The journey continues........

Diversity held it's first meeting of 2014, when eight members continued with their current project "the journey".
After a general chat about what we had been doing during the Holiday break,   Yvonne showed us some ice-dyed fabrics she had produced and explained what she had been working on in her Creative Sketchbook course.
Helen opened the session on our current project.  The drawing travels through the English countryside on a train journey and alongside a canal.  Helen went on to show us a few tracings she had made from selected areas to consider as possible designs to make a stamp, but wants to explore these further before making a decision on her final stamp design.

Helen's journey

Next Cath showed us her ideas, working from an area in her drawing which she has isolated and traced, duplicating it several times to come up with a final design which will be now used to produce a stamp.  Group discussion lead to us deciding that we would each produce a cushion using our final design choices, and have them completed in time for the VSS exhibition in the autumn.

Cath's striking design

Jenny explaining her thought process

Next we moved on to Jenny's work.  Jenny is our mentor in this project, having worked in this way numerous times, so it's alwasy interesting learning her thought process of how she progresses from the small "window" selections she has traced to the next design stages.

Some of the selection choices Jenny has made for further exploration

Jenny chose one of the selected areas filled in some of the shapes in the area then enlarged it, duplicated it, produced a positve and negative drawing of the same area and came up with the designs below.  Jenny explained how with a few little changes the same shape can be made into several different layouts encouraging us to try the same with our own selected areas.

In this shape selection of Jenny's, she has left the areas unfilled, but again enlarged the shape, then duplicated it.  Jenny thinks this design could be suitable for use in a digitised embroidery and may explore this idea further.

We next looked at what Gwen had been working on.  Gwen says she was unable to find a selection which she thought she could work with, until she tried making her selections using a 1" window.

Here is the selection Gwen has settled on using and she began by filling in some of the line shapes 

Gwen worked on grided paper and proceeded to try out various layouts by duplicating and mirroring her selection

and finally decided on this layout, enlarging it in size.

Gwen began work on making her stamp by the end of the session

Every picture tells a story!  

Yvonne told us how frustrated she felt at not being able to find a suitable selection from her drawing to explore further.  Yvonne tried  a different approach in an effort to move forward, using a suggestion Jenny had made of photocopying her original drawing then cutting this up into 4" squares to see if these would yield any ideas.  Yvonne says she found a few potential areas, but still nothing "jumped out" at her.  Jenny suggested she could try and make fresh selections from these smaller pieces, and eventually Yvonnne found a selection she likes and explored this further.

One of Yvonne's selections, duplicated with a few extra lines added

At the end of the session, Yvonne says she felt happier now that she had a design under her belt, but would still explore further areas. 

 Jill arrived at today's meeting with a design she created at the last meeting,

At Jenny's suggestion Jill began exploring another selection she had made previously to see if she could come up with anything else.

duplicated,

and the same design with line spaces filled in

and further selections from this new design

 

Jill tried duplicating circle selections, then duplicated them and added lines to come up with the design below 

Carol worked away quietly and found a couple of selections which she then joined and filled in to give a design she was happy with.  Carol went on to experiment with funky foam and card to create a small stamp, these can be seen on the left of the photo below.

Carol's selection and stamp trials

 For my own work (seen above), I had difficulty finding a selection I liked when working with 2" windows, but as soon as I took Jenny's advise and tried with a 1" window, I found several and narrowed these down to four, which I then re-drew on the computer using Corel Paint Shop Pro .  I was then able to duplicate, enlarge and mirror these to give me some ideas to explore further 

using the same shape enlarged and in different layouts 

I am not sure yet whether I will pursue this design further and produce a couple of stamps to make this layout into a centre panel for my cushion, or re-visit one of the other shapes which I also like.

We all agreed how much we enjoyed this session, and are looking forward to the next one when we hope Ann will be well enough to join in too.  See you next time.

                                                                                         Rachel