Project two: Recording and capturing: 1.6 Detail and definition

Whitework embroidery

Here I focused on a small part of the whitework embroidery and looked to capture it in detail. I used a 'found' paper as my base for this drawing, and white roller ball pen to endeavour to capture the delicacy and minute detail of the embroidery:

Here is zoomed in even further, attempting to capture even more tiny detail, using gouache painted on tracing paper to take this delicacy and transparency even further.

It did occur to me after doing the above that I should use acrylic paint, to see if once painted and dried, it is possible to lift this off the paper and create a painted lace, in a similar way to how bakers can paint melted chocolate onto cellophane, then remove the cellophane when the chocolate cools.

ACTION - need to try this experiment.

Next, I focused on part of the design created by the 'holes' or absences of thread in part of the above section of the embroidery and decided to create my own stencil. I wanted to simplify the design, take a small section of it, then use it in a different pattern or repeat to the original to see what effects I would be able to produce. Here is my cardboard stencil:

I first tried this as a tool for rubbing, underneath quite a flimsy reused packaging paper. While I like the square outlines this creates, it was quite hard to do this without tearing the paper, and I was curious to see what would happen with a thicker paper.

I think what surprised me here was how much the texture of the cardboard itself came through on the rubbing. I really like the effect created by the slightly offset repeat of this pattern:

Another rubbing, to explore the effect of moving the stencil in different directions:

Here I used red, in a nod to the background mount of my whitework embroidery and the effect that this has on the way we view the work:

Here I combine the red and black rubbings, in order to see what effects this produces:

Back to black only here, but trying a few different patterns:

Then I decided to use the stencil on top of the paper instead, to see what different effects can be produced by stencilling through from the top, using 5B pencil and black and grey pens:

Here I switched to a finer black roller ball pen to see what can be achieved with a finer line:

Here I used string pasted onto card to echo the grid pattern visible in the embroidery: