After last week’s workshop I felt that huge buzz that comes when new ideas and approaches are opening up. The Little Oxford dictionary’s succinct definition of inquiry is “asking; question; investigation”. I like the open endedness of that definition. At present I’m happy to ask the questions without worrying too much about specific answers.

I’m looking at how to develop physical layers in my work. I’m interested in trying out different ways of creating transparency and opacity in these ‘sketches’. Some of the techniques I’m thinking about are using meshes, such as the fly wire I have trialled here.

Cotton stitching onto fly screen mesh

In this second sketch the inspiration has come from a photograph that I have drawn onto.

Stitching into fly wire with source material.

This next sketch has several layers. The bottom is a photograph, over which I’ve placed a piece of screen printing mesh which I’ve drawn onto and on top of that a piece of cotton embroidery on canvas.

Photograph overlaid with mesh and embroidery.

The handy thing about this piece is that the layers are still separate so I can try out different configurations. Taking photos of the possible variations is an quick way of trying my ideas out.

Lastly I took one of my photos and played around with focusing in on one section, then scaling it up. I’ve also worked back into the photograph with coloured pencils.

From original photograph to scaled-up final image.

I like how this detail has become abstracted. I could use it as a background or a feature element. If I focus on the lines then I could use it as a ‘mesh’ within a piece of work. The possibilities are still to be fully explored.