Monday 27 April 2009

Sketchbook Monday (Sunday)

I usually do these sketchbook posts on a Sunday but I had a lot to do yesterday and never got that far. I have been a bit under the weather as my cold is now two weeks old and my inhaler suddenly ran out onSaturday morning. I had been to the Dr's Friday to order another but I can not pick up the prescription until today. So today has been a bit of a struggle and at one point I needed a TA to come in and help me 0therwise I may have expired right there and then. I shall pick up the new one after work so hopefully I shall be back up to speed tomorrow.

I am going to show you some of the research, photos etc that I am putting together for this project which is to run for a year. I am a member of the Cornwall Embroiderer's Guild so this is going to hopefully go into one of our future exhibitions.One thing I definately do with my sketch books is get rid of the white page by putting a colourwash over it. I usually do this just before I go to bed then it is dry for the next day. With the theme of seeds I decided to go for pale browns, creamy colours, yellows etc. I anticipate this changing as the book progresses. I then began with looking around the word SEED and started using a dictionary, looked in my books upstairs, gardening books, the school library etc and just gathered bits and bobs for most of January. I out them all in a fabric zip up wallet that I found in ASDA months ago.

Finding key words linked to SEEDS gave me the spidergram idea which I decided to do as I began to feel that I would never actually get started. I did leave the very first page blank for the time being. I added to the interest by adding a few small pictures from books and Google. Dandelions came up via this research and I remembered how much I like the feathery appearance just before the wind blows it all over the place, that I had forgotten was that they were seeds and the wind helped to scatter them!!
At last, I had found my starting point.

I then began to search for Dandelion pictures. I found some by accident on a clipart CD I had at work for a computer design software for Textiles garments! There were several Dandelion plants in the garden which had very kindly decided to grow at the right time so I kept an eye on them then got the camera out just at the right time.

I am quite pleased with this photo. It could be better but considering I do not really have the right lense for this type of picture I was lucky to get this.

I then sketched small sections of the Dandelion head and looked at it from different views. This is not finished at all but I will then stitch up little samples using the pictures and sketches as a starting point.

I have a long way to go and as I have said before my sketchbooks usually evolve via my own interests rather than a set theme, so it will be very interesting to see how this goes. I shall try and post about once a week on this, partly so that you can see what I am doing but hopefully it will help me to stick at it too.

Anyway best be off, I hope the week has started well for you so take care for now.

x

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Thought I would leave you a message Indigo Blue. I love reading your post and love the way you have developed these Dandilion ideas.
I love all the comments you put about your students in your posts. I am currently completing PGCE training to teach textiles. Nice to see someone else in the same position as me. Keep up the good work. xx

Ally Jay said...

Really good to see the creative process at work and how it develops

Gina said...

It will be interesting to see how the sketchbook evolves.

wonderwoman said...

goodness i hope you are feeling better!
your work looks great and its really interesting to see how it all develops - i would like to do some textiles courses but deciding on which one is hard!!

xx

Anonymous said...

Hope you are feeling better soon. Love your sketch book. Thanks for sharing. You have great ideas. Cheerio, woollywotnots

Julie said...

Your sketchbook is looking good. Good luck with this project. Is this just local to Cornwall or is it a national EG project?

Indigo Blue said...

Hi Julie,
It is just our branch taking part as we have not carried out a whole group project for a whie and this was very different.

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