Sun Printing

I did some sun printing during the three days of sun we had this summer. Absolutely loved it and will be repeating it the minute it's sunny and hot again.

Here are some useful resources:

• a video showing sun dyeing in speeded up version.
• a video explaining sun dyeing in more detail and shows some interesting techniques including swirl and scrunch effects.
• sun dyeing with acrylics instead of special paints.

And these ones explain the science behind it:

• http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/howtodyewithlight.shtml
• http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/dyeblog/C557981556/E20130702081959/index.html

I used Colourcraft Silk Paint.

My results were very pleasing

Various trials on the go

This one came out well and I love the blue

This one didn't come out so well in the end, not enough definition

Curling soft leaves

The stripes from the John Lewis bag showed through to the print

My scrunch effect

Some learnings:

• it needs to be hot as well as sunny
• when the conditions are right the prints will dry really quite quickly - especially on thin silk
• soft leaves curl up in the heat
• this might seem obvious but the sun moves around a lot so you may find things end up half in the shade in no time, keep budging them around unless you have a huge garden
• something light/dark in the background will have an effect - dark makes the colour more saturated
• don't wet the fabric first and then try to lay it out on plastic - it's worse than treacle
• masks that are absorbent will pull the dye away from the surroundings leaving a halo effect
• acrylic paint doesn't work at all well

Roll on next summer...

My West Dean Summer

This summer I treated myself to two back-to-back residential courses at West Dean College near Chichester.

The college is located in a stunning house set in huge grounds that used to belong to Edward James, a surrealist poet and philanthropist. He was a double inheritee (from his father and his unlce) patron of Surrealist artist and there are several original Dali pieces at the house. There is an interesting documentary about him on YouTube

The courses I took were Jeanette Appleton's Exploring Colour and Transparency in Felt Making and Cas Holmes' Tracing Shadows - Dyed and Stitched Textiles. Both tutors were superb and I'd highly recommend them. As well as the location of course.

From Jeannette we learnt a softer much less messy and energetic way of felting. She advocates a pre-felting technique that uses none of this 100 rolls one way and then the next. And much less water that I was used to. You are left with a delicate, diaphanous piece of felt that has a handle I was not used to - not the thick stiff stuff, more like nuno, felt that falls like fabric. One of the best things about it is that you can do as much as you can/want, take a break and come back to it later.

She encouraged us to think in 3s - e.g. coarse, soft and something else - what is that third thing? Texture, contrast, colour, dimension? She also drew attention to the mark-making properties of felt.

Something that has had a great impact on me since is that she encouraged me to hang my pieces in three dimension in front of each other so you could see through. She also suggested looking at a space like a museum or an exhibition hall and thinking: how could I respond to it with my art?

I was rather prolific and came away with lots of resolved pieces - although my first piece was 'permanently borrowed' by someone!

Here's some of my work in Jeannette's class:

Felted pieces - one texture based and one colour based

Cutting things up to assemble

Felting the back

The piece coming together

A bit of rolling

The final piece that someone liked so much they borrowed it

The next piece coming along

Nearly finished

Detail of the mark-making capability of felt

Tacking threads left to show through

Hanging my finished pieces in a row

Two more finished pieces

Cas Holmes is a fan of recyling, reuse and repurposing - use what's around. In her first tutorial she used a fish skin from supper! We did heat transfer printing which I have totally fallen in love with. Lots of block printing and a little bit of sun printing because the weather was not at all condusive.

Cas encouraged us to build up a 'stock' of semi-worked pieces and audition them for resolved work which I am doing lots of now. The drawback is that I'm finding that things that would be samples are becoming 'stock' and I'm reluctant to stick them in my sketchbook.

I'm also a bit precious about taking next steps with 'samples' in case I mess up. Cas' philosophy would be that anything 'messed up' can be repurposed and auditioned for new work at a later time.

And this is what I came up with in Cas' class.

Preparing heat transfer paper

Some fabrics for 'audition'

Preparing mono printing

Applying wallpaper paste to pieces so that they run under the sewing machine easily without a hoop

Imaginative use of block print sources

Heat transfer results

More heat transfer preparations

Heat transfer results

Sun printing, but without much sun

Resolved (mostly) piece containing heat transfer, block printing and sewing

Book Review - 3D Mixed Media Textile Art by Textileartist.org

As an aspiring artist at the beginning of my journey I have a forensic fascination with how established artist got to be where they are. So an initial flick through my review copy of 3D Mixed Media Textile Art by Textileartist.org shows headings that really resonate with me.

