Simplicity

One of the things I like to do is to photocopy pieces I really really love and then look at them all lined up and think what it is about them that grasps my attention so intensely.  If I want my work to have that effect, then I want to know how others did it to me!  How’d they do that?

I realize I’m drawn to work with a strong clear message, this is just my personal taste but it would be nuts for me to want to make work that wasn’t My Personal Taste, right?  Clarity of message mean that there should be no doubt about what I’m trying to convey.

Every time I’ve made crap (and believe me this has definitely happened! How else would I know about “extreme doggie makeovers”!!) I’ve tried to analyse why the piece was such rubbish. And, nearly always,  its because I’ve had too much going on and I’ve just launched into something without thinking ahead of time what I wanted to say. Without knowing what I want to say, I won’t know what words (elements) to choose. Some people can speak in tongues but not I!

So, for me, I should always make Thinking my first step.  Whatever the inspiration, I should determine what I want to say and how I want to say it and that will help me choose my language. Actually deliberately putting my message into words always helps me to be clearer in my own mind. And if I’m not clear to myself, how could I hope to be to anyone else? (This is something I’ve started asking people to do in workshops too, by the way,  and they have told me it really helped them as well).  I should know myself what is so special and significant about the inspiration (photo, place, imagination, feeling, concept etc) if I want to share it. If I say too much, my piece could get scattered and confusing. If, looking at the inspiration, several things really interest me then I should plan on a series which each piece in the series addressing just ONE of those things.

Take a look at these pictures:

There are several interesting things here.  The first thing that strikes me is the pattern of shadows on the lattice, so if I wanted to make a piece from this photo, I’d blur down the plant and really emphasize shadows and lattice, I might even eliminate the plant and the shelf altogether.  However, if you saw the plant first, the beautiful contrast of the red against the several shade of green then that should be the focus of your piece.  
Or, perhaps one could convey the sense of a cool place on a hot day?  This was a small corner of a very hot garden on a very hot day in August…in which case a third possible Idea comes to mind.  Three different quilts!

In the picture on the right (Kendal)  are many different interesting things.  What inspired me to take the picture was the outline of the chimneys against the sky…if I made a quilt about that I would eliminate a LOT of the other detail, the street light, the houses nearest to me (you can just see a wall on either side), the people, the road, the cars, the windows and wall details, and probably the depth…because none of that would be about those chimneys.

On the other hand, I could look at this picture and see all those different levels of depth, from the bushes and people in the foreground, then the nearer houses, then the distant one, and then the distant hills of the Lake District.  A quilt about all these depths would be very different.

Or….I could make a piece about the angles and shapes of that conglomerate of houses – see how they are all joined together in a fascinating pattern?

Or, I could make a piece about the colours…I love the way the green sort of flows through the piece like a river, getting gradually bluer as it goes back into space…

Once I’ve got my Single clear message, then I should think about how I can portray that. And again, this is where a possible series might come in. For there are many ways to convey, say, “the greenness of it”! some more literal, some more abstract, some relying more on shape, others more on line, or on texture…and I can explore them all – but not in the same piece! (I hope!)

Simplicity improves.

And now for a clear clean simple cup of tea! And if you have been, thanks for reading…Elizabeth

PS do please comment! Then I know you’re out there!! In the great void!

Intuition, continued.

I had so many fascinating comments on the Intuition post, plus Terry Jarrard-Dimond’s  thoughtful blog today, that I thought the topic worthy of further cogitation, if not agitation!

There have been studies  on intuitive behaviour, e.g. that shown by the police when they talk about “a hunch”, or a rock climber “intiutively” picking the best route.  They show that while at the time of making the quick decision they might not have been able to consciously state what that decision was based upon, when they were asked to think it through slowly afterwards they could recall the experiences they’d had in the past that were similar and thus had lead them to the behavioural choice they made.

Perhaps one way to learn how to be more intuitive  would be to experience many situations similar to the ones where you want the behaviour to appear quickly, effortlessly and apparently unconsciously.  Of course this is the kind of training used in many fields.  I don’t quite know why in art one would expect to be able to be a sensitive and efficacious artist without training.  Perhaps because in the latter part of the twentieth century there was a movement in art schools to throw out some rather stiff and rigid training practices.  But, they threw that poor baby out with the bathwater!  You will not have the intuition to perform a skilful act without having had the training.

