Flying feathers

The full length sliding doors at the end of my studio are ideal for showing marks on layers of translucent materials and extend my working  pin board.

These layers are A1 sized tissue paper and tissutex (the reinforced tissue paper that a slightly fibrey, natural coloured white surface): sometimes two layers and sometimes a few more. Too many layers and the marks are lost and the layers become too dense and lose their translucency.

The marks are drawn with a large seagull feather dipped in a black drawing ink, making large radiating movements of my arm and the odd ‘flick’ of the wrist. I was pleased when I was able to control the feather to make sweeping arcs that are suggestive of movement and flight.

Most were drawn through two layers of tissue, allowing the mark to dissipate a little through onto the under layer. This has often given an interesting intermittent effect as the ink is less effective - I almost prefer this type of mark. Many drawings later, I sorted through them to select the most successful, cutting some into vertical quarters and re-arranged into layers, sometimes swapping the layers around so the more interesting marks on the under-layers appear on the top when clipping them together for these photos.

		Birds of a feather VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Thoughts for development -

Make similar marks on organza and re-create these effects?

Where is the stitch? Add my loopy stitches alongside marks? Forget the stitch element? Use stich in the voids to suggest sky? Is this too corny?

Talking these questions through with my studio assistant, I think I should try it on the fabric first and take stock. Usually when I have published a blog posting and I re-read it, I can immediately see  the answer to my doubts.  So here goes…..’publish’!