Geometry of 12

A five-day course at Princes School of Traditional Arts, tutor Ameet Hindocha, who aimed to teach us how to look at the pattern and see what's going on, rather than give us instructions to follow. He demonstrated the construction of 12 patterns, and guided us through combining two into "our own" pattern, and gave us handouts for them all. 

I'll start with "my own" pattern, which looks unfunished  - that's deliberate. The finished section can be "rubbed off" onto watercolour paper and painted, and the unfinished section (at top) shows some basic structure. 

However the main structure is on the sheet underneath, and it's derived from a design exercise using square and triangular tiles, with sides of the same length so they can be combined. My own design is utterly useless for this (too much white space!) but I enjoyed seeing how different shapes of white space emerged

Here's another that I got to a "finished" state -

Over the five days, time, effort, and concentration produced at least 12 patterns. The square versions laid out for overview -

First and last patterns, hexagonal and square format -

Short slide shows summed up key concepts -

I was sitting a long way from the ongoing demonstation and had to zoom the phone camera to the max to see what was going on. It didn't help that the green used for construction lines wasn't high contrast (sometimes a pale blue was used as well, indistinguishable to me), and when small-scale operations were carried out ("draw the next line from here to here") I was totally lost. But eventually all became clear, and I benefited from quite a few one-to-one instructions.

If you think this looks complicated - it is!

Several finished works were dotted around the room - beautiful work -

I itched to do some painting, however simple, and on the weekend I traced some sections of pattern, transferred them to strips of leftover paper, and tried out a few colourways -

"Inside the box": yellow

 "Indian Yellow" is one of my go-to tubes of paint. Here it celebrates the new flower on the peace lily, inside an amoxycillin box -

Something new...

...this is the first time I used packaging from a vaping product; since then I've picked up dozens from the road. They usually open quite cleanly and are a good size; a series is growing...

This shape used to be a punnet holding tomatoes - turned upside down, it (or its cousin) looks rather like a kimono -

In this box were chocolate eclairs -

More vaping boxes, auditioning for parts in the chorus line -

A King Oscar sardines box -

Art fun with Freya

She's learning to count and recognise numbers....

During some nonsense we invented the idea of a banana with three legs, but I suspect the toy bunch of bananas influenced it. When asked to draw "a banana with three legs" this is what she came up with -

Sticker books and activity books are fun, even though she doesn't follow the directions (art rebel!) -

Love this page -

...but she wasn't quite finished -

I had left my palette out, the paint dry in the wells - she fetched water, found a brush and got to work, mixing the colours (eventually into mud), then washed it out in the sink. Good studio practice! She's learning to wash out her brush before changing colours, but also enjoys seeing what colours come out of mixing -

3D "drawing" with lego -

A quiet moment, such concentration -

 

"Inside the box"

Drawing on recycled packaging that has been opened out. My first attempt, on a box that held chocolate ginger biscuits, was unspectacular - the waxy surface of the box repelled the ink, leaving tiny dots of a very pale grey.

Solid backgrounds, like these sketchbook drawings, were what I was aiming for - 

This box had a hole cut in the shape of a fish - it wrapped smoked salmon -

...the fish is camouflaged among the leaves ...

Another house plant; inside a box of cough syrup

In my window box, cyclamens with seedheads had survived till June - 

Transforming a tissue box -

... with two background colours...

More to come! Since June I've been producing several of these every week. Drawing is with a sharpie and the paint is either acrylic ink or watercolour.

Chair du semaine

 Judy and I agreed to draw something every week, but what - ok, a chair. There's always a chair around somewhere, waiting to be drawn. 

Armchair Traveller

A little book made with maps of different floors of

the V&A - I couldn't find an old atlas to cut up. A good

museum is comparable to an exotic trip

Book of the chair

It's tiny and I wasn't careful about fitting the

chair on the page. Perhaps should have persevered

and put some part of a chair on all pages...

In Aladdin's Cafe [cave, geddit?]

The coffee shop has an "antique" shop attached - actually

the antique shop was there first, and the cafe was added. The 

chairs and tables change regularly. I'd just has flu and booster

jabs, and used the info leaflet to draw on 

Construction lines, second version

 At the start of last week's class I hadn't got very far with "construction lines", my second attempt at the concept. The lines are the grid of compass circles and certain points joined with straight lines, from which the shapes used in geometric patterns emerge. Previously I also printed the shapes and collaged them onto the printed lines. 

The blocks have been printed, and even juxtaposed, but I wasn't at all happy with the combination.

And they're a bit minimal, dull on their own -

Here's the sum total of work so far -

In class I printed both blocks with Payne's Grey and cobalt turquoise -

To be continued...

This rubbing, taken weeks ago, is to my mind the best outcome so far, and I'd almost be happt to leave it at that, or try a few versions of rubbings, rather than carry on with proper printing -