I teach design, composition, color, developing inspiration, motivation and techniques of construction/quilting etc and now,I’m wondering, can one teach intuition? For intuition  is  not  a gift one is born with (despite Jung!), or  that if you put on the right music and smoke funny ciggies you’ll get “in touch” with!!  Of course that doesn’t mean people havn’t tried!!! 
Nor is intuition a  specific body of knowledge, but rather how you use that body of knowledge.

Basically I think there are two kinds of activity in art :
first: artistic activity that is a performance of something learned over and over until it becomes unconscious…until a motor memory has been established, in the fingers or the feet or whatever organ is involved!  Like a piano or dance recital.
second: artistic activity that is a response to a stimulus and leads to the creation of something new. (e.g. choreography, music composition, painting, art quilts).
I think intuition might play more of a role in the first, than in the second kind.

Where does one begin creating, for example, a musical composition?  It is almost always from a stimulus – this might be something tangible like the wind (think of Vaughn-Williams Sinfonia Antarctica or Mendelsohn’s Fingal’s Cave)…or it might be a brief snatch of melody overheard in the street, or created when running one’s fingers up and down the keys…it might be everyday sounds like Philip Glass’s “hum of the refrigerator”.

Intuition is not actually involved with the genesis of the idea: the genesis is a tangible stimulus (as above), or perhaps a thought, like wanting to make a piece about a certain event, situation or mood.  Intuition plays a role rather in the solving of the problem of turning the stimulus into an art form.

Hmnm, so maybe it could be taught…you would need to expose the student to many such problems initially.  For example: how could you make a quilt about
…………………………………….a bowl of cherries………………………… ??

In tackling a problem like this 3 levels of technique need  to  be learnt:
A: the techniques involved in developing designs from the bowl of cherries

B: the techniques involved in making a strong composition from those designs.

C: construction techniques.

Once the students had mastered working from small fixed concrete examples like this, then you could expand to more complex ones, say a larger still life where they had to “find” the part of the still life that was really intriguing to them.  Then you could go to larger visual experiences, e.g. seeing a barn dismantled , and  finally to abstract examples like a specific mood or feeling, or an element like a certain shape, type of line, colour etc.  ( I do think working from an element is one of the harder starting points which is why I wonder why so many folk begin a piece “with the fabric” – the fabric after all is  but a texture or a colour..an abstract element.)

The more experiences you have  had like this, especially in step by step examples with a good teacher and good feedback, the more likely it is that you could develop your own “intuition” as to what would work best in each of these steps.

I don’t think, though,  that at any point one should try to make a quilt (or a musical composition, or a dance) based on nothing!  Imagine saying to a choreographer, okay come up with a dance about nothing, from nothing, and saying nothing!! doesn’t make much sense does it?  I have never hear of art based on nothing.  Many great artists have said something equivalent to  “there is always a starting point”..  So, don’t ignore the Starting Point, the Main idea.

Interestingly, if one studies so-called “primitive” or “outsider” art, one learns that, as Terry says ,these artists have usually had a great deal of informal training and experience.  Furthermore, the interviews with the original Gees Bend quilters revealed a fine sense of how to make a piece balanced, unified and also interesting.  They were not hampered by trying to rigidly follow a pattern, trying to “get it right” according to some dry specifics as to what “right” is in quilting terms, instead they were making something beautiful and engaging and, yes, functional, from discarded fabric scraps.

And this right brain/left brain stuff?  well for one thing, it’s nothing like as binary an activity as that sounds!! The left brain is inclined to be more analytical: constantly evaluating and judging.   If you can slow down that activity, then  you can allow yourself  to freewheel through all possible solutions…but there will always come a point when those possibilities will have to be assessed.   So there is always a back and forth between the two types of cognitive activity.

I don’t think one would ever be hampered by knowing too much – so I don’t advocate quitting studying.   But you might be hampered by critiqueing yourself at the wrong stage in the artistic activity.   Remember I said I thought there were three different activities: design, composition and construction?  I think the start would be to put onself (literally or metaphorically – depending on the nature of the stimulus) in front of it, and then say okay I’ve got to come up with as many design ideas as possible.  So if your Main Idea was Dots, then just be as dotty as you can be!!!  Produce a plethora of points!

Then say…okay, now I have all these dotty ideas, I’ve got to move to the next stage: assess mode: which ones  look more promising?  How can I organize them into strong, fascinating compositions?  I want to come up with a lot of possible arrangements – free wheeling mode.    Then back into assess mode:   which compositions are working best, and how and why?  could I improve any of these?

