mark making textile artist, stitching by hand, thread, embroidery, stitch journal

Winter: studio time

So far my plans for smarter working this year are going well, and I’ve found a little time here and there for some creative play. I’m not entirely comfortable calling it ‘studio time’ because I don’t have a studio and also I’m not ‘an artist’ in the establishment sense of the word. Middle-aged woman tearing up paper in the spare bedroom doesn’t really sound all that engaging though.

I guess we are all artists, in our own way.

I’ve been working on (playing with) collaging the pages of an old 6″ x 8″ notebook, using my own painted papers. You learn how to do this in my Painted Collage Paper and Mark-Making course, by the way. A little self-promotion there from my Marketing Manager (that’s me).

I’m intending a celebration of winter in this sketchbook. If you’ve been with me a while, you’ll know it’s my favourite season, and January is my favourite month. It’s cold, it’s still dark, it’s grey, it’s quiet, and nothing much happens, and all of that suits me perfectly. And we’re half way through it already. It’s ok, I like spring too.

For now all I’ve done is cover the pages with printed/painted papers. I’ll go back in to each page with either more paint, mark-making, more collage, or some text.

I’m really enjoying the muted colour palette.

There is, however, a slightly perplexing problem. I appear to have developed contact dermatitis, but only this week, and only on my right hand. Since I’ve been handling paper with both hands, my prime suspect is the acrylic medium I’ve used to stick the papers down. It seems odd to suddenly develop an allergy to something you’ve been using for years, but I can’t think what else it could be. I’ll try some (biodegradable) gloves and see if that solves the problem.

Wearing gloves is probably sensible in any case when working with paints and inks.

It’s been a good few months since I made time for activities like this, and I realise how important and restorative it is. I’m being very strict about my working hours (no social media at weekends, no working beyond 5pm, and a weekly half-day for creative exploring).

So far so good. Wish me luck with the gloves!

Book cover (2)

This week’s sketchbook cover almost made itself. I had a quarter yard of this glorious Marcia Derse ‘wabi sabi polka dot’ cotton quilting fabric that turned out to be exactly the right size for this one. When something is already the right size, I tend to take it as a sign that it was meant to be.

The light isn’t great here today, so the colours in the photos are a bit greyer than in real life.

Marcia Derse quilting cotton, wabi sabi polka dot

This sketchbook is quite big, with pages about 14″ x 11″ (roughly A3-ish). Unable to find what I wanted, I ended up making my own using some large sheets of 250 gsm mixed media paper and some very helpful online bookbinding tutorials. I even added header tape and a bookmark ribbon. The hard casing is just cardboard packaging covered with brown paper, which is why it needed a more decorative cover.

This book is for mixed media paint experiments, which I’d like to do more of when I manage to find the time.

All I did with the fabric was lay it on a calico backing to stabilise it and then outline each of the circular shapes with running stitch in a dark perle 12 cotton thread. I also added some straight stitches in very pale grey to the plain dark shapes along the spine.

It’s just a simple slip case, so it forms its own useful pockets in the front and back inner covers.

I’m not often attracted to something this bright, but I really like everything about this fabric – the varied mark-making behind the shapes, the painterly/collage style, the patterns in each circle and the colour palette. I wish I’d designed it.

I love being surprised by fabric. Looking forward to getting started in this one.

Book cover (1)

I’ve been having a tidy-up in my workroom and trying to round up All the Sketchbooks. Turns out there are a few more than I thought.

Some are complete, some are nearly complete, and some are completely empty. I do like a well-dressed sketchbook, so you know what’s going to happen next.

I have a little 6″ square Seawhite sketchbook (140 gsm cartridge paper) where I put paint scraps – leftover paint from another project, not enough for a new thing but too much to pour away. Then I go back in and add marks/other media, with no real plan. However hard I try to keep each sketchbook to a theme, they always end up being a fairly random collection of colours and marks.

The cover for this one is made from hand-dyed silk organza and dress net, roughly cut into circles and rings, layered onto some plain calico. Then I’ve covered it with very sheer nylon chiffon and stitched some simple lines and marks over the surface to hold it all together. I’m very bad at stitching text so I’ve sandwiched a small piece of handwritten card on the spine between the chiffon and some net.

mark-making sketchbook cover (front, detail)

mark-making sketchbook cover, in progress

If anyone’s interested in the contents, here are a few pages showing how simple it can be:

I recently got some Roman Szmal watercolours to try, just a starter set of five, and I really like the Caput Mortuum and Aquarius Green:

Roman Szmal caput mortuum and Aquarius green with fine black and white pens

Mostly this book (so far) consists of various rings and circles, hence the design on the cover.

watercolours with walnut ink, marks made with cotton bud (q-tip) and cocktail stick

watercolour with Derwent drawing pencils

There are lots more books needing covers, so there’s more than enough here to keep me busy over the coming months. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, do you have long/ongoing projects planned for the coming winter?

Time Present

Recently I’ve been able to make a start on some new work, and the process of this modest beginning has been a truly joyful thing. I hadn’t realised how much I’ve been needing to do this.

So far, it’s about time, experience and memory. I’m beginning with the opening lines from T S Eliot’s Four Quartets as inspiration:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

What a vast line that is: All time is unredeemable. It’s irreversible and we can never get it back. The only time we can be sure of is time past, present in memory only.

The sketchbook I’m using for the wet media is a Fabriano aquarelle A4 sketchbook, 200gsm pages (no affiliation). Just firm enough for taking wet paint but not so stiff that the pages don’t bend.

Of course it had to have a cover:

And some details from its pages:

sketchbook page, oil pastel resist with watercolour and ink

white acrylic ink as resist with watercolour wash over the top

Mostly I’ve been exploring using watercolour, ink and collage. The above layered stitched work in progress is based on this paper collage:

I’ve been doing very loose sketchbook work, which is a great thing. I like the way it can be more a physical than cerebral process. I like to paint standing up rather than sitting because it somehow enables you to inhabit the process more, and to move around over the page more easily. It seems to generate and capture more energy. Drawing and painting can involve your whole arm as well as your hand, making expressive abstract marks and laying down whatever colours speak to you in that moment.

These are four separate sketches (unintentionally four quartets, perhaps), using inks, watercolours, and basic mark-making techniques, with no preconceived ideas about where it’s headed or what it’s going to be. Not my usual colour palette, but each one valuable in its own way, and time well spent. Even if you make something you don’t like much, it’s always worthwhile because you learn something. I think all of these might translate to cloth and stitch.

watercolour and ink over masking fluid resist

Also some calmer blocks and stripes, just to see.

It’s exciting to see these colours, shapes and compositions emerging. It may or may not lead somewhere, but for now it’s enough in itself. I have much more to read, and more blank sketchbook pages to fill, and it’s utterly delicious.

April

I say it every time, but where does it go?

This year’s overall plan was for it to look something like an aerial view of fields, a visual depiction of time and space. Each block is time taking up space, a few stitches marking the minutes that make up a life as well as a dimensional area on the cloth.

I don’t generally set out to depict ‘an event’ or anything representing what happened that day. It’s usually just a few stitches to mark the passing of that time.

It’s not meant to be a way of remembering the minutiae of daily life, but a bigger picture of the way time (mostly) passes without us even noticing. It’s the opposite of ‘wasting time’, if there can be such a thing. It’s about noticing and honouring time, because time is what allows us to be present here and now.

April detail, random swirly back stitch with silk perle 8

And really there’s no such thing as ‘now’. As soon as you’ve formed the concept of ‘now’ the moment has passed, to be replaced by another, different moment. And you can’t grasp that one either before it disappears to be replaced by another. The moments continue, if we’re lucky, for some years until they cease. Time really is all we have, from our limited human perspective. It’s days in a life, unbelievably fragile yet tenacious.

I don’t know anything about cosmic time, or astrophysics, or geographical time, but I do know time definitely seems to speed up as you get older. Stitching it down doesn’t make any difference, but I suppose it probably makes me feel a bit better about it. I still don’t know where it goes.

