Embroidered Collage

This set of doodles is from Exercise 1 in Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing with Imagination.  Four of the fill patterns are from the book and two I came up with on my own.  I really enjoyed this pattern making exercise and expect to have fun through the rest of Part 1: Doodling and Noodling, but before I can work on Part 2: Drawing a New Reality I may need to go back to his original book Keys to Drawing and spend more time practicing on this reality.

I've not been very good at deliberately following exercises in the past, but I'm going to give it a try as Bert's are laid out so well.  The whole book was very interesting to read through and I picked up some good bits even without actually doing the work.  A number of the creative exercises could be applied to collage, with only a little adaptation, if I hadn't wanted to improve my drawing skills anyway.

The weather was nice yesterday so we all went for a walk; the baby in the stroller, my husband with his nifty new macro lens for his camera, and me with my large sketchbook.  I sketched a couple flowers and a couple trees and a bit of the budding of the trees with a basic graphite pencil while we were out.  Then, when we returned home I added colored details to some of my sketches and explored some variations on the themes, pulling the key points out of my memory.

Trying to sketch the two different trees got very complicated.  All those branches going in front of and behind each other and providing fore-shortening challenges when they're coming straight at me.  It's easier when there are masses of leaves on them, but not nearly as interesting. 

I needed a hand-pulled print for a Spring-themed swap and decided to do a butterfly.  I picked an interesting one from a Dover Pictura book and sketched it in the upper left of the grid.  I knew that would only give me so much understanding of what would happen when I carved, based on past experience.  So then I did the butterfly on the upper right - first shading the entire area in with a 6B pencil and then using a kneaded eraser to remove sections.

  I knew that I could get a little more detail when I carved the soft block, but I still basically followed the shapes I had set up in the sketch.  I stamped the image in the middle right block for a record.  The carved block itself and one of the prints for the swap are shown in the second picture.  I used a purple metallic stamp pad because I've had such a frustrating time with Speedball's block printing ink.  I can never get a thin enough layer brayered down on the block that it really looks good when printed.

I continued to elaborate on the theme in the grid in my sketchbook and did an enlarged version of the original Dover design in the upper portion, trying to capture the rhythm of the patterning.  It felt really good to be doing sketchbook work again.  I also liked using the Prismacolor Art Stix as my primary drawing medium.  The mark is wider and I feel like I can draw a bit looser with the rectangular stick than with the usual colored pencil.

I haven't been using many collage images lately because they frustrate me.  Part of me feels like my art should all be raw - using only my own images, and part of me recognizes that my best pieces don't use collage images.  But they're so much FUN.  I love the door and other bits and pieces that I've collected.

So when I saw an all-media 9x12 spiral bound journal in Barnes and Noble I thought I had it made. I could use it for a journal of collages and paintings and just practice, have fun, develop ideas, and, yes, use those collage images.  So I built up a page and had lots of fun.

And then I realized how awkward it was to add stitching to it.  Aaargh.  So now I have to decide if I should be doing my "journaling" on loose sheets, which I have a distressing tendency to trash if they don't turn out as I envisioned, or just not incorporate stitching, which reduces how much learning I can do on each piece. 

I did enjoy the freedom of knowing it didn't matter how the collage turned out, even though not having an end use is also irritating to my engineering side.  Every time I've journaled in the past I had plans for what I'd do with the pages, either because they were to be swapped or because I had secret thoughts of selling reproductions.

And the best part was that by building up around the collage images - I started with the door and the stone head over it - I came up with a bunch of other ideas that I could develop in a sketchbook and turn into a piece of artwork that used only my own imagery, if I was so inclined.

I just have to keep struggling with my own expectations for myself and my art...

Yesterday evening I wanted to pull out some paper or fabric and make imaginary landscapes that I could then develop further. But with my hands in my materials my brain froze.  Nothing felt like it was going to look right.  It would all just be too awkward.  So I sighed, put it all away, and went back down to my computer.

I pulled up flickr and found a random landscape group and started scrolling through until something caught my eye - and I drew it with watercolor crayons into a 4"x4" box on paper.  I didn't want details or even exact colors.  I just wanted shapes.  I don't think anyone could tell what photos I used, as I abstracted the image that far.  I did this four times.

And then I closed flickr and turned over that sheet of paper.  I kept in mind some of the fabric combinations and shape thoughts that I'd been playing with and started drawing again.  And what I had been doubting now looked like landscapes.  Weird ones sometimes, but not like completely non-objective abstracts, which I'd been trying to avoid. 

Basically, I took a step back in media to reassure myself that I can do this - I can interpret these ideas into the materials I want to use.  I refused to let myself be frozen by my doubt.  If necessary I would have spent a great deal more time working abstracts off of reference photos to get to this point, since intellectually I knew it was possible.  I still would like to make multiple smaller pen sketches of shapes from real photos.  I think that the division of space was more sophisticated and subtle in nature's versions than my imaginary versions and I would like to embed that deeper in my brain.

I'm ready to try again to use the real materials once I have another block of time, but thought I'd share my little mental trip, since I know many people have that "it's not going to work, why start and maybe waste my time" moment.  This was definitely not my first!  Sometimes stepping back and doing even a minimum of sketchbook work really does make a difference.

I added some colored tissues on top of page 2.

This made the back of page 1 look very glaringly white and boring.  Which was when it occurred to me I might want to decorate both sides....  So when I put in the planned line of stitching on the front of 1 I also colored in some shapes that would correspond with it on the back.  I ended up adding more stitching than my original intent and I'm not done yet.  I'm thinking a web of greenery over that yellowish sky like area...

While I was collaging other works I found this window image that I'd always loved and meant to do something with.  It's originally from one of Somerset Studio's collage sheets.  So I pasted it into the journal before I changed my mind.  Now I'll have to develop it somehow!