31st December 2004

Decided to try to write a log of daily work. This is partly inspired by my brother Alex who, having completed the 2004 Sydney-Hobart Race, will soon turn left at Hobart and head for the Falklands via Cape Horn. He is sailing in Berrimilla and is sharing the adventure with with one other crew member, Peter. They are en route for Europe and the Fastnet Race (off the south coast of England) in the summer of 2005. It is an amazingly exciting but of course, potentially, a very hazardous trip. Alex is planning to write a daily Log from Berrimilla, which you can read by visiting his site here.

Not that my Log will in any way relate directly to Alex and the Berrimilla Voyage, but the idea of two Logs seemed interesting. I’ll try to record what’s happening in my head re my work, the studio pieces that emerge and red herrings that float belly up. And sincerely hope he doesn't.

Here's were we started, on the Beaulieu River in Hampshire. I think the two boys fishing are my brothers, or brother and a cousin. This was taken in 1964. The family's veins run pretty saline. Below is a 2004 version of the same view: Forty Years On, one might say.

Some other resolutions I hope to keep:
Try to keep to a regular daily work schedule within a week
Develop three or four themes that are in my head right now and keep plugging at them
Try to make more time for drawings, and not just in sketch books
Keep a sketchbook for general drawing and others which will follow lines of creative investigation so the themes are separated and more easy to trace and use

Currently I am:
Thinking on paper about letterforms and how I might take it onto fabric
Developing the existing work I have already started on grasses (currently featured on What's New page)
Developing the existing “Scribble” idea - maybe into graffitti
Find more outlets here in Devon and elsewhere
Produce a good send-out pack of new work and SEND IT OUT..
Produce a proper product care leaflet for buyers
Maybe find a venue for teaching and set up a local course

1st January 2005
Studio: Currently working on two new Grasstops designs: grey/pink and blue / grey
On paper: Letterforms and words:

Resumé on work and thoughts to now
Continuing to work on this creative thread in a sketchbook. I have no idea where it’s going. Initial impetus was a desire to make words on scarves. I’d seen a calligrapher do this some years ago. She had been able to form words from gutta and with her skill the work looked supremely confident and beautifully formed. I shall not be able to do this without calligrapher’s skills and I do not have years to acquire them.
So I shall need to find another way to make words. As I know and care about letterforms, being a lapsed Graphic Designer, I’d hate to make them badly.
Started by choosing a word - RED - and finding as many examples as poss in upper and lower case, different fonts etc. Cut from newspapers, magazines, made on computer. Had a look at them all stuck in book. Reminded myself that formation of type derived from initial making of letter forms with a pen or possibly a brush. Isolated those that still retained the look of “penned” and “brushed” letters. Isolated those that had the look of letters cut from wood and then those that had characteristics of cast metal, or those clearly formed by computer.

Considered the fact that some fonts were formed “true to medium” (you couldn’t cut very fine serifs in wood, for instance, or go very small). Then there are the merry complexities of wooden type imitating penned shapes, metal imitating wood or brush that was itself imitating pen and then reproduced by computer, and so spiralling on into infinitessimally anal self-referential oblivion.
Fonts carry stuff too - they look trad or contemporary or period. Typographer’s luggage. Think gothic fonts, 30s fonts, typewriter fonts etc etc.
Wondering how to be "true to medium" on silk seemed pretty pointless after these thoughts because no forms are properly true any more. You just choose an appropriate font to convey the message.
So I moved on a stage to look at letter shapes that might work on silk given the means of transferring them there. I don't especially want to be dealing with fine serifs. I cut words from newspapers, cut them up further, repositioned, split etc to see how much of the character of the typeface was left when one mucked about with the letters and words themselves. I liked the blocky fonts best Gill, Impact, Helvetica Bold etc - The Sunday Times uses a bold sans serif for many section headings which are great. Incidentally, the Sports section uses totally massive font sizes for its headlines. Can this relate to the mental capabilities of SPORT section readers. Oh, cheap and miserable female chauviniste thought...
Two words I found responded particularly well to splitting horizontally and replacing back to back. HERO and FREE. A really interesting set of shapes and spaces. Mostly straight lines but a few curves.

