Category: Texture

Sewing on paper

Lately I seem to have blogged about non-arty things, although I have been talking about what I have been up to in my newsletter. (If you would like to have my art news delivered to your inbox each fortnight, simply sign up here.) Originally I added “….an update” to the title of this post, thinking I had already told you about my latest obsession ~ sewing on paper ~ but it turns out it is a long time since I have written about my art, and haven’t told you about the sewing much at all. (See, it pays to subscribe to my newsletter!) So, here goes…

Last year I began sewing again, hand-sewing and machine-sewing, creating trees mainly. All the while there was the little thought at the back of my mind “What it I sew on paper rather than material?”. Those What if …..? questions are the backbone of my creativity. So I did. I began with some experimental pieces that I made exclusively for subscribers. They were a combination of machine and hand sewing. (Some are still available, so let me know if one or more take your fancy.)

I was hooked.

My next “What if….?” was “What if I sew over an existing watercolour painting?”. The composition of an old fig painting had never moved me, so I changed it by sewing over the top of the figs, cutting them out and attaching them to another piece of paper, on which I had sewn the outline of a fig leaf. A much better composition.

Since then I have sold a capsicum

a leaf

a teapot

and a pumpkin

There is another pumpkin almost finished

It is waiting for me to return from my latest series.

About a year ago I was playing around with watercolour representations of the trees on Flinders Island. There were parts of the pieces that I loved, but something didn’t quite work. Nothing to ruin by experimenting with sewing over the top.

This was the first one to go under the sewing machine:

Definitely a good learning curve there. (At some other time I am going to blog about the things that surprise me when sewing on paper.)

And then the second:

You can still the glorious watercolour, the way the colours mix together, while the sewing has given the piece movement and flow.

These two photos show the piece at different stages, to give you a sense of how it progressed.

There is another work in progress……I love the watercolour effects of the trees in the original. It seemed to capture the canopy really well. The understory didn’t work; maybe the wrong colour; maybe too many trunks was stopping me from finding my way through. Whatever, it didn’t inspire me, until the sewing stage began. Now I am really liking it. It has a drawing quality about it.

I think I will leave the canopies of the defined trees, and just work up the part that meets the sky.. I will see how that works, as I am not sure about the edge between the background canopy and the other trees. Perhaps highlights there will help. And I think I will leave the dark green area in the middle.

The sewing has improved the understory, and I am still working my way around that, trying to keep the ‘taking a line for a walk’ effect.

It has taken me a while to get to this creative place, a place where I feel confident that I have something to pursue, a direction, to create a series that might be interesting and different. I shall see where it takes me.

***********************************************************************************

If reading this has encouraged you to sign up for regular updates on my art work, you can click on this link to subscribe.

If you already subscribe ~ thank you. You may have friend who would like my newsletter. Just forward it on to them. 💜

The next edition should be out tomorrow.

Tags Anne Lawson, AnneLawsonArt, creativity, machine sewing on paper, Melbourne artist, nature art, sewing on paper, sewing over watercolour, thread painting

AnneLawsonArt Birds My art work Texture

Now, here’s the nest

Last post I put the nest in the title, and made no more mention of it! So, here’s the nest.

Kate from Tall tales from Chiconia had the joy of watching a sun bird build and raise a family in her nest, hanging just outside Kate’s back door. There’s a photo of it here. I was delighted when Kate sent the nest to me.

It is a beautiful little thing, delicate, and yet so strong. There are feathers tucked into the dried grasses.

But, because it hangs rather than sits on a branch, it is not the usual nest shape. That’s the basic issue, I think.

I have had a few attempts at creating it….with pencil

and with ink and pencil.

And one with only oil pastels

These were studies to learn about the shape and tones.

Then I went to Mark’s workshop in Bendigo, and thought that I would use the technique he taught me with the nest.

First step was to lay down the watercolour.

Then to go over it with oil pastels.

Does it work? Well, I think the basic problem is the shape of the nest. I love it, but, as it is not a classic nest shape, it is hard for the viewer to understand what it is, hard to read visually. So other parts of, such as the materials it is made of, need to be very clear. I like the texture in the oil pastel only, and it comes closest to the grasses, feathers and seeds woven into it, but still doesn’t explain it to the viewer.

I would love to know what you think. Do you think “nest” when you look at any of the studies? Does one work better for you than others?

[It may be hard to see all the versions at a large size, so this gallery may make it easier.]

*************************************************************************************

Are you interested in keeping up to date with my art work? Click on the link below to sign up for my fortnightly newsletter.

