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Saturday 19 July 2014

Where has the time gone?

Gosh, I can't believe it has been 3 weeks since I last posted. It has been a hectic few weeks of working on my City and Guilds assignments and chasing my own tail.

Here are some of the C&G things I have been up to as part of my Artybird course.

Do you recall the "Alien Signpost" piece I started a couple of months back? After much debate (no two people had the same idea about how I should cut it or hang it) I settled on the portrait version with the "torn paper" edge along the bottom.

It is a large piece (173 x 92cm / 5'8" x 3') that I think would look fantastic in a stairwell (shame I live in a bungalow).

I'm really pleased with how this piece turned out even though the integral hanging sleeve is in the wrong orientation! Note to self: don't bother with integral hanging sleeves on abstract pieces, you're always going to want to hang it on a different edge to the one you have planned! ;)

More recently I have been working on an assignment based on John Constable's Cloud Studies. I confess I hadn't appreciated just how prolific a painter he was, many of them are described as sketches but still stunning in their own right. Our assignment was to prepare some pastel drawings on different coloured backgrounds and then use those colours to make felt samples.

These are my pastel sketches.

 Dark blue paper

Light blue paper

Brown paper

All these sketches were derived from the same Constable painting but each has a very different feel, I think the middle one feels like the skies are clearing after a storm and has a freshness about it, while the other 2 feel like the storm is still building.

I was also very drawn to a painting of cirrus clouds, I just love the sense of movement and direction the white lines give this sketch.

And these are the pieces interpreted into felt, firstly with Norwegian wool:


And merino:

Next time - I revert back to my childhood and use wax crayons...

6 comments:

  1. Alien Signpost looks wonderful. I love the combination of straight edges with the "torn paper" edge. Your pastel drawings are gorgeous and I agree with your assessment of the middle picture being the clearing after the storm.

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  2. Hanging it with the 'torn paper' edge at the bottom looks great! Your felt versions of your sketches are lovely - it's not easy to translate pastel sketches into felt pictures.

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    1. Thanks Lyn. I quite like using pastels for planning felt pictures but agree it is difficult to obtain the same level of detail in the felt without resorting to needle felting.

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  3. I really enjoyed this part of the course especially being introduced to pastels. I think you drawings and felts are really atmospheric :-)

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