I think it’s like so many things, you kind of walk your way through it over and over…knowing when to emphasize which skills (the free floating idea generating skills, or the analytical assessment skills).   At first it’s mechanical…and then it gradually begins to flow more.  But oh, it does take time!  so I won’t take up any more of it!

If you have been, thanks for reading!!   And thank you, Terry, for this “conversation”!
Elizabeth

Intuition

I’ve been thinking about the place of intuition in art making after hearing a friend who makes wonderful work wishing that she could work more “intuitively”.

Intuition is knowing or understanding something without having apparently thought about it. This could be solving a mystery (but don’t you just hate those cheap mysteries where the detective solves the crime through “intuition”!! Poirot would be turning in his grave if he had one, as would dear Sherlock). It could also be expecting rain or a storm..some people “intuitively” know a storm is coming. Or it could be in performing skilful acts without obviously consciously thinking through the steps.

Intuition is not a basic instinct, something we are born with, a basic survival skill. A baby will instinctively fear strangers…and when we are grown up all of us are put on alert by our nervous systems when there is something unusual in the environment. The senses say “change!” to the brain, and the brain then assesses the importance of the change. So even in that case, there is a cognitive connection between the input and the reaction. Some very basic inputs will lead to reaction without thought: pulling back one’s hand from a hot object – you can see how that would be important for survival. But I feel that all other inputs do actually go through the brain!  And human beings have the ability to prevent their reactions too – which means the brain.

It certainly is very easy to fall into habits…they are useful routines that save us time..and we might well not consciously be really thinking about them as we perform them, a habitual pattern – “what we always do”.  But I imagine all of us could, if we wished, slow the activity down and give a verbal conscious description of the processes.

Okay so where does this play in art making?

You often hear artists say: “oh I don’t make a plan before I make art, I just do it intuitively”. They feel they are (for example) placing shapes onto a design wall without having apparently thought about it. It would be perfectly easy to do this – quick pick up a chunk of fabric from your cutting table and run to the wall and pin it up…quick run back to the table get another piece back to the wall and pin it up..and so on!!! It might work even better if you close your eyes while you are doing it! I think that would be art making without a plan or conscious thought. I think that would really be the ONLY way to make art without a plan or without thought.  Select the fabric from your stash with your eyes closed, cut out shapes carefully (no rotary cutters!), stick the shapes on the wall and no feeling around to see where the first piece is, either!   I do believe, in fact, that you can pay a large sum of money to take a class and do something very similar to this!   “How to become more intuitive in your work!”  Scrooge had a description for this!

But, seriously,  how many  “intuitive” artists are working exactly in this way? There are some problems in talking about intuition in art;  it’s not one straightforward thing.  Some people who think they are literally not making any judgments about how they place shapes on a wall (or whatever) are  actually operating “by habit”, following old patterns without really being aware that they are doing so. Their old patterns might be very good ones, based on a strong art education and years of experience. Or they might be quite bad ones based on doing what they have always done without ever assessing the value of it or thinking about any way things could be improved. For example a self taught tennis player who consistently doesn’t use her body in the most powerful way, or a golfer who has never been shown the most effective hand position on the club. Or the person who plays the piano “by ear”: they pick out a melody with one hand and then chomp away at some basic chords with the other. After they’ve played a few pieces, you realize that they all sound the same, because they don’t really know what they’re doing except trying to follow that right hand melody.

Going back to our art quilter standing in front of the design wall: Just because you might not be consciously thinking “okay I’ve got to place this piece of red fabric 3 inches to the right because I placed the last piece 2 inches from another piece and I want my distances between pieces to vary….” does not mean you are operating without conscious thought.

True intuition is based on years of experience. Experience both in what works and what doesn’t: where you have learned many times to select/avoid a certain solution or device because it always/rarely works well. Experience can lead you to a good basic design more quickly than if you reinvent everything right from the start. Intuition is not  instinctively avoiding – say – dividing your composition exactly into two because your survival depends upon it. That kind of instinct just doesn’t exist.

Real intuition ALWAYS depends upon experience, knowledge and sensitivity. The detective who has a “hunch” about the killer has unconsciously noticed that person’s awkward behaviour, or spotted some inappropriate element in a scene but hasn’t yet thought about it why the scene looks “odd”. A person who had never tried to assess the body language of a criminal, or the elements of a scene of crime who never be able to intuitively or otherwise find the murderer.

Good, workable, intuition is based on Something. That something is, I submit, a mixture of knowledge and experience. Not guesswork, and not blindly trying to copy something (like the person playing piano “by ear”).

