More on lines

After my last post, and mentioning Dianne Firth, I have been thinking about other quilters who predominantly use lines in their work. Here are a few examples of ones I know about.

Margery Goodall

Nellie Durand her lake series is a good example of lines (strips of fabric) magically blended together by the addition of quilting lines. If you have ever doubted the transformative effect of quilting, look at her before and after pictures of her lake pieces.

Judy Turner - Judy is a Canberra based quilter - unfortunately she doesn't have a website, and I could find very few images of her work on the web. She is mainly known for her use of colour - she was one of the very early practitioners of 'colourwash' style quilts. But my favourites are the pieces she makes from couched woollen yarn. I could only find these on the web. But my absolute favourites are her landscapes/seascapes. I couldn't find any images of those on the net, but I do have one from a postcard I purchased of her work at an exhibition some time ago.

And Lisa Call's work.

I am sure there are lots more - send me some links of your favourites!

Elements and Principles of Design Course

Oh dear, so much for my resolution to blog more regularly. Never mind, I will go for quality not quantity. I have been excitedly looking forward to starting my on line design course, and it began this past weekend - Liz took pity on us all gagging to get going and posted the class notes early.

The first unit looks at lines and shapes (elements) and balance (principle). If you had asked me last week what is more interesting, lines or shapes, I would have immediately said shapes – well of course!! But having taken some time to create different lines, to look for lines in the landscape – both natural and man-made - and thinking about lines – what we use them for, what meaning do they convey etc. I have decided that lines are pretty interesting all on their own.

Liz kicked off by repeating an observation she had heard that line is the least used element by art quilters. I am still thinking about that. Although I immediately thought of an exception – Dianne Firth, Canberra-based quilter who is a master of using line in landscape abstractions.

We started off doing the sort of different line studies that I am sure you are familiar with if you have any books on design – these were done quickly, using Photoshop and my graphics tablet – feel more comfortable with that than a pen or pencil, besides which I didn’t have a chisel pointed marker, which we were supposed to use.

Then I followed Liz’s advice to pay attention to the world around me and took my digital camera on my lunchtime walks and found an amazing array of ‘lines’. That made me start to think about lines. I started thinking of so many different types of lines and uses of line imagery in our speech that I did a mind map: click to enlarge. I was surprised to find how many types of lines there are in our world – literal and figurative.

There are real lines – telephone lines, pipelines, railway lines, production lines, power lines, even fishing lines and clothes lines - that serve a useful purpose and make our lives easier. Then there are the ‘imaginary’ lines that help us make sense of the world. Lines are fundamental to the way we perceive our world – think of the horizon line.

Seeing it skewed immediately produces a visceral reaction (literally making us feel sea sick). Our instinctive reaction to the second picture is to tilt our head to try and view the horizon line as a horizontal. We divide our world with lines – the lines of latitude and longitude; the line around the centre of the earth that divides north from south (although technically, these lines are in fact shapes, as they join up to form a circle), the north south line in the Pacific that determines where one day ends and another begins. We superimpose contour lines to try and make sense of our weather and the very ground beneath our feet.

Our days are ruled by lines – deadlines, timelines, guidelines.

We use them to delineate space – to point out where we may go and keep us on track

or where we cannot go

We use them to show the way and to create order they can help keep us safe

In the built environment they are often straight and strong and provide structure and strength

Things lined up look orderly. 'Stepping out of line' denotes rebellion, dissent, lack of co-operation – although visually, one element slightly out of line with the others looks much more interesting.

My absolute favourite discovery is ‘desire lines’. These are lines created in a landscape by people (or animals) walking a particular way. In the old days, these well worn track eventually developed into formal roads and routes – hence the higgledy piggeldy routes of laneways and roads in medieval towns. In the modern world, in the built environment, a desire line emerges when the landscape designer makes pathways take a certain route, but the people using the space decide otherwise. I like the notion of people ‘voting with their feet’ and silently rebelling against a structure being forced onto them that doesn’t suit their needs. There is probably a whole series of quilts in there – formal structures overlaid with slightly haphazard, organic lines that refuse to submit to the underlying structures. I’ll have to go away and make some notes and drawings in my notebook.

Yes, I have a notebook – at last. This course makes me keep one, and a good thing too.

And let's not forget nature - she creates a whole set of her own lines -usually much more organic than the regimented ones that man uses to try and impose order. I will have to find more examples of natural lines to add to my image collection - these just reflect what are in my immediate surroundings at home and work.

We also looked at the design principle of Balance this week. Personally I have always found formal symmetrical balance to be incredibly dull and boring – might be okay in classic
Greek buildings, but in quilts and textiles, I find it a big yawn. That is probably why I love scrap quilts – a barely contained riot of colour and shapes. The idea of making a whole quilt using the same block over and over and over and over again……………..hardly bears thinking about.

