Stage 1 – Preparation

I prepared my concertina ‘sketchbooks’ as per the instructions, but I found that the resulting product was too small, so I opened them out, which looking at the image on page 59 is correct. This gave me an A5 height page to sketch on.

Stage 2 – Drawing from Memory

I decided to focus on my recent road trip holiday in our motorhome, where we spent 4 weeks touring round the whole of Scotland.  I decided to use my graphite stick to start with as I like the chunkiness of it in my hand.  I have three graphite sticks – 2B, 4B and 6B, and I used each one to sketch out the ‘bones’ of the images I was trying to put down on the paper.

I started out by sketching a straight line across the whole of the page in an attempt to depict the road – as it was a road trip I was visually describing. I then sketched out a motorhome at the far left hand side on the road, to depict the journey we took.

It was at this point that I realised that my drawing skills are not the best by any means but reflecting on what I have learned from doing this course, drawing ability does not matter, it is about letting go and seeing what happens. So I did!

I recalled the start of our journey and sketched out images – from memory – of the memorable places and things along the way.  I didn’t spend too much time on this, it was done very quickly and without worrying to much about what the images looked like (although I think they will need interpretation by anyone viewing them)!

I enjoyed this process, of using the different graphite sticks in a freeflowing way, whilst bringing to mind the details of the things and places I experienced during our trip.  It was nice to work in this way, without judgement about what I was drawing and how it looked. It was my recollection of the trip and visually interpreted in a way that was very natural.

Stage 3 – Drawing from Life

For my next concertinaed sketchbook, I sat in my studio shed in my garden pondering what to draw and I looked out of the window to my right.  It had been a grey day and the light was fading on a grey sky. Silhouetted against the sky was a perfectly framed picture of three trees, in their winter clothes, with my view of them being cut off as they dipped behind the garden shed, thus making a clean line.  I couldn’t see the shed in any detail, but the trees were clearly outlined. So I picked up my charcoal pencils and sketched them.  Then I turned my gaze further to my right looking out of the big floor to ceiling French window and I could see the backs of the houses of my neighbours, again silhouetted against the grey sky. So this time I used 4B pencil and sketched what I could see.  I had to work quickly as the light was fading, and I didn’t get the scaling right, but it felt quite nice to just grab a tool and sketch what was in front of me. Throughout this course I have tended to overthink things and just when I start to feel overwhelmed, I convince myself to just do it, and I’m invariably pleased with the results. Not necessarily with the artistic results, but the way it makes me feel, more free and less constrained. So bit by bit, I think the creativity is starting to creep out of me!

Exercise 4.2 – Customising a sketchbook

I found a book in a charity shop, well I found three actually.  The first one I decided to work on was a novel. The first major obstacle for me was to ‘de-face’ it! It is a very deep, ingrained unwritten “law” that you don’t disfigure or write in books, apart from putting your name on the inside front cover. Even when I was studying literature, many years ago, that was a huge issue for me, and one I only overcame by using pencil – you could always rub it out and leave the book in it’s almost original condition!

So the first thing I did was to fold a page (and I started at the beginning of the book!) into symmetrical shapes and to create a shape which I felt looked like an arrow – pointing towards the next page in the book.  So far so good. Then I took my pencil, yes, my pencil – and sketched a simple outline, a Christmas tree the type a child would draw. This was just to loosen me up and make the first marks. It felt so wrong to be marking the book in such a way, but after the first couple of strokes I felt better about it.

I then turned over the page and the word “bomb” jumped out at me; I circled the word four times on the page and then drew a starburst shape and wrote the word “BOMB’ inside it. Then I linked the four bomb words typed on the page to the bubble written BOMB in the centre of the page.  This was ironic, the fact that I completely subconsciously chose the word ‘bomb’ to highlight. I enjoyed doing this and felt that I had “blown away” my reticence of writing and drawing in a book! But I was still using pencil, the next step was to add colour.

But still pencil! I decided to just doodle and see what happened. I used all the colours in my pencil case and just did whatever I felt like doing, shapes rounded and angular. Again this was a very freeing process and I found it stimulating and enjoyable.  As with the “bomb” page, I found myself being drawn to words as they jumped out of the page at me. The depth of colour the pencils produced was not very satisfying, and the colours were very wishy washy. The words on the text jumped out “it is a weak light that comes through”, which fitted the way I felt about the colours. The words “whir” and “whizzing” inspired me to draw spirals.  I filled half the page with the doodles, but I was dissatisfied with the colours; they were just not strong enough against the blackness of the text on the page. So I’m now going to use my coloured sharpies. All this is just warming me up to this new way of working. I’m thinking that I will use yarn, collage, cutting the pages (eek!) and other techniques going forward.

