A lot of the bloggers have taken on a challenge. We were all given artists as inspiration to see what we would come up with. There are no rules, we could create a block, a quilt, a cushion, a mini quilt, a wall hanging. The possibilities are endless. As I found that lockdown has granted me lots of creative space but no sense of immediacy, I thought it would do me good to do something outside my “comfort zone”.
Slightly scarey, what if got someone I don’t like? Surely the idea is to do something unusual, so I signed up. I was very lucky. One of my favourite groups of artists are the French Impressionists (late Victorians, who painted feelings and impressions – hence the name). Monet, Degas, Renoir and English painter Turner could all be called impressionists, very interested in capturing the quality of light in their paintings.
Wikipedia has my artist as Post Impressionist, so he must have been influenced by all the new art going on around him. Seurat, ( 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) very well known for his views of Paris and the river. He was very concerned with colour experiments which involved him painting with thousands of dots, allowing them to mix in the eye of the viewer to create subtle and interesting light effects. It could take him 2 years to create one painting, which shows how time consuming this was. This technique is called pointillism.
Sadly, he died unexpectedly early at the age of 31.
Ok, where to start? I looked at a few of his paintings, the ones with people on the banks of the Seine are probably the most famous, but seemed very complicated for the project we were doing.
I was very taken by the pictures of the trees ( I didn’t even know he “did” trees). They may serve as inspiration for a later date. The pictures I was most drawn to are the images of the boats on the river. The colour and quality of the light are very appealing to me. Eventually I narrowed it down to the scene of the harbour. The colours are amazing and it draws you in to feel you are actually stood there. I think, because of lockdown, the quality of the open sea and sky make it even more appealing. I also decided on making a wall hanging.
I also had a bit of a word with myself to use this as a “stash buster” and create it from fabric and materials that I had in the house. This was some of the fabric I could find which seemed to match the colours.
I started by printing an A3 version of the harbour picture. This didn’t seem quite big enough to be able to create some quite fiddly shapes, so I decided to double the size. I recycle my neighbour’s newspaper, which is very handy for craft projects. I stuck 2 full sheets together with tape. Then using the print as a guide, I doubled all the measurements and created this rough sketch of the outlines with a felt pen.
I had quite a debate with myself about how to create the dots effect from his paintings. Read the next instalment to see what I came up with.
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