surface. I place paints, water receptacles, brushes and other tools on the kitchen counter within easy reach. stuff is dried all around the hallway, on stairs, boxes, anything with a clear surface (as there is nowhere to hang a line, and various people in the house might walk into it).

 

A note on safety then: I have to be careful when using paints in the kitchen. I am rigorous in keeping brushes, paints etc away from food related objects, and clean up thoroughly afterwards. I take things heavily smeared in paint to the bathroom for thorough cleansing. However there is an issue with the height of the ironing board. After the first day I printed I had a bit of backache and suspect this has to do with the 'printing table' being too low, and I may have been stooping a bit too much over the work.

The samples

A few smaller pieces to see what might happen with space around the print - coloured paper. In one (red), the print templates were placed next to each other, turned 180 degrees from each other to 'mirror' each other.

Various prints, smaller ones and larger, stamps of cork and the edges of the rubbers' wrapper. Although the rectangular rubber prints are a bit hard against the roundedness of the circles and cork prints it does not jar too much. I thought too much circular print would be dull, as it is there is some interest in the diversity of design and angles of the different parts.

 

A less successful print - I am not sure the red circle prints work here, and I think this is still unfinished:

 

Again, unfinished, I think this needs something in a contrasting colour to bring out the interesting lines in the centre print. This was also to show that the prints made by the rubber are useful as a framing device:

Leaf print on fine wrapping paper. The leaf print needed to be kept simple for the profile to show properly, below is a leaf print on a busy background which shows that doesn't quite work, here there is a lot of white space around the leaf motif which shows off its irregular edges and open areas well:

 

A rubber with a leaf-like pattern printing on white wrapping paper:

A less organised test sample of print to test things, here the leaf is printed on a busy background, but there is also a section where I 'walked' the rubber design to make moving trails, and bands of rubber wrapped around stick were rolled across the page:

 

A leaf print on a bubble wrap print background. With autumnal colours this worked quite well, with contrasts created between the organic and the regular. This was also the first time I created a kind of black from blue and brown; this is a great black, it makes something quite warm of black - which can be a harsh non-colour (here there was a bit of green mixed in from the remaining paint from the background, needed really to make sure there wasn't too much of a contrast between background and design):

 

These latter prints also indicate elements of texture, the harder, regular dots are flat while the soft leaves leave an open impression that looks soft.

When printing from a dull square in soft foam I discovered that by rotating the pad slightly these circular whirls appear. This worked well, a circle like design with square stamps alongside. Alone these prints lacked something so I added a few simple rings from lids and toilet roll, so the rings were soft (the card roll goes soft quite quickly from the wet paint):

Tex 1 Ass 2 Further reflections - in progress

Technical and visual skills

These two elements are distinct yet connected. One can be wonderfully skilled technically, but have weak observational skills and so may be less likely to translate the visual idea into a technically and visibly coherent and balanced piece. I think I am still learning the visual side of things. I enjoy making, enjoy stretching materials and techniques to what they can do, and strive to create this balance I am thinking about. I think ideas about aesthetics are important and these two elements would make that happen better together. Some good things are coming out of my work – discovering that looseness and openness, the organic and free are ways that I work with drawing techniques. Knowing that gives me more confidence. This needs careful working in terms of textile techniques, because it can be easy to slip into something tight. I think the design exercises in Project 3 and 4 are helpful to look at this issue, but needs to be developed through my practice more.

Quality of outcome

I guess what I am talking about in the previous paragraph has an effect on quality. I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorbike Mechanics some years ago, and more recently read Matthew Crawford’s The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good as well as chapters on the idea of the hand-made in the crafts. There is something in this about quality, the structural impact of the made object, and what the effect of the machine or tool has on the finished object – and where the hand fits in. I enjoy making and using my hands and hope that the intention of showing the hand’s contribution to my objects is visible in my pieces. So far there has been a lot of drawing to do in Assignment 2, so the hand has been instrumental. Since I am learning the quality of work has been varying, I lack the time to do a lot of practice, which is needed for good observational drawing, but the quality of the colour work for example seems reasonable at times, for example in the mood pictures and themed drawings.

This sounds  bit like an arts and crafts type of discussion; the joy in making using the hand, and I need to ponder this when I think about the purpose or intention behind the work. What is it about the process that creates quality, the focus, attention and aim of the work?