I also looked on Pinterest, my go to resource for inspiration and ideas, and got some useful food for thought ….

I used my sharpies on the next page, and again just doodled like I had done with the coloured pencils. The sharpies “bled” through the paper and the images it made on the reverse were interesting, a faded copy of the original page.

Then I folded a page from the bottom right corner to the middle of the page, creating a diagonal pocket, and to keep it in place, I secured it in place by sewing a simple running stitch along the edge with yarn.

Stage 1 – Research and preparation

I researched the four artists as per the course material; Elizabeth Blackadder, Patrick Heron, Cy Twombly and Ben Nicolson, and Elizabeth Blackadder appealed to me immediately. I love the way she uses colour and strokes to bring her painting to life. As soon as I saw her painting, Staithes, I immediately recognised the location and felt she had really captured the essence of the place. The strokes she uses to depict the cliffs and the sea, as well as the sky, reminded me of how I sketched what I could see out of my studio shed window. The colours she has used are also simple, but very expressive and draw out the nature of the elements, such as sky, sea and cliffs. Very earthy colours and very bold, heavy strokes. I can see that she has caught the brightness in the sky, which was something I didn’t feel able to do with my sketches, but she has achieved it in a simple, but very effective way. I’m going to focus on the style she using in this picture, but on looking at her other work, I can see that she also produces very delicate, intricate work particularly of flowers, using pastel colours and light, airy strokes. In my opinion, the antithesis of the Staithes painting.

The old book I have chosen to use for this section is called the “Victorian Kitchen and Garden”, which I feel will complement the work of Elizabeth Blackadder; very earthy and linked to nature which much of her work is. It also had an illustrated sleeve which I thought I might use as material for collages.

Step one ….

Firstly I squeezed out a small blob of gouache paint onto a plate. I have never, ever used gouache paint before, or indeed any kind of paint, apart from decorating the walls in my house!

I decided to just jump straight in and try to obtain the earthy colours that Blackadder used in Staithes.  I tested them out by using a paintbrush and blobbing each blend of colours on the page. I liked the effect, and although the colours weren’t exactly like the colours on Staithes, they were still earthy, which is what I wanted to achieve.

I had to wait a bit for the paint to dry before turning over the page; and then I got impatient, so I just turned over anyway ….. I pressed down on the page to help the drying process and noticed how the back of the page was slightly depressed where the paint had been on the rear of the paper, adding texture to it.  When I opened the page again, I liked the way that marks had been made on the opposite page, shadowing the marks that I had originally made.  This gave me an idea to paint on the page in a landscape position (turning the book on its side), and the turning the page to create a shadow image on the top page

I also decided to revisit the collage exercise, which I really enjoyed, and try to depict them in the style of Elizabeth Blackadder, in her Staithes painting.

I first depicted the teapot I had used in the collage exercise.  Whereas in the collage exercise I was trying to get an accurate image of the teapot, especially when I was using the silhouette technique, this time I wanted to replicate an image that although could be recognised as a teapot, was much more ‘rough’, as if it had just landed on the page as if by being dropped by a flying bird(!). I used quick movements to put the paint onto the page, and it only took a few seconds to complete! The result was that the image was a lot more ‘rounded’ than I wanted, but as before, I turned the page over and pressed the painted image onto the opposite page. What I immediately noticed was the marks that the paint had made on the opposite page were absolutely beautiful! It was like the textured patterns in nature such as frost, or leaf veins – or even knitting! I could not have even attempted to create a pattern like this if I’d tried, but here it was on the page. the next few photos it is quite difficult to see this pattern, but hopefully you can see it clearly as you scroll through.

For my next one I decided to use one colour over the entire page and then turning the page to ‘blot’ it.  The result of this got me so excited! I realised that the marks made on the opposite page could form the basis of the look I wanted to achieve …. Although I was going off-piste here …. I then tried to copy (from memory) the Blackadder’s Staithes picture on the opposite page, using the imprint as the base from which to work. It was very, very crude, but when I looked back at the Staithes picture, it did capture the essence of it I think. I tried to fold the page back to the original page and ‘blotted’ the new image onto it, but this didn’t work as it didn’t recreate the picture in any way. But ….. it could potentially form the start of another picture, which is what I did. I just painted a tree trunk and then by highlighting the red mark, I turned it into a toadstool, which, as Blackadder had used with the red roof on the Staithes painting, pops out of the painting. But again, if I had have just tried to create this without the ‘blotting’ I could never had achieved the texture of the paint which totally, to me anyway, recreates the natural element of the grass, trees, sea etc.. And by folding and blotting it AGAIN created a further depth to the Staithe recreation! I could just keep going for ever with this technique.