One studies and practices art so that then one can let the more formal elements be dealt with at a less conscious level knowing they will be right. I descry those folk who claim to work intuitively when really what they mean is they don't think about it at all and havn't got any deep down automatic knowledge and end up making a dog's dinner!!!

I don't think you can skip the education step...you've gotta get it, and then get it automatic.  It's like learning a piece of music, you've got to learn it SO well that when you play it you don't think about the notes and the timing but only about the feeling.

There’s no way you can go straight to expressing the feeling no matter how sensitive you are.

I also think that any experienced artist would say that while parts of the process of art making have now become more intuitive for them…the whole process (if the art is to be any good) is rarely, if ever, that smooth and unconscious and effortless; it's blood sweat and tears with nearly every piece..occasionally intuition and luck work ...but often they don't.  I used to think "when I'm a real artist, everything will go so well, there'll be no doubt, no multiple attempts,  everything will work perfectly the first time....." ha!!!  just talk to a few artists, or read their autobiographies, and the Truth is revealed!! No longer can we go off and sign a urinal!!

And neither could have Magritte – without the art education and experience that he had.

I submit there is no way to make good art without getting your metaphorical hands dirty – i.e. exercising the little grey cells.
you might do this in different ways:
planning it out before hand
planning some out before hand and then adjusting as the terrain unfolds
trial and error
etc...but that is for another blog!!
but all involve the brain! conscious thought...
which, I feel, is a Good thing!
otherwise, let us give all our cats paint brushes and sewing machines!!

If you have been, thanks for reading!!!  Elizabeth
PS There’s oodles of room below for your comments!

Festival of Quilts, UK

 

I just received word that I will be giving a two day workshop on design, and a lecture at the Festival of Quilts, in Birmingham, England this August.

Design and Composition in Art Quilts (2 day class) 
Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th August 9.30am to 4.30pm

Working in a Series (lecture) 
Thursday 19th August, 11.30am to 12.30pm.

 

Then, with Dominie Nash, I’ll be showing quilts in one of the galleries at the Exhibition site: from 10am to 5.30pm on Thursday 19th through to 5pm  on Sunday 22nd August.

This will be my first time working in a big Festival so it will be very energizing and different;  I’ll have to talk very fast to concentrate information that I usually give over several days into the smaller time format required for pre-quilt show conference workshops, but there will be a terrific buzz of excitement in the air that I’m sure will get the creative juices sparkling high into the air!

It is also the first time I will have taught in England. Every country has a different aesthetic and it will be fascinating to see how this comes out both in the workroom and in the quilts in the show.  Despite all the hassles involved, travel always broadens and deepens our knowledge, our inspirational well and our understanding.

 
  Since my trip to Iona and Knoydart (Western Scotland) last year I’ve not been able to stop painting watercolours of sea and sky and distant blurry mountains and islands!!  I wonder what repetitive activity the trip to Birmingham will lead to! 

 

The artistic differences  between countries are based on the light, the landscape, the weather, the building materials and the history – lots to absorb and cogitate upon.

I decided too to take a class myself whilst over the in UK, and having discovered what wonderful possibilities there are, I wish I could stay longer.  Taking a class and learning something new in a new place from someone with a very different background will inspire me far more than sight seeing in London, or shopping on Oxford street!

Go forth and learn!
And, if you have been, thanks for reading!  Elizabeth

PS  please email me if you want to know any details about the class or lecture, or anything else! or make a comment – love comments! – thank you.  e

Recycling clothing into art

I went to an interesting talk last night at the Art Dept of the University.
Amongst the many discards of modern society are clothes.   Our foremothers, and some present day folk , but alas not enough, recycled clothing into quilts.   Before synthetic fabrics, the clothes would be divided into wool or cotton and the fibres reclaimed and remade into a lower quality, but still useable, fabric of some kind.   But now there are way too many discards for any number of quilters to remake!  And the fibres are too mixed for the natural ones to be reclaimed.  Great mountains of unwanted used clothing rejected by the thrift stores are built up every week.  These are sorted and the more useful clothing sent to very poor countries like Haiti, but great hills of evening gowns, fancy dress, costumes and wild stuff remain.  Even if Tim Gunn and his Project Runway crew were multiplied one thousand fold and on telly as often as sport or political chat bovine waste, there would be vast quantities left engorging landfills.

