The reality of trying to study while having a chronic illness has hit me hard in the last two months. Already at such as early stage it looks like I won’t be able to finish the course within the two years they let you have. To keep up with the schedule I would need to do approximately 6 hours per week, which I thought I would be able to manage, on average. But very soon after starting I realised that those 6 hours are the bare minimum and in practise it takes me a lot longer.
And at first I was able to put in some extra hours, but then I had some serious health complications and was unable to do anything for several weeks. So it looks highly likely that I will now miss my first deadline which is not a good start. But I have no option but to follow my own pace so I’m just trying to “keep calm and carry on”, as they say. If I won’t finish on time, I can always keep going just on my own, without having the help and feedback of a tutor.
Exercise 4 – my first crisis
So now that I have got those deadline anxieties out of the way, what about Exercise 4? Well, this one was another mark making exercise, aiming to get you to explore lots of different types of techniques. In fact I had a slight panic when I saw the list of techniques you are meant to try:
Rubbings, Wax resists, Bleach, Block printing, Fixative transfer, stencils, crayon scratch, combing, collage.
My first reaction was: “that will take weeks to do properly, and I am already falling behind my schedule”!
Also at this stage, my embroidery materials were beginning to appear. Calico, voile and hessian fabrics, and lots of beautiful embroidery threads of various types. A major distraction from my drawing exercises, as my first instinct is always to just start experimenting, without any plan or designs. I get a lot of my inspiration from lovely materials, just trying them out will bring ideas into my head about what to do with them.
Lovely, but distracting (when I should really be doing some drawing exercises)
So my mind was already firmly on embroidery, which caused a major problem as far as this mark making exercise was concerned. I just couldn’t make the connection between the techniques suggested and their relevance to embroidery. Yes I knew that the aim was to continue on the mark making theme, and just do lots of exploration of techniques and who knows what sort of inspiration you might get. But somehow some stubborn inner part of me had decided those techniques just were not relevant to what I was trying to achieve with the embroidery exercises. “Irrelevant! an unhelpful distraction!” I thought, while recognising very well that this was hardly a constructive attitude to have.
So I approached the exercise with very little inspiration and of course it shows in the results. None of the techniques amused me enough to keep going and do anything worthwile.
Now I might have been able to force myself to try a bit harder if I hadn’t already been falling behind schedule and have a deteriorating health problem to deal with. As it was, I decided to do what I can, and then move on. I’m almost embarrassed to show you the feeble results, but I know I must, it was the deal – I’m sure you learn more from work that wasn’t so successful than one where you achieved brilliant results without much effort at all.
Rubbings of a fern leaf, bits of vintage lace and hessian
Bleach on gold tissues paper (which didn’t do anything) and black calico. Interesting how the fabric colour turned pink rather than white.
Stencilling. I made some paper using silk (throwster’s waste), leaving plenty of gaps for the paint to go through. I quite like the interesting random pattern in produced.
Crayon scratching, using Markal sticks. As I remember from my primary school days, this technique works best if you have light colours underneath covered by dark crayon. Bottom right: using white markal stick as wax resist.
Wax resist using a candle. My “eco candle” had a slightly strange consistency and it didn’t work very well for this purpose and so I quickly moved on….
Using putty rubber to lift out marks from a surface coloured with soft pencil and pastels. Another technique that didn’t work well enough to inspire me to explore much further.
So for this exercise, I’m giving myself some feedback:
“Must try harder next time“.
😉
A Textile Student's Diary 