This set of sketchbook work was created as part of work on Textiles 1: A Creative Approach with Open College of the Arts
Sketchbook pages shown in chronological order.
This sketchbook 7 December 2012 – 9 March 2013.
Previous sketchbooks:
Click here to go to sketchbook 01 (23 August 2011 – 3 November 2011).
Click here to go to sketchbook 02 (4 November 2011 – 1 March 2012).
Click here to go to sketchbook 03 (1 March 2012 – 27 April 2012).
Click here to go to sketchbook 04 (7 May 2012 – 15 August 2012).
Click here to go to sketchbook 05 (16 August 2012 – 29 November 2012).
7 December 2012
I’ll be writing more in project work, but I got a shock and a thrill when coming across Judith Scott’s work twice in an hour or so. Ideas started rushing through my mind.
11 December 2012
Thoughts still rushing…
… although I was trying to keep an open mind.
12 – 13 December 2012
Still reading Styles, schools & movements: the essential encyclopaedic guide to modern art by Amy Dempsey, I chose a painting by Kasimir Malevic to explore Suprematism. Unusually, I haven’t kept a note of the source of the painting image shown below.
I used the base image in gimp to create copies of the basic shapes, then experimented with rearranging them to see different effects. Just a couple of many variations are shown below.
The original image
The image recreated with shapes in gimp.
A slight variation in overlapping of shapes makes quite a difference.
More rearranging.
This experiment reminded me of the exercise back in Project 4 (blogged 24-Dec-2011). This new way of experimenting was both very interesting and lots of fun!
14 – 16 December 2012
A textile design by Varvara Stepanova was my chosen example of Constructivism. This design was from http://bitchmagazine.org/post/adventures-in-feministory-stepanova-and-popova (accessed 14/12/2012). The movement of the counterchange design across the fabric is very clever. I wanted to analyze just how it worked – not an easy task as it turned out.
17 December 2012
Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical Interior was my focus example of Pittura Metafisica. It reminded me of Russell Drysdale’s work (see an example at http://www.abc.net.au/arts/drysdale/paintings/20.htm), but that turns out to be much later. I found a comment that Drysdale was influenced by surrealism, which could be the connection.
There are so many lines in this painting, I tried to identify intersections.
18 December 2012
Back to the project image which continues to fascinate me. The arch of the back feels very important.
19 December 2012
In this version I tried to show how the container could be exhibited with a surrounding blanket.
23 December 2012
Thinking about different views of the container. It has to feel confining, every plane pushing on the figure.
26 December 2012
I’m very unsure about how to make the actual container, and also still thinking about colour. In this version I tried the “spikey” yarn made in project 8 (blogged 16-Sept-2012).
January 2013
This A3 page was created over a week or two. Each vignette is based on earlier sketchbook work related to my theme of Ageing, and in particular the work related to the Francis Bacon exhibition and the photographs I took of models and samples produced in the early stages of Project 10. They each started as a line drawing in crayon, then shapes filled using watercolours.
I was using a brush with a water reservoir in the handle and this is the page where I flushed colour out of the bristles. Random, but it could be a useful component in some future work.
I printed out some of the shape outlines from previous project 10 work, and used watercolours to help me focus on positive and negative shapes. These are on A4 size pages.
This version was thinking about colours to use in the final work, plus the possibility of some draping fabric below the figure.
I scanned in the earlier A3 page, then used some of the vignettes in further development on the computer.
The first one could be used in a border. The others are just exploring possibilities.
Another tack, a kind of montage of multiple photographs and processes.
17 January 2013
A couple of watercolour experiments in the garden of the house on Cockatoo Island. (see post 24-Jan-2013). Especially in the harbour one I was more focused on mixing colours than anything, and I was fairly pleased with my results from that perspective.
23 January 2013
Working on A4 cartridge paper using ink and a brush. This is trying to capture some of the shapes in the “glass tile” filter distortion, one of the experiments as part of project 10 stage 3 (1-Jan-2013).
24 January 2013
Working on A4 cartridge paper with pencil, exploring the negative space of some of the figure photographs.
25 January 2013
Once again looking at the spaces and shapes in the figure – this time trying not to look at the page or what my hand was doing.
26 January 2013
I wanted to be really conscious of the materials I was using in my assignment piece. This is a sketch of the fabric being used for the “dress”.
8 February 2013
The following pages are from my sketchbook at the Alexander The Great: 2000 Years of Treaures exhibition at the Australian Museum. See blog post 8-Feb-2013.
9 March 2013
My sketchbook work was put to one side while I worked to complete my assignment piece.
Here I was trying to create a motif based on one of my sketches at the Alexander exhibition.
Fibres of Being 
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