If you’re interested in learning how to make something similar, my online course is available here.

Autos-optos

During a routine dental check-up some years ago, my Greek dentist once caused me some alarm by announcing that he was going to begin his autopsy. Noticing my rabbit-in-headlights expression, he calmly explained the etymology – the Greek translation of the word is something like ‘seen for myself’. I’m not the most relaxed dental patient and it was helpful to have this (slightly nervous) laugh at the time.

And of course, seeing for yourself is always the best way to learn. I drew some masking fluid on a page of my colour palettes sketchbook before adding watercolour. And – surprise – it doesn’t work.

note to self: masking fluid doesn’t work on this paper

You can see where it was, and it does act as a resist of sorts, but it doesn’t rub off in the normal way when the paint is dry. It lies underneath as a separate layer and sinks into the paper rather than sitting on the surface. I’ve added some pen marks over the top to enhance the effect here and there. I don’t know if it’s because this paper hasn’t been sized, or whether the surface is just too soft. The reason doesn’t really matter; the fact is it doesn’t work as I’d expected. But now I know, having seen for myself.

watercolour and pen on soft cotton rag paper

As always, I can see some of these designs working in textiles with stitch, but for now it’s just an exercise on paper. It’s been a hectic week, and paint on paper is one of my best ways to relax and recover some equilibrium.

I use a separate small square sketchbook for testing paint colours before committing to the thing in progress, and I really like the little abstract compositions that happen purely by accident:

testing, testing – and yes, masking fluid DOES work on cartridge paper

Another long bank holiday weekend here in the UK – whatever your plans are, enjoy some time out.

A beginning

Daily paint doodles have produced these little pictograms, influenced by prehistoric art and the images found on rocks and in caves everywhere in the ancient world:

Daily paint sketches, watercolour on cotton paper with pen added

Prehistoric art is something I’ve always found really interesting. Not so much the figurative drawings of the various beasts fleeing from human hunters, but more the abstract mark-making and simple patterns. They seem to crop up everywhere from the same kind of time. Shapes like circles, spirals, wavy lines, squares, short lines – basic marks. These are the marks I make most often in my sketchbooks too, and a lot of the shapes will translate very effectively from pen to needle and thread.

I’ve prepared a few long cloths, about 10” x 40-ish”, for adding timeless marks with thread. Just to see where it goes. I’m using linen or cotton as the backing fabric, and brushed cotton in place of batting. The top layers are strips of hand-dyed silk, cotton, and linen.

I’m beginning with circular blanket stitch on hand-dyed textured silk fabric and looking forward to following the thread.

Circular blanket stitch on textured silk

Custom colour palette

I’ve been looking for a set of good quality watercolours but haven’t been able to find anything that doesn’t include a lot of colours I would never use. After falling down a few online watercolour rabbit holes, I found that you can make your own half-pan set from tubes.

Imagine the possibilities! I have quite a few little tubes already – probably far too many, but colour is too enticing to resist, and I will use it all eventually. I’m not a painter, but I do like to paint. Getting all the tubes out feels like too much hassle and mess for a quick sketchbook page, so making a pan set with the colours I’ve already got is the perfect solution.

Sketchbook page in progress: handmade sketchbook made with deckle-edge cotton paper. Drawn details are Posca paint pens and Signo uniball white pen

You can buy empty watercolour tins quite cheaply, and many of them come with empty half pans ready to fill from tubes.

Empty pan set with samples of colours I’ve already got

The result is a perfect set of watercolours, conveniently in a metal box that takes seconds to set up.

There’s a lot of green, but then that’s what I like. There’s a mix of brands here – mostly Daniel Smith, with some Winsor & Newton, Schmincke, and Jacksons. They all sit quite happily together and mix well. Some set harder than others, but it seems to make no difference to the paint itself. The Jacksons paints still haven’t set hard after a few days, but this palette lives in a drawer and won’t be carried around, so I don’t think it matters if it doesn’t set.

