As it is Christmas holidays this week I have had to be super organised. I actually had 3 trys at this elephant, in the end I took part of the design I had seen in a photo and then had a go in my journal and ended up drawing the design directly onto the fabric free hand from my imagination.
I have used a piece of batik fabric for the background, cotton for the decoration and poly-cotton for the body. I used poly-cotton so that when I used a moderately hot iron on it it would crinkle. Not as much as I would have liked but not bad. I used a combination of pencils and pens for the drawings . The threads were selected for colour, I don't have that big of a collection as most of my sewing is garment construction.
Firstly, sorry about the low resolution on the last block. I have nearly used up all my upload for the month so had to make the images smaller. This idea may morph into more than one block or it might not work at all, only time will tell. Working with shades of grey is quite a challenge in itself.
When I think of Asian elephants I think of India. This is where, with exception of the circus or the zoo, I have had my most personal experiences of elephants. For me. their presence is so intertwined with the life of the inhabitants that it is impossible to think of them separately.
The resounding images that stay with me of India is the beautiful colours of the sari's of the women. The use of gold stitching, beads and bright colours in their clothing as they would float like beautiful birds in the midst of rubbish and that dull colour of a mass of humans. Even doing hard manual labour, the women looked beautiful.
One of the hotels we stayed in was the home of a Maharajah. He and his family lived on the top floor and the lower floors were rented out as a hotel. All the walls had the most amazing painting. Again lots of gold. (We only had electricity for a few hours a day so never had good light to take photos.)
All those bells on the elephants . I have used colonial knots to try and represent these. As to the shape, I loosely used the design off the curtains in one of the bedrooms.
I used a batik base with a sheer printed fabric over the top of it and then stitched this with gold thread. I appliqued the design onto the sheer fabric first then layered it onto the batik.
I stitched the outline using a metallic thread and then outlined the piece using colonial knots and some back stitch. ( I used crotchet thread to do this.) So this weeks design.
This weeks design is centred on the elephants that stand guard at the entrance to the Pagoda.
I have been doing some research into Nepal recently. I knew it was located in the Himalayan Mountains to the north of India. That there had been the murder of the Royal Family, that this is where the Sherpas come from, that Mount Everest is located there, that some good textiles come from this region. But that is about the depth of my knowledge. The topography of the country ranges from valleys and plains that are only 100 -330m above sea level to the High Himalayas where the highest mountains in the world are found.
The climate ranges from tropical through subtropical, cool temperate, temperate, alpine to arctic. This means that there is a huge range of vegetation's and animals. Because of it's location there has been waves of immigrants and invasions into the region mixing with the indigenous population. In the 1991 census the population was 19.6 million. This included fifty different groups with their sub-divisions and classes, each having its own cultural background and language.
The two major religions are Hinduism and Buddhism which have influenced each other and in some places are found to represent an amalgam of these and other religious beliefs. You can see this in the Pagoda. I was really confused at one point as I was sure I was looking at the same art I had seen in India but this was a Buddhist Temple. Well not in the strictest sense.
Elephants are seen all over India. Even today in the chaotic traffic of Delhi you will often see an elephant in amongst the traffic.
In States such as Rajastan the elephants live in stables attached to the houses of their owners. They are painted and decorated lovingly. I like the folk art type representations of the elephant that you see in textiles and it is this tradition that I will draw upon for my design.
(These Images were taken on a trip to India in 2006) When you stand next to an elephant you have to admit they are impressive!
Pam asked me this question and I have been thinking, what am I going to do with those berries?
When the light strikes the fabric at an angle the relief of the design printed on the fabric reflects the light but looking straight down you can't see it. So how about something like this?
I did some more of the stitching on my piece today. I am experimenting with a new brand of adhesive for fixing the pieces. I think it would be fine for machine sewing but it is really difficult to handle when hand sewing. It is called easy fix.
I had used a white fabric with a self embossed pattern on in. When you look at it it stands out really well but that is not the case when it is photographed. So I have been experimenting with some of the faces from the pagoda. The scale is so small that I'm not sure that I will be able to get the detail I want. These were drawn with a .08 pen.
This has been a difficult week with the funeral of my friend, the last week of the school term and unpleasantness with a member of my staff which has seen me in conflict with that staff member. All these things have taken their toll and left me feeling unwell.
I am finding the fact that I have limited my sources of inspiration to the Pagoda and it's gardens difficult. But the challenge is about detail so I just have to stretch myself and look. When I was young and studying dance my teacher used to tell me not to think so much but just go with the flow. So, with this weeks design this is what I have tried to do. I started with this photograph of a plant which is in the gardens of the Pagoda.
I then cropped the photo to select a detail.
I played around with colour trying to break the mental link I had with the photo.
I then took the shapes and used them as a starting point to develop some kind of abstraction.
I can see that I will have to start dyeing my own fabrics to develop the colours I want to use. I just didn't have the kind of colours that I wanted in my stash, so have had to substitute what I could find.
I tried to machine stitch the design but that isn't the look I want. It has to be hand stitched to get the disconnected look that I am after. That is going to take time and I need to buy a new thimble or I'm going to have holes in my fingers. I have begun and the hand stitching gives the look I want.
So as you can see I didn't do that dragon, but, I'm going to keep him for the future. When I was looking through the photos from yesterday I realised that I had taken a number that were reflections in the ponds around the pagoda. Reflection in water has a strange effect on me. The closest I can come to explaining it is to compare the emotions it raises to listening to Brahm's Third Symphony, the third movement. ( I have added a You Tube clip of this at the end of this post.)
So these are some of the images that caught my attention.
The thing I liked about all of them was the leaf litter floating in the water. They had the appearance of being on top of the reflection like marks in an old mirror. But there was too much detail for a 6" block so I put the image into photoshop and started to play around with it. I ended up selecting a dry brush finish and croping the image to gain the most contrast.
I knew that when printed onto fabric the colours would be a lot darker so lightened the exposure a little. I only have a cheap bubble jet printer so there are lots of limitations. After printing the fabric I outline quilted the image and then added my layer of leaf litter with appliqued shapes. I would have liked the colours to be truer so next time I will make a trip to a print shop to see if I can get a better result.
And so the Brahms. There are a number of renditions of this piece on You Tube. I have selected Von Karajan version as it is lighter. More beauty and less pain. I have read so much about Clara Weber but didn't know she was so beautiful. Brahms has put all his love and longing into this composition.
It is just so busy at work that I haven't spent a lot of time on the design this week. I went down to the Southbank Parklands to take some more detailed photos. It was so early that I missed the parking bit and when I returned found I had a $50.00 parking fine. Not a good start.
There were bikers everywhere. This must be the end point of the Saturday morning ride. The cafes were full. Maybe that was why the snappers were out and about so early.