First, a table of contents that lists a superb cohort of textile artists such as Sian Martin, Gizella K Warburton and Karen Nicol. But most importantly each chapter is divided into:

• 'Beginnings'
• 'Inspiration' 
• 'Process and Practice'

Those are exactly the questions I want to hear answers for from artists I admire.

Beginnings

Right now what I don't want is thematic essays on art perspectives I didn't even know existed. I want the nuts and bolts of how and why. I also want to be seduced by stories of running away to Paris after art school in the 60s and making a spectacular career as Karen Nicol did.

Jean Draper detail of Aftermath from 3d mixed media textile art © Textileartist.org

I was amused by Jean Draper's beginnings because they are diametrically opposed to mine.

"A lack of aptitude in Latin... meant that Jean was demoted to the B stream. What might have originally been perceived as a knock was actually a blessing, as it enabled her to take Needlework as a GCE subject and so influenced a lifetime's work."

At my school Latin was pitched against Needlework when the time came to choose, and I not only had a natural aptitude for foreign languages (alive or dead) but was assured by well-meaning parents that "I could draw any time." And so was influenced into a lifetime of office work!

Inspiration

Hearing about artists' inspirations validates themes I might be interested in pursuing. Landscape, architecture, birds, memory. It makes it OK to be interested in minute subjects. This is where the artist communicates.

I have some themes that keep coming to stay: what happens to people's stories after they die. My father recently passed away. What will happen to his stories? Like the time he shook hands with Emperor Haile Selassie or escaped an African revolution in the clothes he was wearing. What will happen to my stories?

This is also the scary part isn't it? The part where you give of yourself. Jean Draper is haunted by a devastating wildfire. Faig draws inspiration from society and tradition in his rugs.

Faig Ahmed details of Tradition in Pixel and Flood of yellow weight from 3D mixed media textile art © Textileartist.org

Some inspirations, though, I can't say I understand. Like June Lee's intrigue with "the idea of prejudice and the difference in values and standards between oneself and..." I just trail off at those inspirations. They sound too much like that Art Statement Generator. Plus I don't see how her work actually embodies her statement. I feel alienated. Silk heads, do I like them? Could I do it? No and no. But I understand that this is what June Lee needs to do to communicate something from inside herself.

June Lee detail of Bystander from 3D mixed media textile art © Textileartist.org

Faig's take on Persian carpets is of particular interest to me as I grew up in the Far East and the homes I've lived in have been full of these kinds of carpets. Or rather, not these kinds at all, Faig's rugs are humorous and poignant.

One of the most interesting parts of revealing artist's inspirations is when they speak about other artists or people that have influenced them. It has widened my world to new people like Magdalena Abakanowicz or Mark Newport.

Process & Practice

Because I'm unashamedly at the imitation stage of my journey, finding my feet, it's really helpful to have blow-by-blow explanations of how work is actually done. I like to know whether sketchbooks are used, when computers come into play, how much primary observation is done. This is gold dust to the newbie. This book is brimming with explanation on that front.

The photography in 3D Mixed Media Textile Art is really good quality and nicely close up so you can scritinise the details that catch your attention. The landscape orientation of the book means that the images breathe and there is no 'spine' (if such a thing exists electronically) awkwardly splitting them in two.

Conclusion

What is this 'being an artist' thing? It's needing to say something about your world or your life. It's "a lifestyle" according to Faig. I'm not there yet, by a long chalk, but I see it in the artists in this book and I look forward to reaching it.

I'm starting to imagine what I would write for my beginning, inspiration and process. I know the beginning bit, and my inspiration is taking shape - thanks to being introduced to lots of new artist as in this book. As to process, well, I have a long way to go.

Screen Printing

More progress from my class: my very first screen printing.

I'd always thought of this as a rather mystical, unobtainable technique that I would never experience. Only really expert artists made screen prints! And all those people who were doing Art while I had to do Latin at school.

This is what happened:

The prep work for the stencil and the cutouts from the stencil.

The stencil based on my bird theme.

My flight of birds across a piece of tie dye I'd made. I like this a lot.

Detail of the piece above showing the patterened texture of the fabric.

The flight across some patterned textile.

And again, trying to join more than one repeat of the stencil.

Overlaying the stencil with the cutouts.

Some serendipidous mixing up of colours having picked up left over pots from other classmates. One of my birds went AWOL (it stuck to the fabric on the previous pull and I didn't notice).

The back of the above piece has much neater and cleaner white spaces.

I'm not sure the sheer joy of indulging this technique comes across but I was like a kid in a sweet shop.

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This post is part of a series: see Part I -- see Part II -- see Part III -- this is Part IV
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