A Creative Approach — Project 2 Developing your marks — Stage 2 — Exploring marks and lines through stitch techniques

For this exercise, I started with machine embroidery. I dropped the feed dogs and put the fabric into the hoop, but I had to remove the footer each time I had to start sewing. The first stitch I tried, the machine just sewed on the same spot — almost like satin stitch. I found it really hard to move the fabric around. So I ended up taking the fabric out of the embroidery hoop, lifting the feed dogs again and sewing normally. This time I used red thread so it’s easier to see the stitches (the first exercise was off-white on cream calico so is harder to see the stitches clearly). I didn’t have any other machine threads of different weight to try the hand wound bobbin.

I made some parallel lines, moving closer together until they made a solid area (albeit small solid area!)
and I tried some circles, though they’re a bit wonky. I also tried some “squaretooth” stitches as I liked the shape of these. I must have a tension issue as there’s a bit of puckering of the fabric where the stitches have pulled the fabric around the stitches. I did try different stitch lengths. When I did the test swatches I found that tension=3 was the best setting, so I kept this the same for all the stitchings

Front side of the fabric:

Underside of the fabric:

Next I tried some hand embroidery using different weight and colour threads.

The sample on the left (red thread) is a mix of running stitch – using different stitch lengths, stem stitch, back stitch and a short satin stitch.

The sample on the right (blue thread) is a pattern of horizontal and vertical running stitches, using similar colour range and slightly different thread weight. Horizontal threads are made with “mouliner special” DMC 25, colour way 796. The vertical threads are slightly thinner, DMC #8, colour way 820.

Front view:

Rear view:
Once again, I like the underside of the fabric, especially when viewed from a distance.

For the next sample, I used a piece of cotton I’d dyed at a Shibori workshop a few weeks ago. To make this piece, I’d put a coin in the centre of the fabric, then wrapped it in string. you can see the fine, lighter coloured string markings on the fabric. I sewed some straight lines, squaretooth lines and zigzag lines in red cotton. I also tried circular lines around the centre where the coin imprint is, and some diagonal lines too. The centre of the fabric puckered a bit, so it’s raised compared to the surrounding fabric. When I scanned it, it squashed down and covered some of the stitches

11/08: Today I tried some darning stitch (Sue Stone calls it needle weaving) — though I changed the width of the stitches so the first are further apart than the latter stitches. I also changed thread — from a thin cotton to a thicker embroidery thread. It was like weaving with the needle & thread. I think it could have been a bit neater, and now that I see it with varied stitches, I prefer the more uniform, loose weaving that Sue Stone does to my experiment. I will try another later to more closely match how she does hers.

A Creative Approach — Project 1 Marking marks — Stage 3 — Exercise 2 — Using marks to create surface textures

This exercise involved recreating the textured surfaces of objects.

This first page has a drawing trying to replicate the texture of patio tiles, and another showing the branches and remaining leaves of a tree that had lost its leaves during winter — as viewed from the patio whilst looking across the garden. I painted the watercolour wash over the ink drawing in the evening, and thought I was using a brownish grey colour but when I checked in the light of day the next day, I’d actually used a purple colour. Oops. So the colours are not 100% accurate but hopefully the feel of the texture shows through:

The second group of drawings are of the leaves on a pencil pine. At first I thought the segments of the leaves were like little nodules, so I drew the first one (top right) with drops of ink, but when I looked closer I noticed that there were small crosses along the leaves segmenting the sections. I thought this would suit cross-stitch, so tried to draw it in inks and then paint over the top. the problem I found is I couldn’t mix the correct lighter shade of green to draw the crosses. On the weekend I only had my inks and bamboo pens as I was away for the weekend. When I came home I painted the crosses on, though my technique isn’t that good — and probably the paintbrush I used wasn’t fine enough, so the crosses are a bit rough:

The last one is trying to replicate the textures on a root of an Agapanthus plant. These plants are a pest in the native garden so J pulls them out whenever possible. He was showing me the shoots coming out of the root. I thought it had a nice mixture of textures — smooth surfaces, hard and soft parts, fibrous, stringy parts and soft leaves. Also I liked the concentric ridges around the root — it reminded me of how I actually draw a cylindrical surface on paper.

Even though the Agapanthus root is quite ugly, I quite like how this textural drawing turned out.

A Creative Approach — Project 1 Marking marks — Stage 3 — Exercise 1 — Using marks to create surface textures

This exercise involved using marks to create surface textures — working from visual sources.

For these exercises I used pages from a magazine – “belle” magazine, june/july 2013

This first one is trying to replicate the textured rug, using graphite and charcoal pencils:

For the second drawing I was trying to replicate the soft, blurred, smudged look of the glass. The blue definitely worked better than the yellow glass. The yellow paint was too wet and just came out as flat colour.

In the third one, I tried to replicate the curves. I didn’t have silver pens or paints so I used blue Copic pens for this attempt:

A Creative Approach — Project 1 Marking marks — Stage 2 — Exercise 4

This exercise involved making marks with many other types of materials.

Block printing — a wine bottle box + softdrink bottle cap with ink stamp pad:

Layers of coloured water based oil pastel crayons with scratchings using a bamboo pen:
I like this one – the colours peeking through seem quite electric – almost neon. I think it’s because of the surrounding black colour making them ‘pop’

Watercolours and acrylics with vinegar:
I think I used too much vinegar. there’s a few nice artefacts from the vinegar but overall I don’t think these worked out how I was expecting them to.

Brusho paint powders mixed with vinegar instead of water, brusho powder dropped onto the page, ink pen lines using a bamboo pen:
there’s a few splotches where the colour was lifted by the vinegar. I don’t mind the ink lines over the paint, but I think I need to practice the vinegar effects more.

Crayons (Text zoom windup crayons) with a watercolour paint wash over the top.
I liked the top one, so I made another full size picture of it – see the next picture:

Combing: black acrylic paint with scratchings using a dressmaking pin:
I like this one – the black acrylic reminds me of black satin. I like how shiny it looks.

I retried some of the exercise 3 exercises – ie placing salt on the wet paint, placing plastic wrap over the paint, as well as some of the suggested exercises for exercise 4:

Inks with plastic wrap – this one didn’t really work. I think the ink dried too quickly:
I preferred the pre-plastic for this one. I should have kept it aside and tried another — though I did take a “before” and “after” photo.

Collage:

Acrylic paint + bleach:

Acrylic paint + salt:

Acrylic paint + scratchings using a seed pod:

Ink + bleach:

Watercolour paints + salt:

Ink + salt:

Acrylic + scratchings using a sewing pin:

Cutout stencil – simple shapes:

Stencil – stippling and sponging paint onto the stencil:

Frottage / rubbings:
I made quite a few rubbings — with different results. Some didn’t work out as well as I would have liked. Plus I realized that my apartment is full of smooth surfaces! I had to do some at J’s Mum’s place where there were many textures to be found.