ATV Exercise 1.5 Collages and creases:

I feel there’s a real limitation in the pieces I’ve chosen as they are all decorative pieces stretched or pinned to a background and on display in a non dynamic way. There’s no drape or folds or a chance to touch the fabric or examine it closer or see the back of it. It makes some of the exercises tricky as the pieces are so flat. No creases or pleats or labels to examine! Certainly it means I’ve been focusing more on what is on the fabric than the fabric itself in this exercise. Nonetheless I’ve enjoyed this exercise very much. Seeking out the colours and textures that spoke to me and reflected the chosen pieces was fun and putting them together was fun and creative.

I chose to work on A3 paper for both pieces, I chose the embroidered bag and the Maid of honour embroidery.

I mimicked the flowing white on indigo embroidery of the bag by making marks on the background with oil pastels and placed my collage on top. I saw the red flower (fruit?) on the bag as something juicy and luscious and was delighted when I found a red pepper to add to the collage! I very much simplified the form and focused only on the central flower.

For the Maid of honour collage I worked on the rubber carpet underlay I’d printed through in my introductory project. I built the central flower up from layers of found papers and decided to leave out the leaves and most of the stems and just make a simple twisted stem, which then ended up looking quite similar to the stem of the flower in the first collage. I loved how both turned out. Very different from each other and yet they both I feel worked well.