Drawing for Textiles: 1 (Blended Online)

Description

BLENDED ONLINE COURSE WITH OPTION TO JOIN LIVE SESSIONS

NEXT LIVE START DATE:  WEDNESDAY 20th SEPTEMBER 2023 (Zoom details sent out with booking)

TIMES:  19:00 - 20:30 (Every Wednesday for 5 Weeks)

FEES:  FULL COURSE £85

NB   This course is available to anyone at any time. If you want to join in the live sessions you can, but not obligatory. They are however fun and you get to ask questions to Nicola and connect with other like minded attendees. The LIVE sessions are all recorded and uploaded to use as reference or to watch back, so don't worry if you can't make any of them. 

This course utilises drawing as a process to play with both traditional materials, and textile processes to develop playfulness and experimentation as a tool for design and art directions. It will consider DIY approaches to tool and material making, while questioning our motivations and needs to utilise drawing as a vital tool in a creative practice.

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR:

This course is suitable for anyone, from those new to textiles, through to experienced makers who want to explore or refresh ways of thinking. You may be a teacher or lecturer looking to recharge your creative batteries, a student who wants to further your current knowledge, or maybe outside of formal education and fancy trying something outside of your usual remit.

WHAT TO EXPECT:

This approach to creativity focuses on a playful and ‘what if’ method of developing ideas for future designs or art directions through drawing. Mark-making, form creation, repetition and colour trials will be used as a basis to explore drawing through patchwork, weaving and hand stitched quilting. While you may choose to develop ideas onto ‘finished’ artefacts, drawings or designs, the series focuses on ideas generation as a part of the whole creative process.

We spend so much time thinking through ideas to completion, often before we even put pen to paper. What might happen if we think through such things while actually engaging in making, playfulness and ‘just doing stuff’ so, that we build an engaging and rich resource of research? Drawing can also be a challenge that brings anxiety, but a free approach to what might constitute drawing can often release those super exciting but unexpected ideas – that frequently never surface when we are rigid in our thinking.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

While we may have a host of glorious materials and tools available to us, this course will focus on using more every day and accessible materials with extensions suggested as to how ideas may evolve with a broader range of medium etc. In terms of fabrics and threads, it can be with scraps that you have available, old items of clothing or cloth and yarn that has been bought specifically for this.

Key items may include the following: (detailed list will be supplied once you sign up)

General drawing materials: 

• Pencils 
• Pens
• Paints and/or inks 
• Pastels 
• Tapes 
• Glue

Tools: 

• Scissors
• Brushes
• Sewing needles [various sizes]
• Palette
• Water pot

Grounds: 

• Loose papers – various from scraps to cartridge paper
• Sketchbook for recording
• Documenting and working in
• Fabrics [scraps + 1/2m plain fabric]
• Light weight card.

Other: 

• Tapestry frame / old picture frame or piece of thick card
• Various yarns and other yarn type materials such as cloth strips
• Old plastic bags etc.
• Sewing threads.

Good additional options: 

• Scalpel, 
• cutting mat, 
• ruler, 
• fabric glue stick [I like the Sewline one] 

PROGRAMME:

Once you have signed up to the full course, you will have access to a full materials list and a video to help you prepare before you join a session, this will include information about colour and potential subject choices which you can take as a starting point or, ignore and focus on a subject / colour story of your own choosing.

PRE-COURSE MATERIALS:

A]  Confined drawing video. Suggest completing before the live sessions, but not essential.

B]  Pre-session planning. This video should be watched before you start the course to help you prepare and gather the things you will need. 

SERIES PROGRAMME:

Session 1]  Mark-Making & Colour Thinking.

Session 2]  Repetition of Form; but not repeats.

Session 3]  Forms through Patchwork; DIY EPP.

Session 4]  Tapestry as Textural Play.

Session 5]  Quilting as Line & Surface Exploration.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

Each session will have a core focus that can be explored in isolation or as part of an overall series of activities.   

• Understand a creative, action-based approach to research and ideas suitable for further development [for a design or, arts-based direction].
• Develop confidence and enhance your skills in drawing as a tool for textiles.
• Explore the pairing of both traditional and experimental approaches in a creative textile orientated practice.