From journal sketch to fruition ... PYO fabric

 


Gulf Swirls

I used to spend a lot of time in little 'planes popping about the Gulf and Cape country in far North Queensland. That's when I started journalling in a serious sense - trying to capture the brilliance of the landscape and the trance that kept my face pressed to crackled plastic windows - imagining the land below without the milky UV battered overlay of plane plastic. I learned to draw at anywhere between 5000 and 12000 feet ... turbulence notwithstanding. Sometimes the eddies and currents between Mornington island and the mainland were hypnotic.  

Earth Lines I

A few hours later the landscape changed to infinite layers of orange and blue and spinifex sage. The rise and fall of the dirt was as captivating, to me, as the dugong that grazed nervously near Bentink Island. Always the lines ... the stitching lines.

Direct print

The linocut was the result of the dirt lines and Gulf swirls. In its original form, it became the basis for some experimenting on silk ... which was the subject of a much earlier blog  ...  and now (in a modified form - more work, more detail, more flow and hopefully more balance).

It lives again with direct printing onto fabric and became the basis for a screen print where Ankie showed me how to dissolve the dried print in manutex over several scrapes. We made three or four individual pieces of fabric - as the number of passes over the screen increased, the manutex did a great job of breaking down the darker dyes ... the result (below) was quite delightful and unexpected. 

Silk screen breakdown with manutex