Exercise: Exploring one subject in a variety of ways
DECIDING ON A THEME
Having read ahead in the course material I have been turning over the idea of a theme in my mind for a few weeks now. I really enjoy the work of Georgia O'Keefe, and alongside that I also love nature and gardening. Since stopping work and starting studying I have started to cultivate orchids, rescuing them from supermarkets when they are reduced and half dead.....and seeing them flourish and bloom again is a real pleasure for me. I think exploring these amazing plants as a theme is a good way for me to move to progress to the conclusion of this course. Orchids carry such variety in texture, form shape, colour and combined with their pots I feel there is potential or me to explore this in this module. I am concious that choosing nature is perhaps quite a predictable and obvious choice, but this is what inspires me, I enjoy cultivating plants and looking at nature and documenting the changes I see so I have decided I don't need to justify choosing something I enjoy!
Attached link is my nature blog - which I set up earlier this year to document how I see the natural world around me and also to experience using Wordpress in preparation for moving to Level 2 Textiles.
http://miriamwardtextiles.wordpress.com/
Preparatory sketches :-
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Pen and watercolour :-
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Pen, crayon and watercolour:-
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Crayon, watercolour and oil pastels :-
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Crayon, watercolour, oil pastels and charcoal:-
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I then experimented using pva glue mixed with watercolour, which I then made marks in and then washed over using watercolour washes :-
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Exercise Summary Notes:-
I think its quite difficult to answer the review questions objectively as I feel that through this course I have certainly developed my own preferences in terms of which styles and approaches suit me.
On that basis I would say that I feel the pen and watercolour and pen, watercolour and crayon experiments worked best. I liked the level of detail I was able to achieve using the combination of pen and watercolour, and moving on from that I am particularly pleased with the texture I was able to achieve using the combination of crayon pen and watercolour - the texture on the stalk of the orchid is a particularly good example of this, added to the definition present on the orchid bloom. Having said all of this I would not discount the further experiments with charcoal and oil pastel. These perhaps forced me to move away from accurate representation of my subject and more towards capturing the mood.
I followed the various examples given in the course material but then also experimented with PVA glue mixed with watercolour so that my range of tones remained the same. This was a very interesting media to work with, being opaque until dry - at which point the watercolour pigment added really shows its true vibrancy. Definitely an experiment I intend trying again during this assignment.
I think the combination which has surprised me the most is the combination of watercolour and wax crayon, with ink, I am really happy with the way this creates texture, and I had honestly not thought these two media would complement each other particularly well!
I think this exercise succeeded in that I felt I had time to just keep exploring an object I was enjoying looking at. The initial sketches really helped me to orientate myself in terms of mark making and shape in regards to the item - somehow it helped in my translation of what I saw onto the paper.
Now that I have started to record the orchid I am happy that for me I have chosen the correct theme, and I hope to continue down this avenue as there are clearly many many more ways of examining this subject....and I have many many orchids!!
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