The possibilities are endless with this new technique I have discovered!!! Ha ha!

But I need to go back to the teapot.

I copied a different teapot collage this time, and using the same heavy strokes Blackadder had used, although this time I found myself taking a bit more time as I wanted to get the reproduction “right”, to create it. Again I just couldn’t resist folding the page and blotting. What resulted looked like a sweater, so I quickly just sketched a very image of a figure with long hair and a skirt!

I have really enjoyed this exercise; it felt exciting and freeing – both the initial strokes I put down on the paper and then the surprise as to what the “reflection” produced. Extremely satisfying!

Exercise 4.3 – Collating a Sketchbook

I started this exercise by researching the textile artists, as per he course material, and as soon as I landed on Dorothy Caldwell, I knew I had found the artist I wanted to focus on.  I have recently ordered a book (although at the time of writing I have not received it!) by Anne Kelly called “Textile Travels” which appealed to me because in 2017 I spent a year travelling the world with my husband, and I would seek out textiles wherever I went. There is such a lot to be learnt about a culture and a people through their textiles. I had been looking for inspiration as to how to record and preserve all the things I had collected throughout that year on the road, and I think Anne Kelly’s book might give me some inspiration.

And then along came Dorothy Caldwell! Reading about her on her website (http://dorothycaldwell.com) filled me with inspiration and excitement as here was an artist that was speaking to me. Here is what she writes about herself:

My work is a map of land and memory. I am interested in the landmarks that give a sense of place and how humans mark and visualize the land.

The early surveyors, of Canada, measured and structured the land mathematically, but in the squares of the grid, they made notations on certain rare plant growth, unusual geological formations, and other points that they were personally drawn to.

Identifying my own personal landmarks, through gathering, touching, and recording is how I create a sense of place. The vocabulary for my work is drawn from studying textile traditions and ordinary stitching practices such as darning, mending and patching. I am drawn to cloth that has been repaired, and reconstructed and in that ongoing process encodes time and the richness of lives lived.

I can honestly say that I am interested in everything she does with textiles! I love collecting fabrics, especially old fabrics and those that have been mended. I love the fact that the same piece of fabric can be used for many different things. I love to make things, especially clothes, from fabric that has been used for other things.  I love the ‘fabric’ of nature and the infinite beauty of things that surround us. Especially during this year of lockdown, despite knowing the place where I live very well, I have explored my own local area as never before and seeing things with fresh eyes.  As Dorothy Caldwell says, she is interested in landmarks and places, she is also interested in the stories of textiles and the people that have used them before.  Even the old book I had been using as a sketchbook in the earlier exercises, The Victorian Kitchen Garden, had been used for a purpose very different to the one I was using it for.

Stage 2 – Textiles-inspired Translation

My vision for this final exercise was to create a ‘grid’ of 8 individual blocks on a pice of hessian and fill each one with a different material and/or technique. I used my favourite material to create the grid – yarn. The yarn I used was some of my own handspun yarn, a handspun yarn I had bought in Chile, and a commercial yarn I had bought in New Zealand. I laid the yarn in a grid out over a piece of hessian, and stitched it down by hand. I was inspired by Dorothy Caldwell’s use of grids to identify her own personal landmarks, and to honour the early surveyors of Canada – those who have gone before. I wanted to start with my home, not just the area where I live, but literally my own back garden, where I have my shed studio. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any photographs of the grid before I added the individual pieces, but hopefully you’ll be able to see it properly on the photographs of the finished sketchbook at the end. My intention was originally that the grid could be folded up, like a map, and opened out to reveal the individual panels, but with the delicateness of some of the panels, it just became one big “sketchbook”. But I deliberately didn’t make the grids to be of equal size.

I wanted to honour the space which nurtures and supports me but also to link it to the wider world experiences I have had, and to show that nothing exists in isolation. I also wanted to honour the origins of the things I have used in this sketchbook, but also to provide evidence that there are always new possibilities and each item can be used in different ways. This year of pandemic has, for me, highlighted the need to re-evaluate how I live and to find greater depth and meaning to what it means to feel safe and to live a more a meaningful life. 