I would like to know more about Anne’s art work

Tags drawing a nest, inspiration, nest, sun bird, watercolour and oil pastel

Beckler's Botanical Bounty Odds and Ends Plants Texture Travels

Travel theme: Earth

Thanks to Ailsa at Where’s my backpack? for this theme, which is in celebration of Earth Day. Hopefully we will be able to encourage our politicians to have policies that support our Earth too.

It is tempting to publish beautiful photos of sunsets or mountains or glorious landscapes. I want to show you one of my favourite parts of the Earth, the area around Menindee. It is an arid area of Western New South Wales, an hour away from Broken Hill. It is flat and looks uninspiring. However, the more you look, the more beauty you see in this unique landscape.

(Photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2015)

C. australasicum growing prolifically beside the road. (Photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2011)

Looking for the right plants, Kinchega National Park (Photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2012)

Looking back to the caravan park, evening light

Once you start to explore you can see the diversity, and begin to appreciate how plants can survive in such harsh environments.

Big skies…..

red dirt…..

and amazing colours.

What part of our Earth do you cherish?

Tags Beckler's Botanical Bounty, Earth Day, environment, inspiration, Menindee, Menindee Lakes, Western New South Wales

AnneLawsonArt Birds Kindness My art work Texture

A delight from Queensland

Post author By anne54
Post date March 15, 2017
23 Comments on A delight from Queensland

Recently Kate emailed me to ask if I wanted a nest. Well, who can resist a nest? Probably plenty of people, but not me!

The story behind the nest is that an olive backed sunbird created this nest by suspending it from the fairy lights right by Kate’s backdoor. Kate had the delightful task of keeping the nest, bird and eggs safe. You may remember her blog posts about it, where you can also see a photo. It is an amazing creation, especially to be made by such a tiny thing.

Yesterday the nest arrived, safe and sound, because Kate had packed it so well.

And this is my new treasure

Not everybody’s cup of tea, but I love it. The muted colours, its fragility, its construction (how does one little bird create such a thing, especially as only some parts look like they have been woven) and the little additions, like the feathers and paperbark (must be from a melaleuca!)

My mind is buzzing with creative ideas. Maybe even oil pastel?? In October there is an exhibition of natural history subjects, and this little sunbird nest could be just the subject for me! I will keep you posted.

So many thinks to Kate for thinking of me. She is such a generous soul, and my world is richer for knowing her.

Tags birds nests, creative inspiration, inspiration, nest, sunbird nest

AnneLawsonArt My art work Plants Texture Travels

The Nullarbor and trees.

It was at my artist in residency at Mountain Seas on Flinders Island that inspired me to focus on trees. Not just any tree, but melaleucas. I love their canopies, the way the top parts catch the light while the underneath is in deep shade. I love the shape of them ~ flat areas and crevasses. But I also love their trunks and branches, which twist and bend. When they are massed together there is a rhythm to the shapes.

I am obsessed by these trees. I try to move on, but I keep coming back, either to try them in a new way or perfect what I have been doing. I have used pencil

Image copyright: Anne Lawson 2015

I have painted with watercolour

Image copyright: Anne Lawson 2015

I have worked them in yarn. This was probably the least satisfactory way of creating them, but it did lead me onto creating embroidered landscapes.

They all flowed from the Flinders Island experience, where I saw the melaleucas massed together. The trip across the Nullarbor has fuelled my obsession in a different way. The trees there are not melaleucas and, while there are hundreds of square kilometres of them, they are individual trees. I am not sure what species they actually are, and at the moment, that is unimportant to me. Like the melaleucas it is the shape of the canopy and the sculptural branches and trunks that make my creative heart sing.

Maybe you look at these photos and think “Nice pictures, but iI don’t quite get the obsession”. I love them partly because they dovetailed so nicely with the melaleucas, so similar, and yet they shimmered in the wind. Partly because I had to wonder about the evolutionary process. What advantage is there to have such spindly branches? (Bendy branches help in the wind, I guessed, and maybe thinner trunks help move water more efficiently. Any thoughts?) But largely because when you are travelling a thousand kilometres (and another thousand back) staring out the window, you do get a bit obsessed by what you are looking at. I found I was trying to capture the individual trees in my mind.

So, the trees sat there for a couple of weeks and a couple of thousand kilometres. It wasn’t until I came home that I realised two things had come together ~ the trees and a set of oil pastels that were a Christmas present in Western Australia. And this is what is coming out…

The oil pastels allow me to smudge and blend and get carried away with colour combinations. I can layer colours over each other and drag pastels through areas. Then the trunks and branches have the delicacy of the ink. That’s like doodling! Mostly I use black ink pens, but I have been experimenting with different coloured inks. (I show some of my experimentation on my Instagram feed, AnneLawson54.)

