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September Drawing Project Part 2- Postscript to drawing of a textile

I can’t resist showing you a few more ideas so here are some ways of developing your drawings based on your textile study which I’m sure you’ve been busy with over the last couple of weeks!

The first two ideas are only for the brave!

First idea – Take a rubbing or an area of your textile. Arrange a single layer (if possible) of the textile onto a hard surface. This not quite such a risky operation if you choose a strong paper such as tissuetex which is a reinforced tissue paper used in brass rubbings (available for Art Van Go). The rubbing below was made over the border area of my child’s dress, using a candle and then inking over with black ink – after the dress had been moved far away!

Second idea – take a print of a relief surface of your textile. This needs a lot of care and perhaps shouldn’t be attempted if the textile is precious. My print below was done by holding my breath and I’m pleased to say that I didn’t get any marks on the dress, only on the paper.



  • Arrange your textile onto a hard surface.
  • Place a sheet of reinforced tissue (Tissuetex) over surface.
  • Squeeze printing ink or acrylic paint onto a sheet of glass and use a roller to smooth it over the glass so that there is an equal and smooth amount of ink equally all over the roller.
  • Hold the far edge of the paper firmly in place either with your left hand or some tape.
  • Place the inked roller at the top right hand corner of the paper and firmly and steadily roll it towards you to the bottom right hand corner of your paper or edge of the relief surface. Re-load your roller with ink and repeat this by placing the roller alongside the previous rolling and again roll it towards you. Repeat this again until you have ‘printed’ the area you wished to show.
  • If the textile is quite bulky, as the gathered skirt of this little dress, the tissue will undulate as it is pressed down onto the textile. By rolling in one direction only and without moving the paper, you should be able to make a good print.

This print was used on the inside cover of an exhibition brochure by the Textile Study Group called ‘Not What it Seams’. You can see this brochure on the TSG website.

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You may well be forgiven for not wishing to take rubbings from the actual surface of your textile, so think of a way of creating a relief surface to replicate the textile relief surface. Find a material that would work and attach it onto a card surface with something strong like a PVA glue. The left hand surface below (sorry it is not very clear) was made from tiny pieces of punched hole shapes made from a thin card. The shapes were arranged onto the wet glue surface with a pencil point, working quickly before the glue dried. You could think of string, card shapes. The right hand image is a rubbing made with white chalk on black tissue paper.
 


Make a collage/relief surface by observing an interesting detail in your textile and then take a rubbing of it. The rubbing below was taken from the ripped card shapes collaged onto the sketchbook page, right. You can then add colour to your collage to make it more interesting. Oil pastel was roughly smudged over the edges of the relief shapes to suggest the rounded form of the original solidly stitched shape.

You might notice that the background of the collaged surface also shows similar shapes to the ripped card shapes. Wax candle was used to draw shapes onto the background and then walnut ink flooded over the wax marks as well as the collaged shapes. Its fun to add one method of drawing on top of another.
 


Now, be more adventurous by drawing a textile you can be more destructive with – parts of an old shirt perhaps, an abandoned stitched sample of your own. The following processes might help you to look at your textile in a different way and therefore notice different qualities that you didn’t notice before.

Here are several fragments cut from different textiles, dipped in walnut ink and printed onto my sketchbook page; the originals were arranged on the opposite page when dry. The prints show fascinating details of the weave, the surface detail, crumples, stitches, edges'.


Next, I used some scrap stitched fabric pieces that I’ve kept as I use them to test my machine tensions and threads, hence the relaxed ‘scrappy’ look of the stitching!

I painted ink onto them and before they were dry, pressed them into my sketchbook page. I’ve placed the textile fragment next to the print below. I was pleased how the print reflected the textile, but also created a new ‘virtual’ textile. (Thanks to Catherine for the use of this word which I think is a good way of describing a print of a stitched textile. Catherine did her printed stitched fabrics onto another fabric, which is even better as you can then add actual stitching to your ‘virtual’ stitching – but that’s another story!!)




The prints can allow you to observe a slightly different aspect of the textile, so now to make drawings of a selected print. Perhaps you can spot the print the drawing below is based on?

I used black ink, watered down in some places to suggest a lighter tone. Different sized brushes can be used to apply your ink, where you might want to cover a lot of paper or you might want to draw fine lines. You could also use a fine pen. Note how you can add new marks onto slightly damp areas to give the lovely ‘spreading’ effect of blotting paper. Make a huge drawing of this tiny fragment – fill your sketchbook page. Change the scale can be an amazing experience of drawing something small.




I was very interested in the edges of these textile scraps as they seemed as exciting as their surfaces. Enjoy drawing lines to suggest the edges of a textile – note how you can dampen the paper in places before adding a line to make a lovely soft line which can suggest a fluffy thread perhaps.


Use your textile as a stencil to help you see the edges as well as the shape of course. The textile fragment below was placed on my sketchbook page and painted over with a wide paint brush and some black ink. The textile has been placed in an off-set position on top of this stencilled shape, making a wider and more distinct edge line.

Make further marks to draw edges that interest you. The lower edge of this textile fragment below has been drawn several times in a series of edge drawings, each one being drawn by looking at the previously drawn line and not looking back at the original textile line. You will notice that the last drawing at the bottom is a much more personal version of the original one.


Draw this line again and again, using different markers and media. The lines below were made with black ink and different tools, sometimes onto damp paper

The marks below were made onto tracing paper with black ink applied with a stick.

Yes, the lines below are also drawings made in different media. Here’s a checklist – can you work out which is which?

  • Cut paper shapes
  • Couched line of tangled threads
  • Running stitch line
  • Charcoal line
  • Bent wire
  • Wide paint brush
Make your lines as large as you can. You could even consider extending the pages of your sketchbook with fold-outs.

You can place your lines, side by side onto a pair of your sketchbook pages, or you can draw them onto several different surfaces and then collage them onto a page afterwards. In the image above, several lines have been drawn onto transparent materials – tracing paper and cotton organdie – so that when collaged together, they can be overlapped and built up to show layers of the line.

NB. It is important to draw your line afresh each time and don’t be tempted to trace – even if using transparent surfaces.

See you in October with a brand new drawing theme. In the meantime, continue enjoying your textile and be encouraged to try some of this less conventional drawing ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing exciting stuff on your blogs – please leave me a message there to let me know. www.stitchloop.blogspot.com


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