Along came a couple of artists: known collectively as Guerra de la Paz.   Guerra de la Paz is the composite name of  Alain Guerra  and Neraldo de la Paz, who have collaborated for over 10 years.  They were born in Cuba but have lived in Miami for several years.  They were originally painters “who didn’t want to continue painting”.  They were inspired by the many weathered billboards in their area of Miami; the effect of nature on layered paper.  Seeking free art materials, they were given thousands of magazines which they layered into collages, then deconstructed, peeling and sanding off several patches and layers to create mysterious mixed images.  Describing their process they called this “letting go the ego” not caring which bits might be thought precious but rather leaving the results totally to chance.

One day they spotted several large dumpsters overflowing with great hillocks of unused clothing.  Further investigation lead to the discovery of mountain ranges of clothing in vast warehouses.  “Great free material and plenty of it!”  They got a commission in Miami for an outdoor installation and over a period of several weeks created “Overflow”, a waterfall of clothing descending from the gallery roof down the side of the building.  They were fascinated by nature’s partnership in the process: the sun bleached, the rain enrichened colour, the wind made the fabric dance.

Once they started using society’s discards more and more came to light; the fruits of excessive consumerism (itself begetted by unbound free enterprise reinforcing Greed), provided more and more opportunities to free material.  They used everything.  And began making more and more sophisticated shapes and comments on society.

(Apologies for quality of photo, taken from the corner of a dark auditorium!). 

In this installation the “rainbow” is an armature arcing from one set of coloured boots on the left to the right (yes, those are wellies under the clothing!  supporting the mass of fibre detritus). 

  

The piece on the right,
called Ascension
is composed of clothing arranged from white through grey to black supported on a spider web armature.

 

I wasn’t able to get pictures but some of their most striking work was made from ties.  They formed snakes from the ties, with the open wide end of the tie forming a snake’s mouth with the narrow tongue (the narrow end of another tie) forking out in a vicious venomous attack.  Headless mannequins in smart sober business suits had ties transformed into snakes as they faced off in their business deals, hands shaking below, pointed tongues above!

They made a family from the clothing, with sock faces and discarded wigs.  Thinking it would be appropriate to have some family photographs, they took several of them to a Walmart photographer so they could obtain “that perfect family memory” standing in line with all the oversize moms and babies….but Walmart was enraged!  And refused to take the photographs!!  What! have a social comment on excessive consumerism in our halls? Not us!

So, before you rush out to buy more fabric!, make a nice cup of tea and have a leisurely look at the possibilities in your own wardrobe!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading.   Elizabeth

Paperwork, paperwork.

Who would have thought that the life of an art quilter would be involved more with the pen than the needle?

Actually pen = keyboard these days, of course!
Established artists have secretaries and office managers and agents that run the business side, but all the Art Quilters I know are not so well endowed!
Just to give you an idea of where all that time goes , read on.



Dominie Nash and I are having a show of our work at Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, UK this year, and the 25% off and 50% off coupons were flooding in from the postcard manufacturers so I thought some postcards advertising the show might be a good idea!! So which to choose? 50% off or 25% off? I did not want to take the time to work all the way through the order (which you know they cleverly set up that way) before I could see the final price, so I decided to order from them both! Since I don't make up postcards in Photoshop very often it took me several hours to design front and back of both of them, especially since I forgot about "bleed size". Now who goes around thinking about that? Though of course as a quilter, had they said "seam allowance" I might have been right on!



And yes, you're right! The 25% off company was cheaper - by 20 cents on 500 postcards! If you'd like me to send you one, or both, let me know your name and address - you can email me directly.

Having disposed of that bit of paperwork, or cardstock, I turned to my lesson plans. A lot of prep goes into these as those of you who teach know. However, this is valuable time for I truly think the best way to learn is to teach. Every time I've really wanted to get something into my head, totally in not just passing through at lightning speed (!), I've tried to teach it to someone else, preferably several someones - thank you for listening!! I've got several teaching engagements coming up this year (see side panel).

One place I've always wanted to go to was Penland in North Carolina. A little mountain haven in the Smokies devoted to arts and crafts. I never could do it so was thrilled when they actually offered to pay me to go!! Their new catalogues are out or you can check on line. I'm teaching Session 3, starting June 27. Two full weeks and a maximum of 12 students! so we should all have an amazing time and learn a great deal. I'm going to cover art quilts from top to bottom! Penland's facilities are super so we'll be able to do lots of surface design, make some wonderful fabric for our quilts and then have loads of design and construction time in the cool mountains away from the heat of the plains. With that amount of time, student ratio (and I have a teaching assistant!), I am hoping that I get to work in the studio too. You can learn a lot from watching someone work, so that would be good for all. However, Penland did require an immense amount of paperwork!! How many ounces of dye...how many T-pins....ah well, a good chance to be creative!