Interesting observation: when one is saying a word over and over loses its meaning and becomes just a sound. Playing with the word over and over it loses its meaning too and becomes shapes. You stop reading it, in other words. (pun not intended..)

Unforseen problem. Gluestick seems past its sell-by and so the little bits of paper are dropping off every time I open the book. Scanning not a bad idea to anchor the images another way!

Wish I could find my book “Mapping the Mind”. It helps on the perception stuff. I can’t find it since we moved house.
Next problem. If I want to put words on a scarf, what words am I going to use? Am I going to go for the bland “red blue green” sort of word, making the scarf a light kind of statement and just fun? Oh yes, and probably saleable. Or do I use the letters without making a word so they are just shapes and the word hasn’t relevance?

Or do I go for something more edgy? And not very saleable.. on the Unwearable Scarf, more anon.
I found the word FREE earlier. Too short for a scarf. Made it FREEDOM which looked the right proportion for a long scarf. Played about with the fonts and finished liking the Gill Sans Condensed best. Played with splitting various ways, cutting up, repasting and tearing.
When the word FREEDOM is torn lengthways it does something to the total meaning of the word, of course. The actual method of paper tearing needs several "goes". To get a lovely jagged line you need to split the top off the paper and so you tear from further away. But then you have less control of the direction. Close control means sharper torn lines.

The word FREEDOM is a good one. Not rude or essentially controversial but strong. Am I venturing into the Political Scarf? I’d like to try this idea even if I never sell one.

And.. The Unwearable Scarf
Some years ago, irritated by the frivolous banality of the fashion world into which my work is usually bracketed, I wondered about making some unwearable scarves as a form of protest. They might sport uncomfortable or challenging imagery, obscene or rude words, or be plainly unwearable in terms of shape or texture. I felt like kicking against the often self-indulgent comfort of the silk-painting sorority with its endless tropical fish and exotic flowers. Oh, mea culpa yes, I’ve done a few fish myself, but so far I have avoided the flowers.
I also looked up a lot of stuff about the politics of clothing which was more than interesting in itself. Who wears what and why - as in history of denim, once a workcloth, then high fashion, a statement about the "working man" and so on. And T shirts have long been accepted vehicles for advertising, political slogans, rudery or self-contained images. I think Katherine Hamnett started it off.
Why never scarves? Because they are associated with high fashion? Because they are regarded as a luxury item? They don’t seem to have been used for slogans or in a political sense that I can find. Perhaps because in the wearing of them the message will inevitably be distorted. Then I thought of Football Scarves. Oh ho. These have been known to cause riots. Interesting.

Sunday 2nd January
Finished two scarves. House guests here so not much time in studio
Alex reached Constitution Dock Hobart 7 am Australian time 2/01/05 so his stage 1 is now complete

Monday 3rd Jan
Started 2 more Grasstops. J. walked in to talk to me as I was working on the first stages and distracted me so I talked while I painted on whatever background colours were sitting there in the jars. Mustn’t do this. Can’t shut the door on the family but it’s always a problem. Distraction is the thief of etcetera

Tuesday 4th
Ordered a 5 spout tjanting, more wax and scarves and probably spent my Christmas profits.

Wednesday 5th
Finished two more Grasstops and spent the afternoon ironing wax out of the big Savannah scarves. Tedious business. Must do a steam soon with all the new work. I’m not too sure how Savannahs have worked as until the wax is completely removed after the dry-clean the subtleties I wanted to build into the layers won’t really show. Or maybe they’ll be too bloody subtle to see at all.. And again, I am wondering if the effort involved in these heavily layered and waxed pieces is really going to pay off in a scarf, that is designed to be draped. Could I get the same soft effect with less work? Also discovered suppliers out of stock of the favourite blank for these 45 x 180 12mm crêpe de Chines. Boring.

Thursday 6th
More Grasstops, working two in tandem and related colours. Looking at images of this design that were completed about two months ago (below right of Log, currently on What's New page)) I realise I have been squaring off the tops of the grasses now, rather than rounding them as in the image. Funny how things change even when you think you are doing the same thing. Maybe it's the brush I'm using.

