Moving on to texture.........almost

It was my intention this w/e to move onto textural studies, as I knew we'd be spending time at the beach. However we were greeted on Saturday morning by a spectacular 'tide out ' view of Langstone Harbour on Hayling Island. It was a very grey wet day but this made the natural stripes of ..... sky-sea-land spit-harbour bottom-beach-grass, all the more defined. It Also made the foreground stony beach really show up as a bright splash of colour on a neutral BG.
It immediately made me think of this piece of work that I very much admire, and I now remember whose work it is. A very talented textile artist who lives in the Hebradies Helen, as I'm sure she knows I'm a huge fan.



Anyway I managed a sketch, which although at the time I didn't consider it a textural study, on reflection I think it was, however, using the media that I chose made it a flat interpretation. I was also looking at the scene with the colour balance in mind.


1/2/9

Having been advised to turn any inspirational images into B&W for the textural studies, I decided to go a bit further with this image of my pebble with the lines in it, and applied an 'accent edges' filter in Photoshop, which helped a lot to see the lines more easily.


1/3/1

The textural interpretation was made using wire, string and glue gun dribbling, over which I pasted pieces of tissue paper (with PVA) to keep everything in place and unify the piece. It was then washed over a couple of times with white Gouache.


1/3/2

I then applied a second PS filter 'sketch/plaster' to bring out a more dominant 3d line.


1/3/3

The texture was achieved using sand mixed with PVA, rolled Abaca tissue, fine string, and rayon yarn. Plain tissue and Abaca tissue were pasted over using diluted PVA, and the Abaca tissue was torn in areas to give a distressed feeling, it tears beautifully when wet. Parts of the page were then painted again with the sand mix.
I really like the way this one has turned out, which is a big surprise. I wasn't looking forward to this part of the exercise as I always have trouble with experimenting with texture in my SB, but approaching it in this way was very satisfying and made a lot of sense textile wise.
I can see how this might translate into a textile sample, with perhaps some Trapunto quilting, lots of fine white fabric layers and tiny seed beads.


1/3/4

Finally for this post I decided to look at the sea anemones pic I had in my collection. I started simply with layers of scrim that I'd pulled holes in to represent the circular shape of the anemones, and then glued them down with watered down PVA. Before it was dry I put pieces of lace in some of the holes. To make the piece feel more 3d I worked the anemones in muslin with polyester wadding and the stitched some definition lines round the edge.
I like these shapes, but they're a bit too literal and I think they would have to be incorporated into a piece so that they were part of a very textered BG, not just sat on the top. It was my intention to cover these with moulding paste or PVA, but at the moment I think I'll leave them, till I have more of an idea what to do.


1/3/5

My next consideration is how to move from the sketch book to the formal presentation, what I should do for it and what form it will take. I think I might start by extending the anemone idea.