Some close up photos so you can see how the oil pastel creates luscious textures and combinations of colour.

scan-copy — Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2017

scan-3 — Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2017

So far they are all either A5 or A4 size, but I am planning bigger ones. They are so satisfying, and such a contrast to the detailed work in my botanic art paintings!

Most of the paintings are available in my Etsy shop AnneLawsonArt. There are details of each if you are interested in finding out more. Some of the other drawings I have shown you in this post are there too. However you don’t have to buy through Etsy if you don’t want to. You can email me at annebags@optusnet.com.au and we can sort things out.

Tags AnneLawsonArt, creating with oil pastels, drawing trees, drawing trees with oil pastels, Inspiration from nature, Nullarbor trees, oil pastels

AnneLawsonArt My art work Odds and Ends Texture

Samplers

My embroidery work is continuing to engage and enthuse me. It is encouraging a number of creative threads to come together. (Do you like that pun, Kate?!) I will tell you more about those mental ramblings at a later date.

My very good friend Liz is a reliable sounding board and creates wonderful embroideries of her own. She helped me to see that I was heading in the direction of trying to put in too much fiddly detail. I am attracted to detail ~ botanic art was great for this! ~ and find abstraction very difficult.

My original thought was to take a part of a watercolour I had been working on and make it into a small embroidery. The photos tell the story.

Photocopy of part of my painting (Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

Choosing the 10 x 10 cm image (Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

I then traced the outline onto the tapestry canvas. You can see the beginning of the problem…..too much detail already.

Outlining the scene in blue cotton (photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

As I was working I was feeling that it was all too cramped. Liz’s comment, that it needed to be more abstract and less of a copy, confirmed this. I would be interested to hear what you think, understanding it is only 10 x 10 cm.

Work in progress that may not get finished! (Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

It probably didn’t help that I attached the boulder, which I had carefully woven to fit the image, upside down!

Liz came to the rescue again, loaning me some of her textile books. Stitch Magic: ideas and interpretation by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn was particularly inspiring.

Work by Jan Beaney

Work by Jean Littlejohn, inspired by the skin of a lizard

Work by Jean Littlejohn

So, armed with my 10 x 10 squares and the threads I have been working with, I played with stitch samplers. The first was blanket stitch.

Blanket stitch sampler (Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

By putting down layers of stitches and by varying the length and direction of the stitches I was able to create a lot of texture. Also it covered the area quickly. Much less tedious than the usual half stitch filling in each hole. Great for foliage.

The next was chain stitch.

Chain stitch sampler (Image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

This creates a dense flat mat, as you can fill in the spaces with more chains. The creamy buttony things are made with an extended French knot. I can see me using chain stitch for the movement of water, as it gives a great sense of direction.

The third, feather stitch, is my favourite so far, possibly because I am getting the hang of creating these samplers.

Feather stitch sampler (image and photo copyright: Anne Lawson 2016)

There are three layers of stitches here ~ a dark olive green, then the lighter lime green and then the shiny yellow green on top. I love the messy texture that it makes. It doesn’t have the definite edge of the blanket stitch, which makes it even more random. However it also doesn’t completely cover the canvas either. You can see it peeking through. So I added in the twisted chain stitches in the yellow green and the darker green. (That darker green is different colours because it is a variegated thread.) I also sewed some blue green cross stitches, but I don’t think they add much. Maybe the thread needed to be thicker.

In my usual impulsive fashion I have already begun a bigger piece using some of these ideas. My aim with it is to keep my ideas really free, just laying down stitches to see where they take me. I am enjoying this journey!

Tags blanket stitch, chain stitch, feather stitch, stitch samplers, stitches, textile work, texture

Plants Texture Travels

Trees, glorious trees

Only a short post today, because I want you to scoot over to EllaDee’s blog to read her story, “I asked my neighbour about its life…”, a beautiful fable about tree spirits in urban areas. It is a delight to read.

It got me thinking about the beautiful trees, mainly River Red Gums, that grow along the banks of our big rivers. They are so big and gnarled that and, as you walk beneath them, you can’t help but wonder about all the things they have seen — Aboriginal gatherings, European explorers, lizards and snakes living below, birds building nests and possums in the hollows. They have weathered floods and droughts, and one can only hope that they can withstand the terrible pressures of climate change.

Tags photos of gum trees, river red gums

Odds and Ends Texture Travels

Coastal heath

Kate, who does beautiful quilting, commented on one of my photos from the last blog, remarking how she could see colours and textures to make a quilt. I was delighted that she might like to use it. EllaDee saw it as a woven piece, and I see paintings and maybe tapestries in it. Personally I think we are responding to the textures, the colours and the patterns and rhythms of the bushes as they flow up the bank. So, a couple more photos. I would love to know if they inspire you in any way.