Friday 7th
Grasstops am. Tried to round the grasstips again but couldn’t with existing brush. But discovered by twisting and pressing the wax-filled brush I could achieve an interesting all-in-one grass and stem effect which I shall try to reproduce. Interesting that the stroke is in essence calligraphic and elsewhere, seemingly unconnectedly, I am playing with letterforms. A large delivery of silk arrived including the organza and georgette. I much prefer the organza to the gauze as it is less prone to snagging. And the georgette is sheer but a much better quality fabric than either organza and georgette. Now I can do more “Scribble” work. Perhaps the 5 spout tjanting will turn up tomorrow.

Saturday / Sunday 8/ 9
More ironing wax out of scarves and rolling them in paper ready for steaming Monday am. Discovered the room I do the ironing in has an extractor fan, which is very good news. I can’t always do this job in the garage in winter and the smell builds up - also a whitish haze which is either burning paper or wax fumes and distinctly unenvironmental.

Monday 10th
Steamed 12 scarves: 3 long Savannah and 9 Grasstops. Some of these had more blotching than I’d expected after steaming and I think it’s because I need to ensure I’ve wiped all the wax surfaces more carefully each layer. Otherwise dried dye spots migrate off the wax when it melts in the steamer. All the scarves are saleable quality except possibly one which looks dreary. I might add another layer once I’ve seen it through the dry-clean.
Paraffin wax and 5 spouted tjanting arrived via the postie!! Will try the new wax on new Savannahs and Grasstops as it will be a harder and more brittle mix, and perhaps better suited to the design than the batik blend I’ve been using up till now.
Had e mail to confirm that Alex and Peter sailed out of Hobart this morning and the Berrimilla voyage has begun.

Tuesday 11th
Ironed out about 20 x 4.5 organza scarves after washing them. The new 5 spout tjanting has the spouts coming out in a tiered arrangement, in line with the handle, as opposed to a splayed arrangement at 90 degrees (as my three spouts are). This makes the drawing action feel rather odd. You have to care not to over fill the bowl or when you tip the tjanting to have the spouts aligned to the fabric surface, wax will spill out of the bowl. Um. What’s more, there are burrs on the metal of the spouts so that moving away from the hand works ok, but drawing it back catches and snags the fabric. On the sheer organza this is a major probem. I will see if I can gently sand off the burrs. So initially I’ve made what I shall call an “experimental piece”, which looks like a Music Manuscript paper on acid.

I'm trying to develop the "Scribble" design but want more designed scribble than I'm getting..

Technical Department sanded the spouts gently and they now snag less but it's clear they aren't properly aligned at the bottom and one spout is slightly shorter. I have probably bought the economy model. But combining 5 spout and then 3 spout in two separate wax drawing sessions has produced something interesting on scarf experiment 2. Less Manuscript on Acid and more Snail Trails Aimlessly on Organza..

January 12th
Not sure what I’m doing with Scribble at the moment. I probably need to do some work on paper . Will have a think with the experiments on the wall. Stretched out a smaller (40 x 150 cm) 12mm crêpe de Chine for a new shape Savannah since the larger ones (45 x 180 cm) are scarce on the shelves both in the studio and at the suppliers. It feels a very different shape but checking the proportions the long ones work out at 1:4 with the shorter ones 1: 3.75.
Oh joy. Suppliers are out of Fondnet (dye dilutant) and I have a course to run in a fortnight where I get through a lot of the stuff. This has happened before. Perhaps I should try to contact manufacturers in France direct and bypass suppliers.
Savannah progressed to three layers during the day. Long drying time between each application because I can’t accelerate it with hair-dryer or the wax would melt. I need to have another right-size frame out from the garage so at least I can so two at once. Experimented wiith placing more deliberate flat shapes in the texture (like the grasstop wax-mark) to see how this looks. With the just-steamed batch I’d discovered that the accidental creation of a larger wax shape, (like a thick brush mark where I’d actually intended just grass-like texture), has become key to the design. I sometimes crack the wax shape for crackle lines to seep in andthese work partucularly well. Funny how accidents often turn out to be creative forces.

