Drawing

Knitting, mixed media drawing

As I wrote in my last post it's been so good the past few weeks to have a bit of time to work on my own practice and enjoy playing around in my studio. I've been doing a lot of drawing and as well as enjoying the drawing in itself it has been giving me lots of ideas. My brain is ticking over with lots of ideas for work I want to make and things I want to try.

Work in progress

Paper and bamboo fan with pen drawing

Paper and bamboo fan with pen drawing (other side)

Paper and bamboo fan with pen drawing (detail)

I found these 'decorate your own fans' in The Works last week and thought they might be interesting to experiment with. I started by taking the paper off one of them to make a template so that I could replace the white paper with other materials. Having made a template with the paper I then started drawing on it and quite liked what I'd done so I put it back on the fan staves (not as easy as it sounds!)

Graphite and pencil on tracing paper and knitted sample

I've been doing some drawing on tracing paper as I like the translucency and it relates well to the textile work that I do. I did try making a tracing paper fan but it looked a bit rubbish so I started experimenting with arranging the drawings I'd done with samples and I think this works a lot better. Having the time to play and explore these ideas is really great and I find that the more I do the more I keep thinking of different ways to develop the work.

Drawing made into a vessel

Different views of the vessel

I'm running another Vessel making workshop soon and with this in mind I've been playing around with turning some of my drawings into vessels. This is something I've been wanting to try for a while so it was good to try it out. The drawing I chose to work with was of hands knitting and having made it into a vessel I decided it didn't work so I flattened it out again. However, I do think it will work with other drawings so I'm going to carry on experimenting!

Back to a 2D piece

Back to a 2D piece

Back to a 2D piece

I've got a couple of busy weeks work-wise coming up and I'm really looking forward to it; having had chance to spend some time focusing on my own practice I'm feeling all inspired and creative and looking forward to sharing that with other people. I started a series of felt making workshops today with the No Borders art group (who I have worked with several times before) and they came up with some really interesting ideas they want to explore, including felting a portrait of Lady Gaga.