Today I'm going to look at a few pages in my sketchbook and one of my artbooks
This page is one I did recently, when I was designing pages for a fabric book. The top sketch is obviously just some leaves, but I was interested in contrasts and the shadows of the leaves. The bottom sketch is of a pomegranate, inspired by a design of Judy Coates Perez'.
On this page at the bottom is a modification of the pomegranate that I was happier with. At the top is a doodle of a dragonfly, where I intend to thread paint dimensional wings and bead the body. There is also a little scribble of my cat's ear, since she was handy, lol.
This page is just drawn in pencil, and generally, that is where I start, then I go back and rework the pages later with color. going back over the sketches this way allows me to revisit ideas and remember what I was going to do. It's a great way to find inspiration when you are at a loss.
This is a reverse applique sample in my leaf art book. I was playing with Gesso and decoded I liked the washed out effect it gave. The leaves at the bottom are just stickers I found in a bargain store, which i used to balabce the page a bit.
This is a half finished collage in the same book. You can see that this is not an artist's sketchbook, but a reclaimed book (you can just see the writing on the page in the background. I like to use an altered book for my art books. A page which has been painted over with gesso or medium to wash out the text is much easier to get started on than a pristine white page, which can be daunting for most of us.
This page looks like a mess, doesn't it? I purposely tore the picture so that I can complete the picture myself, sort of like a drawing exercise (an idea I got from Laura Kemshall). This is another way to overcome the clean page block.
Another thing I learnt when doing this page was that ink jet prints do work with medium and PVA and will not bleed - BUT you have to leave them for a few days, maybe a week to allow the ink to set and use neat PVA or heavy medium (the less water, the better) to glue and gloss over them.
I have had bleeds when using ink jet prints in the past and now I think that perhaps I really did not let them set properly in this way and used PVA with too much water.
Any way, that was just a brief look into my always incomplete and sometimes messy paper work. Perhaps because of my painting and drawing background, I find this work invaluable to my textile work. Like this blog, keeping a record of what I do and how it all turns out does come in handy down the track.
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
