Art with My Needle ~ Week 24
Today I am taking this slot in a different direction - right back to the beginning.
Pattern and Design.
Where to start?
Paper and pencils - Set your hand on a piece of paper and draw around it. Yes! Just like a child does at Kindergarten. Already you have a design. Remember no two hands are the same. A series of straight lines thick or thin, or circles overlapping provide ideas. A page of text forms a pattern, how many times have you looked at a printed page and seen an image, not from the meaning of the words but the shape of the words, sentences and paragraphs?
Give a young child some paper and pencils and leave them to play for a few minutes and they will provide plenty of abstract designs with their doodles. Come on, we have all seen similar pieces hanging in Art Galleries and wondered what they are doing there or what they were supposed to be. Time to begin doodling in monochrome or by adding some colour. Hold two pencils together and draw with them as one.
Threads, string or knitting wool - Take a length of any of these and loosely gather it into your hand then drop it from head height onto a piece of paper and it will give an abstract pattern. Soak the string in poster paints or randomly paint along the string and drop on the paper, then cover with another sheet of paper and place a heavy book on top or roll with a rolling pin to help transfer the paint to paper.
Rubberbands - Dropped on paper as suggested with the string. Try this on the scanner or use the digital camera and print out a copy of the photo on paper. Sometimes the shapes and not the lines become important.
Keys - particularly old ones form great patterns. Arrange in repeat form, in a circle or in mirror image.
Kitchen utensils - graters, sieves and cake cooling trays all give pattern
Fruit and vegetables - whole, in segments or cut crossways. I once used a cross section of a savoy cabbage as a design for a brooch.
Natural sponge and seaweed
Driftwood
Feathers
Peeling paint - can give wonderful colouring and layer effects.
Trees and branches - Great for pattern
Leaves - particularly skeletal ones give magical lacy effects.
Back when I was working for the City & Guilds, among the names we looked to for inspiration were Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. In those days we had to cross the channel to mainland Britain to attend a workshop or hear them talk. Now they have joined forces and the workshops come to us and in the video below we can see how Needle Art has developed in recent years.
If you are hungry for more ideas follow this link to another video by Ele Carpenter, Curator of the Open Source Embroidery Exhibition in San Francisco, California. Now did you ever think of using GPS as a beginning for Needle Art?
Alice said,
February 3, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Surprised to see I’ve done a couple of these: (the paint-dipped string for one–let it drop naturally, then pulled the end sticking out from 2 sandwiched papers and jerking them to and fro before sliding the string out added some interesting design). Here’s one I didn’t see: take a sheet of paper and draw a light guiding line (will be erased later) through the center lengthwise. Turn the paper sideways and write your name on the line in your best penmanship. Then fold the paper right on the line, take it to a window pane and turn it upside down (name side on the pane itself so it shows through). Now trace the same lines in reverse on the line. (tip: if you have an “i” in your name, don’t just dot it, make the dot a tiny O.) When you’ve finished, open it up and see the pretty and unique–one of a kind–design made with just your name. (This is a fun project for kids especially.) To add more interest, fill in the different loops with color pencil or paint–one or two color theme–and trace all the lines with one of the colors. Viola! Not exactly a Tiffany, but very pretty nonetheless.
Grannymar said,
February 3, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Alice, great idea with using a name and every name is different so gives a different shape.
wisewebwoman said,
February 6, 2010 at 1:50 am
Interesting ideas today…
XO
WWW
Grannymar said,
February 6, 2010 at 8:22 am
WWW - A change is as good as a rest.