Critical thinking skills

My tutor suggested reading –  Cottrell, S. (2011) Critical thinking skills: Developing effective analysis and argument. 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. It seems quite a heavy read, it’s actually made me feel like a more academic student just looking at it.  I’m really excited. I don’t currently feel able to order my thoughts and express ideas effectively. I become whimsical and fly off at tangents or sometimes just time warp completely. I completely understand the skills that applying the content of this book will give me. ( a terrible sentence there for example! I know what I’m on about and someday you will too!!!)

Cottrell suggests that to gain maximum benefit from the book it is a good idea ” as you work through the book, pause to consider from time to time how that aspect of critical awareness would benefit your own study, writing or professional work.

Without making this a massive task, I intend to use this blog as a reflection space to embed the ideas in the book more deeply in my thinking. 

This could take some time…

ATV3 Colour Studies 3.2 -Translation through yarn

This was more than a little frustrating. Getting hold of a postcard of a suitable old master painting is not an easy task. At all. I looked everywhere to no avail and then entered the world of online education resources, the stuff of nightmares. Finding and image was the easy part (but still not easy) the downloading and printing (shiny new printer) was another minefield to stumble around in. Then I happily yarn wrapped, and I lost the image reference. Noooooooooo. I may have cried at several points in the process.

For future reference dragging a jpeg onto the search bar sometimes does the trick.

I settled on this Old master mostly I had to reject images for being of very entitled Lords and Ladies or impoverished servants, or naked. Or horses.

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Disegno and Colore
About 1640
Italian, 1591–1666
Oil on canvas
90 15/16 x 71 5/16 in. (231 x 181.1 cm)
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
I actually thought it was nice to see a portrayal of a female artist but it’s  way more complicated than that…
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The gentleman artist is wearing quite a sombre palette
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The attire of artist at the easel is lighter and more flowing.
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The tablecloth appears to be green but I can see rusts, golds and blue also.
I think the colour translation using yarn worked quite well. I used fine threads as they seemed to suit the fine brushwork but if I have time I will also do a wrap using chunkier yarns and fabrics.

ATV3 Colour studies 3.1 – Gouache studies

I love mixing colours. It is meditative and absorbing, and mind bendingly problem solving. I took a very analytical approach and made some colour progressions using the three main primary triads, warm, cool and earth tones. I mixed them together and with each other, I made tints and hues. I used the book Colour – A Workshop for artists and designers by David Horning.  It is full of exercises that I will continue to work through.

This became my resource to compare fabric colours to , I found it really useful to gauge which primaries to mix. this sort of became second nature after a while, but still useful to use a check.

I mounted these fabrics together because they are from the same family , having cool, red, blue, yellow with paynes grey as a mix in common as predominant colours. They clearly have differences also! the orange fabric has some colours that use warm yellow. The red/blue fabric has warm blue. the trickiest colour was the dark yellow/brown in the red/blue fabric. It seemed to suffer most from drying a lighter shade. The mix I settled on for this was yellow ochre with lemon yellow.

I spent a silly amount of time looking for a single photo to go on this board. The colours all my favourite landscapes ,bright skies and fresh leaves. When I practised mixing the freshest greens came from cool yellow, warm blue, this mix is dominant but there are  some cool blues in the palette too.

This palette relies more on Paynes grey as a mixer, I think it is my new favourite paint. the colour quality seems somehow richer and less garish .

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Well how much bother can a worn out grey and white sock cause? the answer is plenty!! This was by far the most complicated sample, I have honestly only touched on the range of tints and shades and tones in this little fragment. the wool is undyed and spun from sheep with many colours. The colours in the yarn are complex and then the shadows and highlights add their own nuances. I did fairly well to record a wide range but I just couldn’t work out how to portray the wonderful luminosity of the cream yarn.

ATV assignment 2 – Stitching: Placed and spaced – stitched piece 1

 

Birch Bark – the eyes have it

I love the fabric as it is really…



My drawing has a rust coloured eye so I added a base layer of inktense then started to raise the texture of the bands around the tree and define the eyes by stitching sisal behind the fabric. I was delighted that this gives structure like a whale-boned under skirt. the base layer is bouncy and three dimensional.

However the proportions of the fabric have changed and the eye is no longer at my fibonacci point of focus so i added some strips of silk to extend the length. the result is like the very delicate bark layer that can be easily peeled away.

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I used techniques that I experimented with on my samples to build up a variety of textures. This was easier by far as fabric is so much more flexible to work with, and less brittle so stitches can be really close together. I wasn’t too concerned about making it look exactly like any one drawing, there are elements from several of my tree drawings and an essence of my love of trees. This drawing was the main inspiration.

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I think that I used really appropriate colours and textures.
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I almost like the reverse more in places, particularly the woven sari silk and the stitch s that hold the sisal twine in place. The eyes from the back look like the darns on the old Scandinavian tunic that I drew in the summer.

 

 

 

 

 

ATV assignment 2 Surface and Stitch research point 1 – Used materials

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Textiles 1: A Textiles Vocabulary
Research point 1
Stitching to mend or darning could be another consideration in your translation from paper to textile. You may find that your drawings and stitched paper pieces suggest a feeling of mending or repairing and refining. Is this something you can introduce into your textile preparation and stitch work? As already suggested, you may decide to use imperfect textiles or found/recycled materials as your basetextiles rather than employing brand new unused
or virgin materials. Consider how you can work with the characteristics,imperfections or  patinas of the textiles you’re using as base materials. An element of repair may give another layer to your work.
Many textile designers and artists choose to work with found, recycled, worn or even discarded textiles and materials. Try to find an example of one such designer or artist and analyse how they select, apply and alter their chosen materials. Make some notes on this research in your learning log

Some thoughts on environmental concerns – just a few of many….

Used materials sounds so harsh! reuse, reduce, recycle,  is like a mantra in schools and society but there still seems to be a little stigma attatched, a late twentieth century mill stone around our planets neck. something that I feel very passionate about.

I would like to live in a world re-appropriating materials into something else was such a natural thing that no body would notice the difference.

Environmental expressions used as a marketing tool – a disgraceful hypocrisy.

 

Boro

darning,

little ghost butons

Tom of Holland

 

ATV Assessment 2 – 2.3 Drawing with stitch

  
When choosing drawings to work from, I was very unsure where to go with developing stitch marks from my drawings of textiles. For example stitches based on drawings of embroidery  on the huipil, without copying them badly, where can you take them? While reviewing the exercise it occurred to me that stitching on a folded paper substrate, could be this!

   
 
I made an origami bird and embroidered it based on the stitch marks I made!

It was an impulsive idea that I needed to see through. Clumsily executed but quite an important hatching of thought process .