So the first thing I did was to collect some of the soil from my garden where I have spent a great deal of time over the past year! For the first time ever I was glad it was clay, as this would make it more malleable! I then ‘spread’ it onto a piece of cartridge paper with a flat knife and made a random shape in the middle of the paper.  I then loosely span a small amount of wool, from a fleece which was given to me this summer by a local farmer from a farm very close to my home. I have walked across his land for years, but this year it has become so much more important to me, and I have taken the time to get to know the farmer better and also to engage more in the activity on the farm, including the shearing – hence the gift of a fleece once he found out that I spin!  Also on the farm is a lovely old fallen tree trunk which has always captured my imagination with its texture and swirls. So I used the piece of wool I had spun, and pressed it into the damp clay in an attempt to depict the tree.  Sadly, as I write this, I realise that I have never taken a photograph of this fallen tree – I have the vision of it in my mind, but that doesn’t help you as the reader! As the clay is drying, it is falling off the page, so I think I will keep coming back to this as it will change and maybe become something completely different!

For the second panel I stuck down small locks of fleece and fibre which I had collected over the years. I choose these particular pieces, alpaca in two colours, and a Blue Faced Leicester sheep, as these animals are also on other areas of land very close to my home and have featured highly in my life this year as part of my daily walks. I encompassed the locks within a loop of the handspun fleece.  I also added some of the fleece whirls I made in the Materials section of this course, as they seemed to fit in very well, picking up on the natural colours and the texture of what can be achieved through manipulation of a beautiful natural resource.

The next panel was inspired by a skeletonised leaf which my dog brought into the house on her coat. It was beautiful. I had also been saving some pea pods from the peas we had grown in our garden over the summer.  Sadly I forgot to take “before” pictures, but I decided to paint them green with the gouache paint I had used earlier to depict the colour they had both once been and to recreate their former glory, but also to show that although there is a lot of, I will go as far as to say, misery, in the world at the moment, there is also the knowledge that nothing stays the same. Wow, that’s a bit deep, but as I sit here writing this, it is New Year’s Eve and a time for me, and I have no doubt many others, of reflection and anticipation. In normal times I would also say excitement, but the atmosphere is very different this year.

As I painted the once, perfectly formed pea pod, it started to curl and change shape, and became less and less like a pea pod! I then used a wooden block of a swirl which I had acquired from my travels in India and stamped a swirl pattern on the page, again inspired by the ‘circles’ of life, and using the same colour as the leaf and pea pod. I love the colour green; my studio shed is painted green on the inside and I look out onto my garden which at this time of year is predominantly green.  Green is the colour which is a constant in our landscape even though other colours pop up through the seasons.

For the next panel I tore a page out of my Victorian Garden sketchbook and decided to try the paint and fold technique I had used earlier – just to see what happened! My first instinct was to use the green colour again, but I decided to go for yellow instead ….. this didn’t work, or at least the beautiful designs it did make were just not visible, so I put some green over the top, and this time it worked. I wonder if I only see the patterns, which to me are like mountains and valleys and trails through the countryside, because I expect those things to be green?

So I decided to do another one and use blue instead. Because I was lazy I didn’t clean the brush …. I thought that the strong blue would ‘override the paler green, but as I was putting the blue onto the page, the green started to come through faintly. This time it worked and I loved the result! It looked like the sea with coral beds and swirling seaweed. Over Christmas I had been given a packet of seaweed ‘crisps’ and I loved the packet they were in, so I kept it long after the crisps had all gone. I decided to cut out the diving figure on the front of the packet – and again I forgot to take a photo before I started cutting (too eager to get started!) – and stuck it onto the blue seascape.  Again, this is linking me to my own story of travel and diving, as during our year of travel I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to scuba dive in some fabulous places. Also, the packaging was 100% recycled and recyclable and it was interesting to think what it had been in a former reincarnation.

I then turned to the fabrics I had decided to include. These were pieces of indigo dyed hand block printed fabrics that I had collected in India and also some pieces that I had created myself at a indigo dying shibori workshop I had attended; a beautiful green and purple cotton fabric handwoven by women in a women’s co-operative in Sri Lanka; a remnant of some curtain fabric which my friend had given me and from which I made a dress and finally, some scraps of Harris Tweed fabric I had begged from an art studio whilst I was on my most recent trip to Scotland in September.

