Finding Inspiration

I’ve been looking more closely at my metal purse and focussing particularly on the clasp. I’ve made some sketches of the clasp and the hinge and I already showed some of the prints and rubbings last time I posted here but after watching Laura’s video “Finding Inspiration” on DMTV I wanted to try some of her great suggestions for playing with a change of scale. My purse is tiny and anything inspired by it wouldn’t have much visual impact worked life size. The images here are much enlarged photocopies of the initial photos I took. I printed them out A4 letter size. It’s surprising how they change the effect of the decorative elements  – don’t you think they look almost architectural now?

Most of my early sketchbook pages have been black and white but I wanted to involve some colour and the rich purple/blue velvet lining gave me just what I wanted. I’ve added washes of watercolour of those colours over some of the prints but first I rubbed a silver oil pastel across the edges of the pages. The pastel shrugs off the water based colour and I hope those little pale dots give a similar effect to the perforations found in the main body of the purse. At the moment I still don’t know where this is leading me – there’s lots of thinking and pondering to be done! I’m imagining a small, heavily stitched panel but who knows – might be something quite different when push comes to shove. Might even be a precious evening bag. If I’m enjoying myself I could do both! I have jumped ahead of myself though and searched through my crates of fabrics to find stuff that seems to represent the essence of my subject. Thinking of the perforations in the metal I’ve found out several nets and tulles of various mesh sizes. I’ve painted a few bits of old lace with mixtures of blue and purple fabric paint because the flower motifs on the clasp and hinge have very similar designs to those in lace. I found an old lace motif that is completely the wrong colour but I can overlay it with net to tone it down. Finally I found a scrap of metallic crinkly fabric that might fit in there somewhere. To me working on a sketchbook page or playing with scraps of fabric is much the same thing. If something is kind of right but not quite the right colour I can adjust it whether it’s on paper or cloth!

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanks for visiting my website today – I love to hear from you if you have questions or comments – Linda x