So asymmetry is definitely my preferred way to work. And I paid attention to radial balance,

which I probably haven’t taken a lot of notice of before. We had to do our exercises on 4” x 6” cards – I found that radial balance didn’t look right in the rectangular format – it seems to look

better in a square format.

Normally I would shy away from making a quilt or anything much in a square format, I suppose because I particularly like landscapes and they just don’t work in squares. But I can see now that if I HAD to work in a square format, then doing a piece with radial balance would work really well.

So, that is week 1. We are on to colour next week – yippee!!

colour and design play with photoshop

I am continuing - slowly - to work my way through my Photoshop course. I am looking forward to doing Liz Berg's online design class, which starts on 21 Jan, and in preparation was going through some of the abstract design exercises in recent editions of Quilting Arts magazine. Combined with this was the spooky experience of second guessing Sharon Bs colour scheme for her Take it further challenge, and it all came together in a session playing in Photoshop.

I decided to use the colour scheme chosen by Sharon for the TIF challenge and playing with it using simple shapes in PS. You can replicate the colours from Sharon's sample exactly by typing in the number at the top left hand side of each colour into the # box in the colour picker window of PS (to open the colour picker, just click on the foreground colour square towards the bottom of the main toolbar). Then create a document with a shape for each colour and save it as your reference. When you want to do some design work, or just play around seeing the effect of using different proportions of the colours in a design, open a new document and have your original which has a sample of each colour open alongside. Use the eye dropper tool to touch the colour you want from the original and that will set the foreground colour in your colour picker to that colour. Then just play with whichever tool you want to create shapes and fill them with the desired colour/s.

Here I just used the rectangular and ellipse marquee tools to create shapes in the different colours, on a textured background. No great design principles at play here!

Next I had a go at creating unity through proximity.

In this one I wanted to create a sense of movement, with the triangular shapes falling across the page. I also played with transparency with the pale yellow overlays. You can do this by varying the opacity.



The very first image I made using the rectangular marquee tool, then hit it with a filter to distort the shapes and make them more organic - I also used a gradient filter for the background. BTW all of this can be done even if you only have Photoshop elements (I tried it on version 2, which is pretty old!). I don't know why, but I feel more comfortable doing these sort of design exercises on the computer, rather than with real fabric bits. I guess I don't feel that I am 'wasting' fabricd - and I can always hit the 'undo' button. I also don't flatter myself that any of these are great examples of design! But as I said in my New Year's Eve post, I am resolved to follow Rayna Gillman's advice to accept the crap quota - so the more I do, the better I will get.

DISCLAIMER: Warning - playing in Photoshop can be a serious timewaster - don't blame me if you don't get the laundry done and dinner is late!

Sharon Bs 2008 challenge

I am sure many of you (however many that is) follow Sharon B's blog and participated in TAST. I signed up for TAST this time last year but only lasted two weeks - I just couldn't keep up (refer to previous post about not having enough time - and whining about it!). Anyway, I decided not to actually sign up for the new one, as I didn't want to be a repeat offender (although I had every intention of checking it out regularly). So imagine my surprise when I checked out her blog (thanks to my friend Gay, who reminded me it started today) to find that this month's double barrelled challenge is to explore the idea of admiration of another - who do you admire, and why? and/or a colour challenge.
Check out my last post - aren't I amazing! While not actually having signed up for the challenge I managed to complete and post a piece on that very theme, using that very colour scheme, and all before Sharon even announced it - now, for my next trick......................!!!

Looking forward - looking back

First, looking back. Today is the last day of the year and this day is always tinged with sadness for me, as it is the anniversary of my mother's death - seven years ago now. I have been feeling restless and annoyed that I am not producing anything, while at the same time whining endlessly about not having time to do anything. So today I resolved to make a small piece in the style of Lesley Riley's fragments to honour my mother.
I wanted to use some of the rust dyeing I have done recently -so used a piece of silk organza and some wide silk ribbon that I quickly rusted up. I transferred a favourite photo of her aged about 3, with teddy, using solvent, onto some smooth shiny fabric to get a clear print. Then I had to decide what fabrics to put with it. One of the limitations of rust dyeing is that it is orange - no two ways about it. I had previously paired some rust dyes with blue, the complement of orange, but didn't want to use blue in this piece, so was scratching my head, when my eye fell upon an article by Lesley Riley in a recent CPS on rust dyeing. She had done a piece in rust dyes, purple and aqua and I suddenly realised I should have been thinking of a triadic colour scheme - which would give me much more scope.
So, I rummaged in the scrap bag and quickly found some pieces. I had a beautiful piece of lace that I was determined to use, but alas no matter what I did it just didn't seem to work. In the end I discarded it in favour of the scallop trim which seemed to fit better. Along the bottom are five little flowers cut out of copper tissue with one of those little stamper cutter thingies you get in scrapbooking stores. On to the rust dyed ribbon I transferred her family motto '"to the valiant heart, nothing is impossible". In retrospect, I should have used a slightly larger font, but it does invite the viewer to move in close to read it. All in all, I am happy with this piece, and glad I just told myself to 'do it' and stop procrastinating.

