You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2011.
Hurray! I learnt how to do colour overlay’s in Photoshop last week and have been having the best fun ever since ‘colouring’ in. The possibilities are endless I tell you!
I don’t think any of these are award-winning wallpaper designs or anything. In fact I found it hard to conjure up colour ideas after designing the pattern in black and white. Luckily I’ve been pinning colours to my Colour Palettes Pinterest board for a while now, so I had a bank of inspiration to go to.
I remember learning to drive and finding steering unexpectedly tricky. Now I jump in the car and co-ordinate all the tasks without even thinking about it. And so it will be with this I’m sure. Off to obsess some more with colour options, placement choices, scaling, repeats, texture…
Thank you to:
for letting me show your work here as my colour inspiration.
One of our tasks this week on the ABSPD course was to loosen up and get mark making and to even make some ‘brushes’ to mark make with.
And that’s how these crazy looking objects came about.
It made me realise how stuck in my own way of working I’ve been because when I suspended disbelief and just had a go, I came up with some very useful work.
It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle at the moment with each piece being created for the whole picture. I can see how useful these abstracts will be for layering into patterns as backgrounds.
I am itching for some colour though. 
Soon…
Just popping in to some you some repeat patterns that I’ve been working up a little from last weeks drawings.
They are still at quite a crude stage but I am learning more everyday.
Can’t wait for colour week!
I find it really hard to believe that it is twenty years since I was a fresh faced art student eagerly setting out in the creative world to study Textile Design as it was then known (now it’s Surface Pattern Design). I love working with children, but how I became an infant teacher would take a lot of telling and probably a bottle of wine, so suffice it to say that teaching was Plan B. A a very good, enjoyable and worthwhile Plan B it has been.
I heard a phrase the other day which I quite like; someone described them self as a ‘recovered artist’ which is a bit how I found myself three years ago. However good Plan B is, untapped creativity just doesn’t go away.
This past week has been Week 1 of The Art and Business of Surface Patten Design and it has been great for me. I feel like I have come home again.
We were asked to choose and find a shape in environments around us or on objects and draw them small, large, reflected, microscopic, in outline, in silhouette, in detail, whole, simplistically and on…I cracked open a new sketchbook (first mistake – A4 would have been easier to scan from than A3) and got lost for hours drawing variations.
I absolutely love having reminders and prompts to look, work and think differently. Tonight I made a brush from rubber bands! More on that another time and I’ll show you some patterns I mocked up.
I feel like I have been very distracted from here of late – good and bad distractions.
The best and happiest of these was the beginning of The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course, which began last Monday. I’ve done a few online classes in the last year and this is THE BEST! It’s really beautifully and thoughtfully designed and delivered (we even got sent these postcards as a welcome before class began) and I am having A BALL I tell you. But I’ll show you more later in the week, promise.
Yesterday I amazed myself by not just being out of bed in time to visit a local craft fair but in purchasing nearly all our Christmas presents for family whilst there :0 Shocking I know. Shocking because it’s still November. Shocking because I wasn’t expecting it to happen that way. Shocking because I unexpectedly got ahead of the Christmas game. Shocking because we then went onto a second fair and did the same again.
kitschmyart.com
But what a great way to shop. We got some lovely items but the best part was supporting local craft people. It felt so good to hand over cash to a Designer Maker rather than to a corporation. I may be a changed woman.
I don’t think I’ll be alone in admitting that I sit (knitting) in front of Kirstie’s Handmade Britain, tutting and eye rolling at the heavy weather she can make of what seems like a simple craft project.
Take the second episode where she worked with Clare Cole on an embroidered card. It looked easy peasy, just some cutting and stitching. Just drawing with thread right? How hard could it be?
Well I can now say that it’s harder than it looks having given it a shot myself.
Sorry Kirstie – I shall no longer be so smug about trying something new and being good at it.
More teacups!
Am I boring you with all these teacups? I’m not sure.
I’m having great fun but do you still want to see them?
These are the last for now (although I must warn you that I’ve put a Wedgwood teacup on my Christmas wish list.)
The thing is that I’ve painted backgrounds since, been Photo-shopping elements and playing around.
I could still be showing you teacups into 2011!
What a lovely chilled Saturday I have enjoyed.
Spent most of the day in the studio tinkering with things that I’m yet to show you. Suffice to say my excitement levels have been up and down, but all will be revealed in time.
Discovered loads of new-to-me music on a spare MAC that was brought home from the studio.Thanks Simon wherever you are now – you have great taste!
Enjoyed nine hours of knowing exactly where my 15-year-old son was – completing his first day at his new Saturday job.
Took Lottie for a walk in a new-to-her wood. Suffice to say her excitement levels were just up, up and up until it was time to get a full on cold wash down with shampoo. Then she stood still. Head hung. That’s the downside of being the dog version of an off-road vehicle Lottie.
Been excited to set virtual foot for the first time in the new classroom for this course which begins on Monday. You can still register of your interested too.
Hope you’re having a great weekend too.
If I remember correctly this is one of my nans cups from her tea service.
This is a real favourite to paint.
It reminds me of playing shops with her, the smell of her leather handbag and the scent of Polo mints when she opened it, the dark dining room and the noise of the kitchen lino underfoot.
It’s also got a great shape, flowers in all the right places and to top it off it requires a nice fancy lick of gold ink for the edging.
I don’t think my knitting has the Xfactor (especially not where I added a stitch and knit a beautiful hole in the stocking stitch!) It’s more a case of knitting with the Xfactor as in making good use of the three hours per week that I am watching and feeling guilty of such time wasting pleasure.
The pattern is from Thrown Together by Kim Hargreaves and the yarn was a sale bargain last Christmas; Rowan Classic Yarns RY Silk Wool DK. Ooh – it’s 8 o’clock got to go and start watching and clicking! Byeeee.
