Cut Dots
15 x 15
A few weeks ago I posted an article which featured 'dots'. Some were created through soy resist and some were painted onto the surface with dye. The overall color of the fabric was yellow.
First work using dots.
I wanted to work with this process more but still have not been able to get into the cold wet studio. Finally it came to me that I would just cut dots from fabric and sew them onto a yellow ground.
I began by cutting dots in black, white and a deeper shade of yellow. The white dots were to simulate the resist areas of the original fabric and the yellow were "just because". I laid some white dots out and then removed a few and added some of the yellow ones.
Next I added some black dots but the mix just did not please me.
I decided that the white dots were too high value so I cut some gray dots that were closed in value to the yellow. I inserted those and added more black. Now I felt the composition was looking like a color blindness chart. This kind of arrangement might not be a bad thing to explore but it was too far away from my original vision so I removed all the dots except the black and made the decision to go right to the sewing machine and sew them on rather than arranging them and then sewing. That is how I proceeded , throwing in 3 yellow dots to create some open space.
The first dot piece also had additional bits of fabric applied to the face and stitched but I opted not to introduce those elements on this work. Something else to explore another time.
The original project had featured 'rice stitch' and I wanted to find a substitute for that stitch. After some experimentation I came up with using the zigzag function and that I like a great deal. The image at the top of the page is the final results and here is a nice detail which shows the stitching.
Cut Dots detail
These small works are very charming but I am convinced that the power of this type of composition is in the overall size of the piece and the scale of the elements in relation to the size. I think there is the potential of interesting images which might emerge through scale and repetition. What this means to me is I have to do this larger....much larger. I'm adding that to my list.
Thank you for dropping by. I would love to hear from you.
