At the beginning of a new project, although my head is always fizzing with ideas and inspiration, they are generally all ideas of how I can do stuff with fabric rather than paper. It's like I miss a step in the way that my ideas are supposed to progress, and then it's almost like I have to start working backwards. I do like to draw and paint, but it's not something that I am very confident in doing, so I end up taking a long time over it and then feel frustrated at the small amount of work I have produced. I suppose that as time goes on throughout my degree I will become more confident in my abilities and things will get easier.
So, using pictures that I took up at the allotments last week I have been doing some painting.
I really love this photo I took of a bumble bee on a dandelion. I used acrylics to paint this and although I am really happy with the finished painting, I can't see me using this sort of realistic style in my garment in this project as we are not at the stage of using digital printing yet mostly due to expense.
I would however like to include maybe some bee or butterfly motifs in my garment, as pollination is an integral part of plants growing, both naturally in the hedgerows and in cultivation on farms and allotments. The work of the bees and butterflies was just as important to growing Britain's produce in wartime, as was the work of the land girls.
In my photos you can see a strong theme of grids. I found them in netting, fencing and chicken wire; plastic, metal and wood. I like the juxtaposition of the rigidity of this black chain-link fence with the yellow blooms of forsythia haphazardly weaving it's way through. After painting the top half of the page with a paint brush. I used the edge of piece of cardboard dipped in black paint to recreate the grid in a printed form.
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