Working Together - some tlc with the Textile Study Group at Farncombe

A dual workshop with tutors Ruth Issett and Bobby Britnell who swapped over groups half way through the weekend. The ‘t’ stood for ‘tearing’; the ‘l’ stood for ‘layering’ and the ‘c’ stood for ‘colour’.

I was part of the group of students who worked with Ruth for the first half of the weekend and started to use ‘colour’.

We were rationed with choosing just two colours from primary and secondary colours plus a white. These two colours were acrylic paints applied by roller and procion dyes applied with brushes onto squares of cartridge paper and tissutex. Building up layers created interesting mixtures from the bold cadmium yellow and turquoise I chose to work with.

Now to pattern, using monoprinting – rationed this time to vertical and horizontal lines – i.e. grids of any sort.

‘Tearing’ and ‘layering’ then began the process of devising further grid formations which then evolved into composition variables. Fascinating to group and re-group the individual squares.

 

Bobby then led the second half of the workshop. The idea was to work into the coloured squares with the additional methods that Bobby introduced.

The first exercise was to ‘draw’ the layered strips made previously – left below. We did this with graphite (middle) and puncturing (right).

A leap into curved lines with marks made with gesso and other punctured methods.

…………… and a few stitches……

Could this be the beginning or the end? Unintentional marks made on a scrap background. Don’t you just love it when this happens?