January 13th
Walking with the dog on a really glorious winter day - the light had an extraordinary quality and seemed to be glowing out of objects rather than falling on them. Intensely luminous. Sky very clear blue coming up from the moor and oak tree and complex network branches were full of black rooks. Repeating / related flat shapes in network of texture. It reminded me of grasstop / Savannah design. Finished the Savannah started 12/01. About 5 / 6 layers. Not sure how it’s worked with the new flat shapes in, but there’s something happening and I’ll have to look properly when it’s steamed and dry-cleaned.
Took a deep breath and stretched another organza and used the 5 spout tjanting. I’ve filed all the spouts to the correct length now and it works better. There isn’t a way to practise this action without doing it for real. So I had a go at some more calligraphic strokes, imitating not real letters but parts of letters. They look more deliberate and I prefer them to the previous Aimless Snail look (see entry 11th Jan). Maybe I am getting somewhere after all.

January 14th / 15th / 16th
After last night's scarf it's back to Scribble design and Adventures with the 5 Spout Tjanting. A sure cure for any insomniacs reading this. Selected 5 fonts that had “the look” of brushed or penned scripts (Textile, Giovanni Book Italic, Palatino, Lucida Handwriting, Apple Chancery). Wrote the word Scribble in each.
On layout paper I wrote out pages of S shapes to try to learn what the S does. I used a square-ended brush in attempt to create the angle of the 5 spout tjanting which informs all the shapes and angles of the marks it makes. (The more I get into this the more I admire calligraphers and typographers and realise how much typefaces don’t do quite what you think).
Some of the fonts were non-starters with a square-ended brush : Textile has softly rounded ends and although the direction of the stroke echoes a brush movement I don’t think all its alphabet could in theory be written with a brush at the same angle. I am going to have to make all marks at the same angle with the tjanting.

I wrote out the word scribble and realised that the angle that creates the S does not necessarily create a nice e. Therefore I need to find the angle best suited to all the letters. I filled the tjanting with ink (very runny - looked like squid disaster area) and thickened watercolour to see if I could have a practise with it on paper. Not a great success.

trying out the S shape on paper

The beast itself

The image above shows the marks made by the tjanting on silk. I started the S shape at the top of the image but am not confident enough about this yet - hence fragmented lines and wax splodge. You have to hit the fabric running in the right direction and tip the spouts down evenly as you reach the fabric so the wax starts to flow from all of them at once. At the end you have to lift and tip in one motion to avoid similar unevenness, and I managed that better. Where the lines cross it's hard as the tjanting reaches a bump and snags, and if you stop moving the wax just keeps on running and forms another splodge.

I'm going to have the weekend off and give the tjanting some R and R with the brushes.

Tuesday 18 / Wednesday 19
Slightly distracted couple of days, but finally managed to start making charcoal drawings from photos. Not at all keen on working from photos but we are having a lot of weather just now so there isn’t an option. Pinned up previous photo images and work made from them, hung everything on wall for review time. Amusing to note my family now reads the studio log to find out what it is I do up here..

Below left: my pinboard covered in images created with photoshop from digital pictures: these have helped me sort out what the various tones are doing. The large image at the bottom is a charcoal drawing

Below right: some of the Savannah work so far. Left are 2 "Grasstops" and the three on the right are large Savannahs. The centre one still has all the wax in, hence the sheen. The other two Savannahs have had a wax iron-out and have also been steamed.

Thursday 20th
More drawing. A long time since I have worked so large - eg, not in a sketchbook. I am feeling much too pleased with the most recent drawing so it’s probably bad. The more you do, the less “precious” each drawing becomes, and you stop worrying about what it looks like and concentrate on the process. Then you can tear up the drawing when it’s finished because it isn’t important any more.

Friday 21st
Started to pack up some stuff for the course I’m teaching from Monday. I now hate the drawing I did yesterday, so that’s OK. Maybe it was good after all... Gave up on searching for “Mapping the Mind” by Rita Carter (mislaid somewhere when we moved house) and ordered another copy. It’ll be sure to turn up now. Tried a tie-dye method on a scarf which is successful with indigo, but this time using acid dyes. I want an effective but quick method to show students next week so they can see tie-dye doesn’t need to be awful. I used dental tape (not floss) and a twisted method on the scarf - and it worked well. I let it dry out, more or less, but impatient to see the results took a bit of a risk and opened it up while still damp. The dyes didn’t move and it’s ready to steam.

