We formalised it a little bit this week and actually had an exercise to do. There was no pressure to participate we had said that we might bring some textile work to do in case we didn't all feel like participating. In the end, we all did the activity.
It was taken from a Sandra Meech book. Between the five of us, we actually had three of her books,
Creative Quilts, Connecting Art to Stitch and Connecting Design to Stitch. We used Connecting Art to Stitch.
The activity involved using a famous painting and then choosing a small part as the beginning of our own designs. The two artists we chose were Klimt and Hundertwasser. Collage was the medium suggested.
Then out came the papers. Collage is not something I would usually choose to do, so it was well outside my comfort zone. I didn't come up with anything wonderful but there were small parts that might be good to develop further.
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| The colourful table. |
It was good to have the set activity - I would never sit down and do a design exercise by myself, despite having several books of design exercises. I keep hoping that having the books will make me either do it or be good at it. (If this process worked, I would have been the best poetry teacher ever!)
Having said that I would never sit down and do such a design activity by myself, I am now occasionally thinking about the part of the design that I liked (like might be too strong a word but it will do for now) and how I might use it. I don't even know what medium I would use, so it is at a very early stage at present. At least I am thinking.
Those L-shaped pieces of cardboard are very useful for isolating small parts of the image and seeing possibilities in the bigger mess.
6 comments:
You're doing some lovely stuff the last few posts, Mary!
And that was a magnificent photo of the possum too...
Thanks Misha, now I'll have to buckle down and see if I can use the designs or develop them further.
Exercises are good, and I think one of the reasons is that they set limitations. Limiting oneself seems to set the creativity free.
Funny you should say that Parlance, we had a long discussion about that when we were doing the Suspension exhibition. I really found that the limitation in colour suited me and my weaving, especially, became quite meditative.
What a great idea to have a design exercise to do; it keeps the process happening. As you say, you don't do it otherwise. Well done.
Thanks Glennis,
I'm not sure I can accept the congratulations, I was not the instigator. It has got some ideas going though and I have started thinking about all sorts of designs - too many, in fact.
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