Lesson 4

The subject is birds, the method is using bondaweb -- lots of possibilities! Battery hens came to mind immediately, but I decided to rise above that depressing thought. So, a quick rummage through the sketchbooks. These drawings from years agowere also interpreted in collage - influenced by an early applique piece by Janet Bolton -
This time I wanted to do doves rather than chickens - inspired by the (misremembered!) dovecote at Rousham
My twists on Jane's instructions are: getting the bird shapes via cutting them out of paper rather than tracing a drawing, and using the bondaweb for the background - here it is drawn on the paper backing -- but I'd forgotten to reverse the drawing -
Here's the fabric palette - muted blues for the background, colourful silks for the doves -
The background in place, and an idea of how the little (and big) doves will fit in.When it came to adding the details, the coloured birds just didn't work. I'd been thinking about Picasso's "palomas" series in the Barcelona Picasso museum, in which the pigeons in his dovecote are white. It's enlightening to see how simply Picasso has depicted the doves - just a couple of circles - and in some of his lithographs, like this one here, the bird appears to be just a couple of squiggles!

Mine of course were much, much more laboured. Clunky, even. As I was laying out the pieces of the big bird, Tony happened by and moved the head and beak to the side, a tiny change that makes all the difference -- The "tail feathers" are done with free machining, and the eyes are french knots.To develop this further, I'd look harder at the structure in Picasso's pix and also do some ink-dropper drawings of memories of birds in motion and at rest (which will involve looking harder at birds in general). And be less restrained in my choice of fabric - look at the bright blues and ochres in the Picasso pix, after all. Just break out a bit, free up....