I’d like to spend a bit of each day on sketchbook work, and this convenient set-up will make it so much easier to restart a daily practice. I’ve been doing some doodles just to see what happens and already they look like possible textile/stitch samples.

This is what Sunday mornings are for, right?

Klee sketchbook

Sketchbook cover, Klee’s 1922 painting of a little fir tree. Layered sheers and hand-dyed fabrics with simple hand stitch and applique

The sketchbook cover is finished – despite all the careful measuring and re-measuring along the way, I am always really surprised when it fits.

I have sketchbooks in various sizes, mostly made from papers that I collate and bind myself. This one is a bought spiral bound 12” square one, which is a good size for exploring mark-making and for holding samples of stitched work.

First page: A Klee medley, or Klee’s best bits

Sketchbook page exploring blocks of colour

‘Coming to bloom’ is a pastel drawing made by Klee in 1934, on black paper. I made a quick sketch with pastels, also on black paper – the fixative has dulled the colours a little, so I made a duplicate sketch in watercolour on a white background.

Then the fun really started. I made a little stitched sample on a scrap of black cotton fabric, only about 4” square or so, exploring ways of creating stitched blocks.

4” square sample. From the left: needle weaving with hand-dyed threads; rough satin stitch with 2 strands of DMC floss; sketchy long and short stitch with one strand of DMC floss

I really like the woven blocks. The satin stitch blocks have floats that are too long to be practical, but I also quite like the irregular sketchy effect of the straight stitch sample on the right. I worked the samples from right to left, so the weaving was the last thing I did.

Not quite sure where all this is going, but then some journeys are about exploration and discovery rather than arrival.

A play day with Klee

Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who has purchased fabric and thread – it’s now all on its way to you. I hope it arrives soon and that you can do something lovely with it.

I’m back in the day job from tomorrow so I’m having a little me time today, working (playing) in the second of two sketchbooks I have on the go at the moment. The first sketchbook is about ancient marks, standing stones, and lines on the land. The second is a study of work by Paul Klee, one of my favourite artists. I have often registered the affinity that Klee’s work seems to have with textiles. One of the first textile wall hangings I ever made was an interpretation of Klee’s ‘Fire at Evening’. Many of his paintings are basically patchwork, and many of his drawn lines look very like stitched marks.

This painting looks exactly like a stitch sampler to me, and reminds me of my own stitch journal.

Paul Klee, ‘Rhythms of a Plantation’, 1925

Drawing based on Rhythms of a Plantation, 1925, 10” square

The marks on Klee’s painting ‘Clarification’ also look exactly like running stitch or kantha stitching.

Sketchbook page, watercolour and pencil, exploring lines and marks

What particularly interests me about Klee is his work linking painting with music. He thought of music as having similar principles to painting, particularly in terms of composition – and of course we use the same word to describe an arrangement of musical notes and an arrangement of painted or drawn shapes on a page. I like the layering in his polyphonic works, which are usually a series of regular painted marks over a patchwork-like background. To me this is very like a quilt – the patchwork ground tells one story, and the quilted lines on the surface tell another story, like two voices singing in harmony.

The stitched sample is an exploration of how tiny bits of fabric would look if applied to a textile surface. I’ve used felt in this first foray, simply because it’s easy to cut up into small pieces and it doesn’t fray. I’ve experimented with different ways of attaching the little tiles (for scale, the bits of felt are about a quarter of an inch square).

Tiny pieces of felt applied to vintage linen

Probably my favourite is the invisible method (top right), but I’m not confident that it would be stable enough. I took the needle and thread horizontally through the centre of the felt, like threading a bead, and then down into the base fabric. I suspect over time it might split the layers, in which case the top layer could peel off.

Whether any of it works or not is immaterial today, really. It’s just nice to have some time to think about the possibilities.

Tag: mark making

Winter: studio time

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Book cover (2)

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Book cover (1)

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Time Present

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April

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Autos-optos

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A beginning

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Custom colour palette

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Klee sketchbook

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A play day with Klee

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