Thursday, October 05, 2006

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.

4 comments:

smarcoux said...

wow .. even talented using the other hand in drawing ... is there no end to your talents miss!

One of the Gallus Gurlzss

jackie said...

This looks fascinating and like a textile piece already. Its fascinating to think how those loops might be interpreted.

margaret said...

Just yesterday I found a banksia piece started in your workshop at Cathy's in London a couple of years ago. This inspires me to finish it!

Anonymous said...

Luuuuurve banksias! I've always thought May Gibbs' "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie" had something to answer for in making the banksia men evil! And after your printing workshop in Mittagong, I've been linocutting - a banksia seed head, among other experiments. Not the flower, though - too hard for me!