Module 1 - Making your Mark: Chapter 2-3.

Texture & Surface Relief

Sketching freaks me out so consequently I do very little of it.  However, I thought it might be fun to have a go at photographing my poppy seed head from lots of different angles, then print them in black and white to prepare some outlines for tracing.  I started this exercise on 6 January, the day was clear and bright with light flooding into the sewing room.

I managed to spend a day manipulating images and then doing some tracings.  

I enjoyed this exercise, although the tracing with dots took a long time.  My aim was to try to pick up some texture in the seed head, the first two tracings are useful as they demonstrate how French Knots could be used in hand sewing to create a surface.  The third image could suggest some free machine embroidery on soluble film with different densities of stitching.

I began to play with the Artist Effects button in Microsoft Word and found that it creates a sketch like effect.  Whilst this is an enormous cheat, I found it useful as it gave me an idea of how to shade my own sketches.

Artistic Effect from Microsoft Word

Since then I have been laid up with a dreadful cold and am only now able to start working again.

I am determined not to fall back into bad habits, so am posting this very short blog to put something 'on paper' and will work on this chapter again next week.