Extended drawing - last module of autumn term

Was it the rumour that sewing would be involved that kept the men away? They missed a treat.

The machines were waiting for us, to be shared -

A handout showed work by Ines Seidel, Gwen Hedley, Sian Martin, Kazuhito Takauoi, Naomi Kobayashi, Alice Fox, Mia Pearlman, Chiharu Shiota, Maurizo Anzeri, and our tutor, Ruth Brison. She said of the module, Drawing with manipulated paper and stitch: "This is a fine art drawing project that has links with sculpture and textiles. Paper and stitch is an area I've explored before as a tutor and picks up on the idea of using paper, linking and stitch to draw, divine, mould, trace or forge a commentary or idea about something."

In the first session we explored the process of paper manipulation and linking, in the second we developed a theme from a focus.

Inspiration

Direction

Experiments in perforating, punching, piercing, cutting

Experiments in colouring, cutting, folding

Fronts and backs

Action stations

Review at the end of the first session

During the week I spent a happy afternoon working on this, picking up one of my samples and developing it by cutting and pricking a scrap of paper.

Those marks led to thoughts of "Hexenstich" - witches stitch! - also known as herringbone. My mother used it for hemming, and unlike the lazier stitch I use (slip stitch) it's difficult to pull out. 

I wrote a bit about it in my notebook, then made some samples on paper, with a single thread and then with a double thread - which kept tangling. The third, "gone wrong", sample used this tangling process as part of the work, leaving the wonky threads. By then the afternoon sky had darkened and the desk light was on, and the threads cast wonderful shadows. I drew it all as best I could with my soft pencil on the rough paper in the notebook.

That led to the realisation that I needed practice in drawing parallel lines close together, so I took a larger sheet of paper, which had been folded into small squares and some lines stitched -  an experiment abandoned in class. Into each square went a practice drawing, done with the various pens on hand, till the sheet was almost full.

Still practising, I quickly stitched some random stitches in the nice stiff, springy, sometimes intransigent thread, based on Alice Fox's work in the handout - and drew that, with stitches in pen and shadows in pencil, not a particularly successful combination.

Another example in the handout, wrapped work by Ines Seidel, led to wrapping some of the nice thread round folded paper, and drawing that -

And so to class, with all my samples in a folder. We'd been asked to bring in materials to work with, and I'd forgotten, so worked from what I had. 

First the folded paper with practice drawings. I continued stitching along the folds, and was pleased to figure out a way of stitching the vertical  rows that allowed the tucks (formed in the horizontal rows) to be manipulated -

 Two views of the resulting "lampshade" -

The brief for the session was to make two items ... what now? I folded and tore some stiff paper into pieces, and wrapped pairs together with some black thread. Thinking "another lampshade" I sewed them into strips on the machine -

 and then round and round until stopped by the limitations of the arm of the machine -

 The unfinished nature of the tube allows some flexibility of form -

Result: two objects made in three dimensions. Did I "devise a focus, with a visual stimulus, idea or premise, using sketchbook work, photographic information or found materials from which to derive ideas", or was it a matter of do what you can, with what you have, where you are?

Possibilities for "inside/outside"

A flurry of activity in the room

The importance of photography

Display and discussion

Looking forward to resumption of classes in January, meanwhile there's time for "research" (aka browsing the internet) on the term's themes and projects.