Sampling Unit weeks 3 and 4

Monday of week four started with a drawing workshop where we were asked to make our own tools out of random materials and then start to draw with them to add to our projects. I found this fun, and I had done it before so I felt I could get into it quite quickly. The idea of using long garden canes was successful because you could get much freer and interesting marks when standing over the page or holding your arm out infront of you.

This is ust one of the drawings done on monday. The colours worked well for me. Even though sme were a bit too brash or not connected to my project very well, I loved the idea of freeing up my drawing therefore freeing up my colour palette. It has been very fixed over the last week and it was refreshing to throw in some blues!

Here I was experimenting with loosening up the drawings but still retaining that small amount of structure. Water colour with fineliner ontop. I feel it represents the process of rust well; through the idea of something loosening the sturcture of metal, yet the overall shape is still visible.

Further experiments with made tools in sketchbook. Here I'd been listing properties of rust to get more of an idea of where to push my embroidery. I'd come up with: growing, disintegrating, changing the actual properties of the metal, changing the shape. I wanted to start incorporating these ideas in my drawings and then hopefully into the textiles.

 I still wanted to keep some structure though! I feel lke this style of drawing suits me because it reflects my decorative ideas and is loose and organic.

I then began to translate some of these ideas into stitch. The embellisher translates well the idea of change of roperties onto fabric. The felting and breaking down of a fabric due to an alien process. I also started encorporating metal art foil into the work by trapping and sewing straight through it. (Really easy to sew through). I also love the structure created by the straight couched cording.

Here was sewing straight on to a large section of foil. also cutting into it to create more of a surface. I really enjoyed doing this, and I love the idea of the whole ground being shiny and in your face!

I aso felt like, from the descriptions I had written down about rust, I needed to incorporating tailor tacking. Here I love the breaking up of the black fabric using the embellisher and the tailor tacking helps to describe the additional, very different surface that rust gives to metal.