Introductory project: Stage 2: Observing qualities: Cotton lawn

I next chose the skirt made from cotton lawn fabric with a coral and red print to observe closely and record.

As the fabric was of quite a light weight and soft and flimsy texture, I decided to use tracing paper to suggest this.

I decided to fold up the skirt and focus on the folds and the hem and edges of the skirt. The skirt also consisted of a cotton underlayer, which gives weight and improves the way they skirt hangs when worn. This provided extra layers to draw, which I attempted to capture. I decided to use graphite sticks as I thought they would lend some fluidity to my drawings.

Here, I repeated a similar technique, again on tracing paper with graphite sticks, but tried to draw more quickly, trying to capture the suggestion of the folds, but only the detail of the hem edge. Where there was more than one layer of fabric I indicated this with more than one line of drawing:

Then I had the idea that I could use the paper quality to refer back to the two layers of fabric: the white copy paper to represent the plain cotton underlayer of the skirt, the tracing paper to indicate the flimsier cotton lawn patterned layer of the skirt.

Next I tried looking at the surface pattern of the fabric more closely, but I don't think I captured this very well, as it was a complex pattern and the graphite sticks I was using didn't really lend themselves to showing this level of detail, so I think I should have used a medium with a finer tip:

Finally, I looked at the fabric, its weave and pattern in extreme close up: