Saturday 20 October 2012

Colour

I am getting there - slowly. Despite the temptation to do the opposite, I am taking my time which means I probably  won't get it done by the due date.  As my grandmother would say, better to be sure than sorry. I am including a photo of images on the floor near the loom that I refer to often re. colour of the Kimberleys and the train trip.  The thing that surprised me was how much green there was.  I often put pictures up on the computer as I can see how things are progressing with the weaving.








I have posted 2 blogs  in 5 days; anything to avoid work.

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Accents

Today I am having a day free of house issues, workshops, tapestry weaving and assignments and just  fiddling around - mainly catching up on my life; which is nice.  The last 2 days I attended a workshop at Open Drawer on Patterning - historical traditions and innovative variations given by Ruth Hadlow which I have found very demanding but very useful.  There were only six in the class and the workshop focused on experimentation and a subjective  open - ended approach and exploration of patterning; e.g. we drew with scissors which is very freeing.  At the end of the two days, I have come away with a subject matter to research which I can use in designing tapestries. However there is much research to do and in areas that I have never dreamt of.
In discussing my response to one of the exercises we had to do, Ruth questioned (she asks more questions than I do) why a particular thing worked and it was because of an, unintentional on my part, flick of colour on a white page with black writing.  Which reminded me of a suggestion made to me about the fish shape in my tapestry. 



It was suggested to me that the fish looked blocky and  lacked reference to the surrrounding area and I should add some yellow to heighten interest and enliven the shape. 


I know the 2nd picture is a little lighter, but I think it works.

Saturday 6 October 2012

Faces

The  latest assignment to keep me from weaving the large tapestry due in 6 or 7 weeks is called Interaction between people.  We had to do 4 drawings and select one to do small tapestry  sample.  The drawing I chose to do a tapestry of is one of my beautiful cousin Marj who died last year after a long battle with breast cancer.  When I was doing photography at RMIT we had to do portraits and I took  a lot of photos of her.  She had just found out she had to have a course of chemo tablets and the photos reflected her concern.  The drawing I did reflects my reaction to this news. We had been best friends since we were  8/9 and were constant companions and playmates for 60 years.

The cartoon


      

The tapestry