Saturday 22nd / Sunday 23rd
I suppose I’ve always been aware that just because I am not in the studio it doesn’t actually mean I’m not “working”. All sorts of stuff related to creative work keeps stucking its head above the conscious thinking surface, then disappearing. Maybe it will re-emerge, and maybe not.
I’ve found dog-walking to be especially conducive to creative thinking. I heard a programme about monks and “walking meditation” once, and wonder whether there is something about the regular rhythm of walking, open air, whatever, that allows the mind to loosen up and to float about more freely.
Today’s dog walked dragged up the following set of thoughts. Over the years I’ve looked at the way water moves and a lot of textile work has been based on it. I have tried to see how waves move, ripples reflect etc. Recently I have made sketches trying to analyse the movement of water in two nearby rivers, going back to the same place on different days. I have been trying to create a code or language to describe speed and direction (as well as shape and pattern) because conventional drawing alone isn’t capable of conveying all the information that interests me. For instance, I drew arrowheads in a gold pen on top of certain areas to show direction, even using words in with the marks.

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All the drawing led to much sitting on nearby damp logs (doing my piles no good at all, and definitely frustrating the manic collie) looking, and not drawing, trying to see exactly what happens when water moves, and why. I know little about wave dynamics. But a river has to be different from the sea, as it’s gravitationally motivated.
The tsunami last month was followed by excited visual offerings from the salivating graphics department of TV News, who had barely reverent fun with massive rolling waves, tiny palm trees and lots of exploding bits and pieces. There’s nothing like disaster to get those guys going. And my brother’s encounter with a huge wave off New Zealand last week has been followed by a white-knuckle description in his voyage log.
In the abstract, there’s this information that intuitively appears to relate and have creative significance. In other ways it has no right to be here. But it kind of insists, so here it is.

Signing off for a few days while I teach in Oxfordshire.

Sunday 30th January
Back in circulation after teaching, although still quite tired. Everything is now unpacked and back in my studio, and students’ work is in the steamer today. Some lovely pieces from all of them. The tie-dye activity produced some very interesting results as one student took the time to make intricately alternated blobs of colour up the spiral and achieved rather spectacular effects. This worked particularly well with the crêpe as the colours and patterns were more clearly identifiable than on sheer fabric.
A student variation on my offered tying method was more effective than mine: she halved the twisted scarf and bound it at that stage rather than allowing the twist to coil back again before binding. Anyone reading this wanting explanations, please e mail!!
I will be taking my and students’ work to dry-clean (to remove wax and gutta) by the end of the week.

Monday 31st January
Took work for dry-clean. Should be ready this week. It will be exciting to see the Savannahs without wax when they are done. Looking back at the sequence of work built up for this dry-clean (last dry-clean was in November and well before Christmas), I think I am getting somewhere with the Savannah theme. Trouble is, I doubt whether anyone else will and I certainly doubt if they will sell.
Ah. Clip Clop. I can see my hobby horse trotting up ready for an outing... The reason they won’t sell is that they will have to be too expensive, unless I give them away. The intensive work (maybe two days each) isn't in-your-face obvious but means they would end up at a high price. Our Western view is that a scarf is a fashion item (hobby horse now at full gallop)....and worse than that, it has function. Let’s all spit on the wearable, the usable, the useful, no matter the art, the beauty, the skill and craft in its making.
Japanese textiles acknowledge the value of intensive work on the inside of a kimono that no-one sees but the wearer. Here, we art-scarf-makers must always be prepared to accept that a buyer probably just wants a green scarf to go with the latest jacket purchase. Very rarely am I aware that a buyer buys the outfit to go with the scarf!!
So, could I sell them as hangings? Rather harder, actually, as they take up valuable gallery wall space for which there is great competition. But a hanging would certainly command a higher price, being “art”, which is hung on a wall. Next issue is that I have severe misgivings about selling silk hangings. A high price should mean that they will remain on the wall some time. But I cannot guarantee the silk won’t rot or fade. Some habotai cushions I did about 6 years ago are in shreds. Crêpe has fared a little better.
A recent research of mine to find out why modern silk rots so badly revealed the possibility that it could be because contemporary processing removes the gum (sericin) from the silk. The sericin in older silk remained in fabric and thus protected it against the ravages of UV light and pollution. It means the silk was slightly yellow to begin with. These days people want pure white, and that means no gum.
Hobby horse back in stable chewing straw. "Steady, boy", as they always seem to say to horses in The Archers.