For the indigo grid, I randomly cut the fabric into shapes to fit inside the grid. My intention was to stitch them together using Kantha stitching. However, I couldn’t work out how to keep them all together whilst I did that, so I glued them down to a piece of cartridge paper to keep them in place and then I used a single strand of the same handspun yarn I had used earlier and stitched them down.  I love the effect of Kantha stitching and I was very pleased with the result. I wanted to depict India as being chaotic (hence the randomly cut pieces of fabric) but being held together by custom, tradition and the skill of the artisan. Kantha is a very traditional craft in India, originally used by people from the poorer classes in Bangladesh as a way of using old fabrics – sari’s and dhoti’s in particular – layering them up to make blankets to keep warm. They would cut the sari’s and dhoti’s to size and then take the thread from the cut sides and sew the layers of fabric together using what is effectively a large running stitch over the layers. The stitches are worked in parallel lines to fasten all the layers together.  Because the fabrics they were using were old and had been washed many times, they were soft and the resulting blankets proved to be quite strong. In Sanskrit Kantha means rags, and pieces of cloth stitched together depicts family unity. It was also a collective occupation and women would tell each other stories as they worked together. Traditional Kantha embroidery is now not just in the remit of the poor. Each piece of work is a creation of self-expression and no two pieces are ever the same (how could they be!) and each piece is a labour of love. What started as a necessity to re-use old fabrics has evolved into an art form, much sought after all over the world.  I love this, and it fitted very clearly into my sketchbook vision.

For the green cotton fabric which I had bought in Sri Lanka from a Women’s Co-operative Organisation called Selyn, I decided to honour the women who had hand woven it. I took a piece of this beautiful fabric which is woven with different colour warp and weft threads giving an iridescent hue to the cloth, and laid it flat. I then randomly cut strips of the same fabric and loosely wove it together on top of the flat piece and then stitched down the edges with my sewing machine. Again, drawing from the (endless) inspiration of Dorothy Caldwell, I feel that this is honouring the women who made it and creating a really beautiful piece of cloth.

The next exercise, I cut a hole out of the middle of the grid square in the hessian and put a piece of the curtain fabric underneath and used a simple stitch to fix it to cover the hole.  I used another piece of my handspun wool, this time a dyed merino in autumn colours, which I had plyed with a natural white merino, to stitch it in place.  For this section I wanted to show visible mending using a fabric which has been used for another purpose – in this case curtains.  I drew in part on the work I had done in Section 3 Materials, when I stacked fabric and cut holes in to show the fabric underneath. Not quite the same result, but when I turned the fabric over to tie off the ends, the picture which jumped out at me was the European Union star logo. Again, I felt this was very poignant with Britain leaving the EU, and something that I had been thinking about a lot and connected my thinking with the ‘artwork’ I was creating, albeit completely unconsciously. I had thought about doing lots of different holes and using different stitches to secure the patching, but after considering it, I decided to leave it as it was, a single repaired hole.

My final piece was using the Harris Tweed fabric and I decided to attempt to depict a Scottish scene of sky, hills, lakes and heather. I laid the fabric pieces on top of each other in an attempt to obtain depth to the view and frayed the ends to depict a natural landscape collage. I stitched the pieces down in the most invisible way I could as I didn’t want the stitching to show in any way. This last panel I hoped linked the fabric produced by the inhabitants of the Scottish island, Harris, to the landscape of the Scottish Highlands which I have only recently visited.

Summary

Throughout this course, I have often felt constrained and restricted in my work – even though I know that this perceived restriction only comes from myself, and usually, once I’ve actually got started on an exercise, I have almost always achieved beyond my expectations. I’ve reflected on the grid design of this last sketchbook; was I subconsciously trying to constrain myself again by ‘compartmentalising’ the subjects? But even though I have produced what could be construed as “boxes”, I feel that each one has a link and the thread (yarn) which surrounds each grid, also brings the ideas together. And also, the idea of a sketchbook is to test out ideas and techniques which I have tried to do here. Any one of these grid pictures could be developed into a bigger piece. My initial thought in designing this grid system, was to fold the piece up so it could be opened like a book, but with the clay and leaf sections, if I did this, they would be destroyed, so it ended up as being left as a whole piece.

I have absolutely loved this part of the course and especially this final sketchbook exercise. I have been totally inspired by Dorothy Caldwell but what I’ve actually achieved in this exercise is only a fraction of what Dorothy Caldwell and this section of the course has inspired in me. I feel as if I’m buzzing with ideas as to what I can do with this – in fact over a few nights I’ve had difficulty getting off to sleep, not because I was worried about anything, but the sheer number of ideas which are buzzing round my head! I really feel now that this course is achieving what I wanted it to do, and that was to unleash my creativity. I always knew it was there, but it always felt just out of my reach.

My learning log is called my Textile Journey, and I’m reflecting how particularly poignant that title is, and that this journey will continue……