rosiepink

Fabulous Flowers at West Dean College!

Detail from one of my experimental paintings.
So many ideas to bring into feltmaking from this process.

Annie

A couple of weeks ago I attended another fabulous course at West Dean College, called Floribunda. The abbreviated description was "...be more expressive and...indulge your enjoyment of colour, texture, form and paint...make paintings that go beyond traditional flower painting, to encourage you to be bold, experimental and courageous" Sounded just perfect, I love creating pictures of flowers and experimenting. It was with a lovely tutor, Emily Ball, and I had a wonderful time. I learnt an awful lot about painting, and the process of painting, but I also learnt loads that I can bring into my feltmaking too. Double win!   I do like to experience the creative process of other people using different media such as paint.  The medium may be different but a lot of the lessons you can learn apply whatever you do in your creative time.

At the college there is inspiration everywhere, whatever the time of the year. The gardens are tended with lots of love and it shows:

 

Here is a selection of some of the flowers that were gathered from the grounds, by the gardeners, for the centre of the classroom:

To start with we did lots of exercises that were really helpful in getting us to loosen up, such as random mark making, just experimenting with our materials to see what different effects we could achieve, without a finished picture in mind:

We also did an exercise where we painted purely from touch - we each had a flower/plant behind our back that we had not seen given to us and we painted everything that we felt with our fingers e.g. velvety, spiky, smooth etc. This was one of my favourite exercises and it felt really free.  Mine was an achillea:

We then turned one or two of our mark making / scribbling exercises into pictures of flowers. This gave us a great background to start on rather than a white blank page and, through the editing, removing and adding to the marks some great things happened!  I really enjoyed doing these:

We all worked at our own pace when not doing group tutorials and I painted several pieces, none of them masterpieces but I loved the outcomes, the process and what I learnt from them.

Here is one of the pieces I did (A1 size / 33in x 23in), I had loads of fun doing it but fought with it on and off for hours, changing it and turning it and editing bits in and out:

And some details of that painting and another one that I did:

One of the main things I learnt that was most useful for me was don't be too precious too early about any one piece of the work - if you let go and allow yourself to edit then great things can happen. Both of the following photos are pieces of painting that I edited with white paint, and coloured paint, turned round and edited again. I love the scarring that shows through from the layers below, and the fact that the sections turned out much better for it. You can discover a lot from editing and being brave and pushing yourself:

I really got stuck in and was exhausted by the end, in a good way, and covered in paint!

Having worked through these exercises and paintings I decided that it would be a lot of fun to push myself more in some future projects to be even more experimental with compositions and layouts in my feltmaking and other textiles work.  The rapid work of sketching and mark making is very freeing and I will endeavour to do more of this, both in my sketchbook and also with fibres.  I learnt that it is important to observe and to think, but not to overthink and not to allow my logical and sometimes fearful brain to rule!  Now overflowing with inspiration I've begun making a fresh new pile of prefelts to use to layer up and cut up to use in some new pieces:

'The Windfarm' - a simple seascape

Small abstract seascapes are quick and easy to make.  Just lay down some coloured horizontal lines and 'hey presto' the eye is tricked!

Make 3 base layers of wool fibres - start with a vertical layer so that the 3rd layer is vertical.  Wet down the wool fibres then mark a horizon with a piece of thread. 

The layout shown below was approximately 30 x 20cm (12"x 8") and only Merino wool fibres were used.

You can just lay down horizontal, dry, coloured strips of wool fibres, but I prefer to wet the strips as I think the results are better. 

The sample below shows 10 strips of merino wool fibres on a base layer of white (each colour was the same amount of fibres).  The top 5 strips were pre-wetted and the bottom 5 strips were dry, and when placed on the base layer they looked identical.  However, during felting the dry fibres have spread and the colour is not so intense.  The pre-wetted fibres don't spread so much and the colours stay vibrant.

To wet a strip of fibres, simply hold each end and saturate it in a bowl of soapy water.  Then lift it out and run finger and thumb gently down the length.

To make the sky, start at the top with the darker colours then work downwards to the lighter ones.  Go back over it putting in colours wherever you think they need to be! 

To make the sea, start with the darker colours on the horizon (remember to remove the guide thread) and mirror some of the sky colours in the water then add a bit of headland. 

Add a focal point.  Perhaps a lighthouse or buildings or boats.

The focus for this seascape is a windfarm and the windmills were formed from very thin wisps of white merino wool fibres.

During the early felting the straggly bits on both sides of the piece of felt were trimmed and it became painfully obvious that the windmills looked more like drunken dancers, so they were removed!

When the felt was dry the windmills were added using white cotton perle embroidery thread - each windmill comprised a french knot and 4 long stitches.

I have a stash of frames bought from charity (thrift) shops and I had just the right one for 'The Windfarm'.

This is a very quick and easy way to make a seascape and it will never be the same twice!