Creating Original Designs - Foredown Tower

 

One of the 'expanded' exercises - a rectangle of black paper cut into strips and then expanded to experiment with spaces in between, or positive and negative spaces.

It seems like a long time since last weekend, so much has happened. 
The weekend was great fun and the group worked really hard. Foredown Tower is a great place to teach with wonderful views across the Downs and out to sea.
'Creating original designs' is a two day course designed to encourage students to look at positive and negative space and taking sections of a design.

 The 'journeys' hanging side ways on.

The workshop involves using three different design formulae, the journey, expanded and flipped out exercises. All these are very simple to do, in fact the whole workshop is - it's just that we never take the time out to do these kind of things. You get brilliant results, you just need to be encouraged to get on with it, so going on a workshop can get you started. If you are interested in trying this by yourself or in a group all this is in my book Experimental Textiles. I will be teaching this workshop again at Art Van Go in May.

 

The group trying out the 'spaces in between' before they stuck them down.

The 'expanded' exercises hanging on the wall.

 

 Some of the 'flipped out' exercises displayed on the floor - we ran of room on the walls.

One of the 'flipped out' exercises - take a square, cut a shape with a scalpel (and cutting mat), then flip out the shape like a door on a hinge.

The taking sections from their journeys with 'L shapes'.

One of the groups sections that have been traced off from their 'journey' then transferred into their sketch book with carbon paper.

These designs can then be flipped and mirrored to create further designs. 

Playing with colourways is an important part of the workshop.

You can see the design (heavily pencilled) that was used to create the flipped and mirrored design on the left of the page.

Another design that has been flipped and mirrored.

The designs that are created are totally original and can be used for virtually any creative process. The next workshop at Foredown Tower will be Making Printing Blocks - November 17th and 18th for more information go to kimsworkshops

 

We managed get through 2 large Victoria sandwich cakes over the weekend. I think I will make them in batches in future and freeze them ahead of time.

 I feel it is my duty to feed my students with cake to keep them going, so if you come on one of the Foredown Tower weekends - expect cake!

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My week has been rather busy with me getting everything ready for the photo shoot for my next book. Having collected all the work in, I needed to photograph everything and create a shoot list. These things always take longer than you think. I delivered the work to Michael the photographer and the publisher joined us to go through the shoot list, looking at each piece and discussing how to photograph it. The meeting went well and all the work I wanted to include in the book - will be included.

I am very excited, I have work from several popular textile artists as well as work from schools and colleges. Now I just need to write the the book . . .

Have a great weekend - I'm going to kick fallen leaves in Sheffield Park and see Skyfall - Yeeha!!!!

x