As for looking forward - I plan to take more of the 'just get on with it' approach in the coming year. I am signed up for Liz Berg's class and she has a good line in just do it, work quickly, produce the work. I also have realised I have to accept Rayna Gillman's sage advise to accept the crap quota. Apart from a tendency to over analyse, I also tend not to want to start something until I am sure I am going to get it exactly right. This is a terrible trap, because of course half the time I don't start, and when I do, and the end result is not perfect, I get very despondent. Rayna's advice is accept that there will always be a crap quota - do the work - lots of it - sift through the crap and find the gems - the more you do, the more gems you'll get.

So - that's what I will try and do more of in 2008 - and if you hear me starting to whine about not having enough time, feel free to give me a very sound telling off.

Happy New Year

Book review

I just love books, they are always a main feature of my birthday/Christmas gifts. One I received this year is Alysn Midgelow-Marsden's new book on working with metals. I settled down with a cuppa to enjoy it and was immediately alarmed to read the dedication "I would like to acknowledgement the many people....." - oh dear, I thought, that doesn't augur well for proof-reading.

With advances in technology, self-published books are becoming more popular, and are particularly noticeable in the textile art world (well, that's the one I inhabit, so that is what I have noticed - for all I know they are all the rage with the antique toy train collector set too). There is nothing wrong with self-published books per se, but it is important that basic standards aren't disregarded in the process. In my view, that is what has happened with this book.

Basic proof-reading would have picked up straightforward typographical errors, including the one noted above. The author needs reporting to the apostrophe protection society - apart from two very doubtful instances on the cover there is a real clanger at the top of page 8, and assorted other superfluous examples. Like Joan, I found the conceit of using lines from Shakespeare's sonnets (real, or imagined) highly irritating - it adds nothing.

Most of all the book would have benefited from the attention of a good editor. Some of the sentences are so long, and syntax so tortured I had to re-read them several times to understand what was being said. A good editor would also have known to use 'complement' instead of 'compliment', and someone with an eye for design and layout would have provided the much needed white space that Joan points out is missing. The book lacks a tight, logical structure. If you are new to using metals in textile work, this will be a confusing introduction. Copper curls are mentioned on page nine - in bold letters - I have no idea why, but aren't illustrated until page 34.

Not all the pictures are captioned, so you aren't always sure what you are looking at. I particularly noticed the lack of a suppliers list at the back - something commonly found in most books of this type. The only supplier mentioned is an English based company called Art Van Go, which I have heard of. But this is little use to Australian/NZ or North American readers, who, I am sure, would have appreciated a supplier in their neck of the woods. Then I realised that the book, which written by AMM is 'in conjunction with' the owner of Art Van Go.

On the positive side, I enjoyed being introduced to the work of other artists in the medium who I had not encountered before, and a couple of the resolved pieces appealed, partcularly the one called 'on sea's rich gems'. On balance, however, I didn't feel that I got anymore from this book than I already had from Maggie Grey's "Paper, Metal, Stitch" which suffers from none of the aforementioned shortcomings.

Christmas treats - and turkey dyed fabric

The smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns heralds Christmas morning at our house - it just wouldn't be Christmas without them! Except my girls have never been partial to cinnamon, so I make one batch with a rich chocolate filling - they disappear so fast, you wouldn't believe it!

Later in the day we have more traditional fare - which for us, means turkey. Except I can't be bothered with a whole turkey, so just cook a whole breast on the bone. This year I stumbled across advice from Stephanie Alexander, a renowned Australian chef and author, on how to cook the perfect turkey. You wet some cheesecloth and soak it in a herbed butter mixture, then wrap the turkey. Bake for 30 mins per kg and rest for half an hour before removing the cloth. Here is what it looks like straight out of the oven. Thos wrinkles are the cloth.

When you peel it off, you have a beautifully cooked turkey - no basting!! I did keep adding a cup of water to the pan (the turkey was sitting on a rack), to stop the juices burning, and I ended up with a beautiful thick rich turkey flavoured jelly, after I had drained off the fat. That went into the gravy. So, very successful, and it kept the oven clean as there was no spattering like you get when you baste.

I washed the cloth to see it if would keep the gorgeous mahogany coloured marks, and it did, but the cloth disintegrated. Shame - I thought I might have discovered turkey dyeing to complement my rust dyeing!