The Banksia

Banksia studies . Yesterday I got a bit of a fright as I thought I had to have another quilt done within the week. I want it to be "Australian" as well as pertinent to my place ( it's for an exhibition which is travelling to Syria and France next year with the title Sense of Place which I am curating). I have done the first piece- Forest, as we are surrounded by Forest- The Otways National Park. There are also banksias which are native to the region, and I also have many in my garden- they flower all through the winter and are evergreen. Apparently Josephine and Napoleon were so taken by the banksia that they had a special garden built.

I have in the past made banksia quilts, but decided I wanted to revisit the flowers, to see if I could see anything new. I started out with a coloured scan on the scanner and was surprised at how well the flower actually scanned ( the flowers are round and this one would have had a circumference of 15 cm or so). I then reduced it into greyscale ( I do this often to see areas of light and dark-values- positive and negative space) and then played around in photoshop filters a bit. I Then printed it and drew back into the picture and rescanned and then drew freehand the line drawing. The last drawing( at least that is what I am hoping will show up- blogger is not co-operating) was done with my left hand ( I am right handed).It was a little trick I leraned from reading about Raoul Dufy who did this from time to time. I actually find my left hand drawings more characterful then my right hand drawings, but they are a bit of a struggle- I never know quite how to hold my fountain pen. Anyway the pictures/drawings have given me some food for thought how I might go about tackling my next "banksia" quilt.