Demonstrating creativity

I think I am fairly creative. Somehow, once starting this type of work, I have a lot of ideas. The ideas are sometimes on a very grand scale and seeing other people’s work or work by historical artists and grand masters will trigger further ideas. They need not be textile artists to trigger ideas – ceramicists, jewelry and print designers, painters, sculptors – anything that contains a germ of something inspirational. Assignment 2 speaks of tensions and balances, and this must relate to aesthetics and visual quality. I discovered El Greco during this assignment, and returned to the German Expressionists and Emil Nolde over and over again during the two months I worked on colour and composition for projects 3 and 4 - this study is still unfinished. It was very enjoyable and shows me that all this work by the giants can be visited and re-visited over and over again – and can lead to new ideas when it is combined with other impressions that are more contemporary.

Context and critical thinking

I see that I have just commented on this a bit. For Assignment 2 I have also written a commentary on Alice Kettle, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks, and am now looking at Michael Heard, Klaus Haapaniemi and other more narrative designers for some of my latest design ideas. As I said above, I think context and history is vital. I trained as a design historian at a design college in London. It was a theoretical course and the only contact we had with the craft and design practitioners would be at shows where we saw their work, or in the bar socially. The designers were buzzing with ideas to develop new impulses, new directions and what influences they might bring to bear on the world. I befriended some designers and went to see their work in progress  in their studios and learnt a lot. However I think with a bit of sadness now that I was probably studying design history as a vicarious means of ‘designing’ and making.

We did though, see and touch many a historical object as part of our studies, and I remember being touched by some sort of aura through a piece of Italian renaissance majolica, although my chosen period of study was the turn of the century around 1900. I did not make any ‘thing’ or object (not even knitting), but tried to contextualise my historical analysis through the contemporary. What I did create then were texts and studies using words, I undertook archival research and studied objects. It was great, it had its own craft and discipline, but now I use those skills to help locate another set of ideas and inspirations to make and build using material.

Tex 1 Ass 2 Project 4 Reflections

Project 4 reflections

Did you manage to ‘make space move’?

I think that when configurations of shapes or lines are dynamic, either by placement through angles, density, asymmetry, or in the case of line – overlapping or suggesting vanishing points either inside or outside the frame then space ‘moves’ somehow – so yes. I quite enjoyed placing the lines. Something interesting happened there. I might have tried a few more placements of the squares, although I do understand what is happening, rule of thirds for example or reading images from left to right, top to bottom and creating a sense of movement through and implied line from edges of objects; I would like to explore this a bit further as I sense that some of this is culturally bound.

I am quite interested in Japanese aesthetics and what happens in some compositions in Japanese design. I am also conscious that this is key to some extent when thinking about repeats in printing, how within a grid/repeat the designs behaves in one way, but when placed next to the same image various effects can appear or what happens around the edge/frame.

What are your thoughts about the drawings you did in Stage 3?

I think stage 3 and 4 merged together in this design work. Stage 3 for me was mainly about looking through the view finder at various drawings, working out whether something would be framed as square or rectangular, whether I thought something might work symmetrically or repeated. This was what led me to use the reflection tool in my image software. This was not asked for in the course material, but I thought it might be interesting and continued a bit with this, although I would say that this technique might need to be used sparingly as, depending on the chosen drawing, seemed o created repetitions in design.

Were you able to use your drawings successfully as a basis for further work?

I tend to work big and so when it came to translating the selections I blew up some of the details, and the drawings then became something completely different, when in watercolour they almost looked calligraphic.

When drawing on the small scale things became a bit fiddly, and simple designs are probably better for smaller dimensions.

I am missing a purpose with the design. I know that these exercises are for developing approaches and technique, and this is important, but I find I need an idea behind this. Many craft people talk about ‘playing’ and that is right up to a point - that is what I am doing right now, testing materials and approaches, and that is the process at the beginning. I don’t mean that I want a finished product, a ‘result’ but I would like to work ideas out through design work with a bit more intension, but maybe it is up to me to find that purpose, and soon I will find it, I hope.

Are there any other things you would like to try?

Yes, I think I would like to work with an idea or purpose, I am thinking about trees, natural themes and have been taking a few photographs, and looking at some print designs with trees as sources, anticipating the print exercises to come.

I am interested in abstraction and these design exercises have brought that to bear on my work in Project 3 and 4. It might also be good to continue the abstraction theme, thinking about scale more. I tried out collage in shades of colour. I would like to build up more experience in that area, in the past I used quite contrasting colour ways in collages to look at landscape, but I think the key to successful collage is careful selection of shape and gentle modulations of colour, rather than too harsh tonal breaks.

Now that you have a good working method, do you feel confident that you can carry on working in this way independently?

I need to practice more, and I definitely need to draw more. But as I said, I would like the intention to be at the core of the work so it becomes focused and strong. Otherwise, yes, I will probably return to this section at times as the course progresses and I have a few design books that consider placement, colour and other design elements, so I can consult those in parallel to support this work.