Drawing Tuesday - "Embroidered Dreams"

"Embroidered tales and woven dreams" is a wonderful show of textiles from Central Asia and India - it's on till 25 March and is a nice quiet place to draw - not many visitors, which is unfortunate as the works on show are gorgeous.

My first choice was in a side room that might not be part of the exhibition, an early Islamic textile from Central Asia, 8th or 9th century, silk -

Reindeer with antlers surrounded by S motifs for protection

Inside the chequerboard, the squares are composed of several sections, almost like a log-cabin patchwork design. The colours have faded and what is now dark may have been green and blue, as well as the yellow and red and brown or perhaps black -

Yet again my good intentions to finish this off later in a colourful way came to naught -

A "Safavid chasuble in lampas" from 15h century Iran next caught my eye -

Worn sections were patched with more fabric, carefully pattern-matched

White silks as well as gold-colour, on that blue background - a complicated bit of weaving

I started with fine felt-tip pen and then switched to the freedom of pencil -

The crisp line of the pen is an invitation to lose oneself in ever more detail; it also can be used in a sort of hatching to represent the actual threads in the weaving. Perhaps it's a better idea to start with the pencil and add those hatched threads later with the felt-tip. Next time, maybe?

Elsewhere.......

Jo's models in traditional middle eastern dress

Najlaa's "orange cloth"

Mags' close look at furniture and its shadows (more on her blog)

Sue's complicated fabric pattern

Judith's versatitility

Joyce's notes on embroidery

Michelle's details of patterning

Carole's "strange jewellery"

Extra-curricular activities -

Mags continues with her "train stitching"

Carol drew ancient statuary at the British Museum

Sue went to another Veterinary College evening session

Judith tried out different backgrounds on a copy of last week's work

Najlaa produced more marbling on fabric

Janet's Mexican bag is very much in the spirit of the exhibition

Tool of the week - 

Very fine Mono rubbers; the slightly chunkier one is from Muji

Addendum

My good intentions and conscience met in a moment of early-morning insomnia and I got the crayons out -

After sharpening every pencil in sight and dithering about colours, in the end I used only the red, a bit of grey, and the remains of my coffee.