Flock at Woolfest

The FLOCK

I was very excited at the weekend because I made it to Woolfest! I've missed it the past couple of years for various reasons but managed to get there on Saturday and I had a really good time. Having had a stressful few weeks it felt really good to do something I wanted to do and that wasn't really connected to work. I spent lots of my shiny pennies on various fibres and threads and am looking forward to having a play with them.

Detail of FLOCK

More Sheep!

Also at Woolfest I saw FLOCK again. This is a project I'd taken part in with my Heathlands textile group and when we went to visit Farfield Mill a few weeks ago we saw it installed there and one of the members spotted their sheep (quite impressive as there are now over 5000 sheep!) We'd also seen part of the flock at Rheghed, not that we're following it round! I really liked the way they'd installed it in one of the livestock pens at Woolfest and I was very excited to spot my sheep!

Sheepy

My Sheep!

Curious sheep

Part of the Flock at Farfield Mill

Crowning Glory

My Crown!

At work on Friday I felt like making a crown, so I did. I used my tried and trusted method of crocheting strips of plastic bag and then melting them with the iron. I just used a simple border pattern and used lace to fasten it at the back. It's not quite such a random thing to do as it may first appear. For our summer project this year I want to do some headgear making workshops so I'm starting to get samples made to give people ideas. I will also be making hats, wigs, fascinators and whatever else I can think of!

Detail of plastic lace

On a head

Detail

On my head!

Rockcliffe Banner

Some of the students I was working with. This picture was in the News and Star

After much stress and stitching I finally got the rings finished for the banner I've been making with Rockcliffe C of E Primary School. One of the teachers very kindly saved me much stress by putting the banner together for me ready for the torch parade through Carlisle. Whilst making the rings I realised that there is a very good reason why people don't make 3D banners; they're time consuming and don't hold their shape easily! However, the finished result was (I hope) worth all the effort.

Patches ready for stitching

Stitching the patches together

Ring made and drying off

I enjoyed working with the children and staff at the school so much and hope to work with them again. It was great working with enthusiastic people open to giving things a go and getting involved. After I'd worked with the children we did a 'parents evening' for parents and members of the community to come and see what the students had been up to and to have a go themselves. The patches resulting from this session were made into the red ring.

The rings laid out in my living room-this thing is huge!

Detail of the rings

Red ring

Red detail

Green detail (collagraphs)

Red detail (screen print)

Life Drawing 14th June 2012

Red sketch

Thursday's Life Drawing session was another really good one. We hadn't seen our model for this session for quite a while so it was great to see him again and have a catch up. I had a lot of foreshortening to contend with but I think that it lead to some interesting drawings. I'm teaching a life drawing class for Carlisle and Border Art Society on Monday so I was thinking a lot about what I was going to cover in the session with them which had a big influence on my drawing. I was trying to think about portraying the body as something living, with life and movement rather than just as an object to be captured on the page. This obviously suits my somewhat loose and chaotic style of drawing and for this session I developed something I'd touched on previously-using colour to add a bit more life to the drawings. Overall I was really pleased with my drawings this evening and am looking forward to using a bit more colour in future sessions.

BIG drawing

I managed to cause our model much amusement with this drawing. I was working on a sheet of A1 (I usually work on A2) so the paper was already huge and I said at the start of the 40 minute pose I was going to try and stay on one sheet. After a measly 5 minutes I'd moved on to a second A1 sheet and then had to scurry to the other side of the room to get more A2 paper as I'd run out! However, I think the finished drawing has a feel of being quite monumental and imposing, which the pose was from where I was sat.

Hands and feet

Layered sketches

The drawing on the right (image above) is an outline sketch I did without looking at the page, I really like the free flowing feel of it.

Two heads
I wasn't happy with the first version so I drew a second.

Layered continuous line sketches

Continuous Line

Sketchy

Foot detail

More continuous line

Lovely Lacey Birds

New Dress (needs a press)

I bought this dress in the sale last summer with the intention of customising it but it has sat in my to-do pile for a while. A couple of months ago I used a printing block I'd made to print some birds on it but because I used a dark green they didn't show up too well. Then last weekend I was looking at the lace bird cushion covers I'd made and thought that it would be a good idea to use the same technique on the dress. So I did. I used the printing block as my template to cut out the lace birds and I used fusible adhesive web to attach the lace to the dress. I then secured the birds with free machine embroidery and gave them buttons for eyes. I'm really pleased with this dress now, I got lots of comments when I wore it to work this week and I think it will become one of my favourites.

One bird

Halter-neck  purple jersey with lace birds

Another bird

Five birds

Top bird

Life Drawing 31st May 2012

5 minute charcoal drawing. My favourite drawing from this session, it was the last pose.

Another of the many things going on last week was Life Drawing. It was another good session with Caf as our model, she came up with some great poses including some which must have been quite uncomfortable to hold but were fun to draw!

4 page Pen drawing, 20 minutes

5 minute sketch of same pose

5 minute pose, 2 minute sketch

This started as a bigger drawing but I only liked this bit!

Crazy pose, great to draw

5 minute warm up sketch

Can you guess what it is yet?

Small Puffer fish

Well it's clearly a puffer fish used as a ball during a game of underwater tennis. You'd have to be crazy not to know that! As mentioned previously (see Spheres) I'm involved in several projects connected with certain events occurring this summer in Londinium.

I've been working as a support worker for Prism Arts for a little while now and it's such a great job. The artists and service users are all fantastic and it's just so much fun. Our current project is a studio theatre taster course which will culminate in a street theatre performance in Carlisle when the torch comes to town. Our piece basically centres on the games being somewhat taken over by aliens, both good and bad, and us all being saved by power rangers. It has also resulted in my having a lot of fun with my sewing machine; making alien faces, puppets, fish rackets and an underwater tennis player, and with my felting needles, making the aforementioned puffer fish. I love my job.

Eyes

Tentacles

Large puffer fish

Another large puffer fish

Tentacles or spines?