mytexturedworld: Stage 5: Playing with the chosen image

Working from the photos in my sketchbook, I tried out various ways of representing the image, using some of the techniques I'd already tried, and some new ones.

I soon found that I was doing only one of the three images, which was the most interesting. This of course made the composition all wrong so I would have to think about that later.

This was my attempt to use free machine embroidery as drawing, inspired by seeing a huge Alice Kettle wall picture at Collect 2014.

This is folded muslin, fixed with PVA glue. The folded parts look more intensely white with the light in front of them, and darker with it behind.

I like the way this works, and the contrast between the stiffness of the glued fabric, and the softness of the curves and translucency, and would like to try more of this in future.

At this point I realised that the book about folding that I ordered, as recommended by my tutor, has not yet arrived, so it will be too late for me to use for this assignment. Which is a shame.

This was rather less successful, an attempt to make the shadow shape using patterned black fabric and black machine 'drawing'. Part of the problem is that machine stitching has to stop somewhere, and the thread is visible behind. Also that the pattern needs to be purposeful in the image, or it just gets in the way of visual understanding.

I decided to try a combination of the soluble fabric and layering techniques to create an image of all three shapes like the glasses photo. I tried to use the texture of the bondaweb to give more interest to the background, and a more densely woven fabric to give contrast between the shapes and background. I wanted to make this one very white. This is what it looks like with the light from the front and from the back.

Finally, I had a go doing something similar with colour.

What I wanted to capture, if I could, was the quality of light that was in the original photograph - that light that shows you used a flash in a dark place.

I also wanted to capture something of the feel of the mysterious striped coat from Martin Margiella.

For this I again used yellow organza in several layers, and bondaweb, but this time I used strips of it rather than a whole sheet. I made the shape/ background contrast using a piece cut from an old kimono dressing gown with some flower pattern in the central part. I sewed pale yellow lines in topstitching to indicate the patterns within the shape.

This is also interesting to look at, and I think that it does
capture the strange specific glow of light that wanted it to.

Then I printed off a photo I had taken of regular metal fenceposts onto extravorganza, and superimposed this on the image.

This is what it looked like with the light in front (left) and the light behind it (right). The one on the left allows the details of colour and translucency variations, and the sewn lines, to be seen. The other one is more threatening somehow.

This is interesting, and I think the most successful of the samples I've made, and I would like to explore this more with different kinds of bars in front of different kinds of images.

As usual, the ideas start coming more when the deadline approaches.