Another different teaching opportunity opened up this year too. This one also involves vast quantities of paperwork. But again it is worthwhile - in that writing down what I teach helps me to clarify and organize my ideas - and believe me I know I often need to do that! I've elected to teach an online class - I've not quite finished the lesson plans yet, more details when I do. I'm pleased about this because I know many people cannot make the time, or, more likely, the financial, commitment to take a weeklong workshop away from home. The online courses are very reasonably priced and a great option for everyone. But do pity that poor teacher slogging away on a hot keyboard!

I had the opportunity too for a short article in Quilting Arts - wonderful!! but more paperwork! I think it comes out late spring or early summer...I'll let you know on that one too.

And then all the networking - it's really important, but it is more keyboard time. And I've not even mentioned researching, ordering supplies, accounting....I think at least 50% of my time is spent on the computer these days...I'd love to hear what amount others spend. And, better yet, if there is any way round it?

If you have been, thanks for reading! And now, back to the design wall...hmmm where did I leave that thing...... Elizabeth

Finding Yourself, the Art Quilter

Terry Jarrard-Dimond and I were discussing the development of a personal aesthetic, or “your own voice” as it’s sometimes termed, a few weeks ago.   I’ve also given several workshops on “Finding One’s Own voice”,  so I was very interested to see an article in this month’s (Feb/Mar) edition of International Artist about exactly this point.

Alex Powers writes about finding out what kind of artist you are; he speaks from personal experience having for years made one kind of art, while really preferring another.  He describes ten questions that he feels would have helped him to realize his own aesthetic a little earlier.  Not all of the questions are appropriate to the art quilter, so I won’t copy them here (and they’re in the magazine!)…but I thought it would be fun to take the idea of a self assessment questionnaire and apply it to the art quilter.

1.  Design Elements:  usually 5  are listed in any art book:
      shape, line, value, colour, texture.
Which one of these is most important for you?  
I was surprised to realize that Line is the one I tend to emphasize. 
I love the line made by the edges of buildings  or trees against the sky, or the repeated lines of mountains receding into smoky distance.

 

 

 

 

On the left look at the line of the buildings against the sky, then the line of the sunlit buildings against the shadowy ones behind, and finally the line at the edge of the water.

On the right, see how I’ve made a quilt about these delicious calligraphic lines, the skinny white ones on the black, and then the reverse in the window space.

Trained as a sculptor I think Terry J-D might go for shape…and looking at her work that definitely comes to mind, but I hope she will comment!

Linda Levin I think goes for texture, looking at her very dense recent cityscapes (see left), it’s the overall patterning that speaks loudest.  

 

 

 

 

 

After Line, Value is the next most important for me:  I’m a great fan of very dramatic value patterns, and I think this might be why I love black and white quilts.

So – what appeals to you most and can you see it in your work? 
If not, hmm…are you making the right things for you?

2. Design
Some people work from a very detailed full cartoon, some from a small value sketch and others just begin with a blank design wall and one piece of fabric in their hand.
How much you plan a piece out beforehand clearly speaks to what kind of a person you are as well a what kind of an artist…however Alex Powers warns that: “Design usually has to be learned before it can be used intuitively”.
I do often like to have my cake AND eat it…so I often go for the middle road.  I can see the virtues of completely planning everything out, AND those of complete spontaneity.
So I like a small value sketch, having that helps me with my main shapes, lines and direction of attack, but allows lots of room for serendipitous choices along the way.  I like to know roughly where I’m going, but I don’t need to know the exact detailed route.  So my working method is definitely in sync with how I like to be. Is yours?

3. A picture plane is often divided into 3: background, middle ground and foreground.  Do you use all three?  focus only on one?  Flatten the plane so there is no depth?

Answering this question I realised that (and I was surprised at this) I tend to be much less interested in the foreground…in fact frequently I like to have plain texture in front, little line or shape….my interest is in the middle ground…and often too in the sky.  this gives me the sense of space that I love so much.

And as I write this, sitting here in the middle of a wood with trees right upto the windows, I realise I’d love to swop them out for a nice lake?  Any takers?

Isn’t this fascinating?   I’ll cogitate upon the types of questions one could ask oneself some more in another posting – come back next week, or make a comment yourself, I’d love to hear from you!   This is getting a bit long and it’s time for a nice cuppa tea!!!  If you have been, thanks for reading!  Elizabeth