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):

From the small sketchbook

I recently started a small sketchbook. I know that the recommendation is to do some drawing every day, but I work full time and with the time spent on writing on the blog alone to enter the reflective learning, there is little time to stop and focus on drawing as well during the week. So, I try, and when there is a moment I have a go.

This is mainly to try to get into the idea of thinking visually. At the moment my themes are a bit random, from a birds nest to trees to mushrooms. Probably better not to worry and just put something down. Here are a few things done in a single sitting in a churchyard that was getting colder and darker as the evening progressed. In the end I had to leave as it got damp and I was sitting on the ground.

Grasses and ox-eye daisies, I enjoyed doing these, not necessarily strenuous to draw, but kindly to the eye and a gift from nature.

 

A very large pine amongst shorter bushes  and trees

 

From a photograph of autumnal mushrooms

A day out in Winchester 14.06.14

Today we had a great day out in Winchester. I went to the Discovery Centre to re-visit Alice Kettle’s large scale work, Looking Forwards to the Past from 2007. Coincidentally, Grayson Perry’s Walthamstow Tapestry was showing in the gallery there, so I was really looking forward to the visit as we drove down through the great countryside north of the city.

The Kettle work is quite impressive for its scale and how it works where it hangs. It is not easy to see it in full, you kind of have to peer from above slightly when you view from the library, or you see it from the other end of the work,  from the café area. Otherwise you walk past it, as it hangs on the wall, almost as a piece of wall covering/’wall paper’, and you then only see if very close up as you walk down a ramp.

There are three samples for people to touch on a small panel nearby, variously of the courser sewn stitch type, a sample of what looks more like a piece sewn from a digital rendering of more graphic work and a third in a finer stitch type. There is a small text panel to describe how and when she made it, and place it in context. Although there is a suggestion that the work was partly a community-based project, where people could come and see her work on it, and there were also suggestions that some contribution had been made by others, but this was not elaborated on.

While I was in the café/shop area, I also looked quickly at cards, and got quite excited to see some very fine cards drawn by Michael Hearld. I had seen his book on Amazon, but here was a children’s book about nature that was extremely beautiful and charming. I went straight home and looked up his books in general, and then found a short video on his work on Youtube: Mark Hearld - An Introduction.

But I digress, the point of the visit was of course also Grayson Perry and the Walthamstow Tapestry. I watched his taste programmes on 4OD (In the best possible Taste) earlier this year, and listened to his Reithlectures. He is witty, insightful and has interesting ideas, so seeing a tapestry of his on important contemporary social issues is a treat. I had to smile and snigger occasionally at some of the juxtapositions of brand names against the small vignettes that make up a large part of the piece, it is quite funny in places. He plays with scale and has covered the whole thing in small images of people and animals, with the seven ages of man as the large thematic illustrations running from left to right down the length of the tapestry. He designed the piece for digital construction on a jacquard loom.

Purist tapestry weavers may disagree that it is  not a tapestry, but he is not interested in that craft-art debate necessarily, and is more interested in social commentary and the effect it has in woven textile. In a video interview shown in support of the display he did refer fleetingly to historical tapestries and their connotations of luxury, but I read his textile work more as a means for him to narrate and talk about themes to a large audience, in groups, raising discussion, if needed (I think his pots are good as well, but they are subtle and difficult to decipher immediately, whereas large colourful textiles pass on their messages in an immediate sort of way).
 

A couple of days later..... 

It ended up being a very good day, with interesting things to see and think about, and I continue to carry some of those ideas with me still, a few days later.

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.