Tag Archives: drawing

From Sunrise to Sunset

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by in Drawings, Embroiderers Guild UK, Exhibitions, galleries, Inspirations, Processes, stitched textiles, Textile Art, UK textile artists

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I am indebted to a good friend for this title which she suggested when we were talking about forthcoming exhibitions this week, so thank you to Myfanwy Hart, as it has inspired a new blog post! I have been very involved in the natural world for some years, and increasingly found myself emphasising colours and forms in the skies. Some of these are very detailed, others show simplified shapes of colour and stitch. I’ve put more information with the images that follow.

Firstly, if you don’t know Myfanwys blog site then take a look at https://crochetalongwithme.blog/author/nuvofelt/ with loads of lovely colour!

So here are some images where sunrise and early morning skies played a part in the work. The first image is very recent and uses memories of the South Downs where I live in the UK. It’s followed by two other locally based pieces. Finally I don’t write a lot as I hope the images speak for themselves but your thoughts are always welcome!

Daybreak001

Daybreak 2018

On the left, Silver Lining, a windy morning, and on the right a bright sunny winter morning at Petworth, which I’ve shown before here. The blue-grey palette of Silver Lining contrasts strongly with the rich morning late mid-winter sky on the right. They are followed by “A Quiet Summers Evening” where memories of travelling through France and the UK combined to produce a palette of golds and blues, as I tried to echo the sky colours in the fields below.

 

A Quiet summers evening

Sunset from Lanzarote, with the night sky gathering and darkening from behind the distinctive mountains there, and a softer Sussex sunset of gentle pinks

EPSON scanner image

Fading summer light detail

And finally a piece from 2017 where the sunset has faded away giving way to the night. You can see more of these on my earlier post called Skyscapes.

C Naylor, Skyscape Nightfall

 

Exhibitions, looking back at 2017

26 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Drawings, Exhibitions, galleries, Inspirations, Processes, stitched textiles, Textile Art, UK textile artists

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Preparing for, and selecting pieces for exhibitions is a time consuming task, and although I’ve done this many times it doesn’t necessarily get any easier! In 2017 I made work for, or sent work, to venues that were very different. Walford Mill in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, is a fabulous venue that always has an amazingly eclectic selection of artworks from small and delightful, to the thought provoking and dramatic. I was asked to send 3 pieces to Textile Textures from April to June, and was lucky enough to have this piece, “Poppies Beneath The Downs” featured on all the publicity. It didn’t come home!

Carol Naylor, Poppies beneath the Downs UK copy

I also made work for an exhibition with a local group of contemporary artists called ARTel, on the theme of Transience. I worked on the idea of sky, and the fleeting moments of colour that we see at different times of thEPSON MFP imagee year. I exhibited a series of six pieces, only 5 inches square, but mounted an framed to 12 inch squares, intimate, densely stitched, with rich overlapping lines of embroidery. Showing with artists who worked in paint, print, clay and photography was a very worthwhile and challenging experience.

Carol Naylor, Skyscape-sunset

Recently I held a joint exhibition with my painter husband Albert at the local  Oxmarket arts centre, Paintings, drawings and textiles that combined to give what we hoped was a rich and diverse experience. Some images follow.

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Art and Textiles from Spain to Scotland

10 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Drawings, Embroiderers Guild UK, Inspirations, Spain, stitched textiles, Textile Art

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As always a busy summer schedule included work and play! Our usual month away in Spanish hideaways, wonderful landscapes for inspiration, staying with friends who are like family, was swiftly followed by a flight to Glasgow to teach for the Scottish Region of the Embroiderers Guild on the stunning campus at Stirling University. You can see some of my drawings here, plus examples from the summer school, an amazingly responsive group of students who played and worked hard in equal measure! The first images are from Spain, followed by a selection of work from Stirling summer school.

Sunflowers near Sepulveda, sketch book drawing. I hope to use this and the second drawing as starting points for embroideries this autumn.

 

2017-07-30 10.25.32Carol Naylor drawing

This is the wonderful Posada de San Millan in Sepulveda where we stay with our delightful friend Pilar.

2017-07-29 16.17.17

 

Lavender and sunflowers growing in fields side by side on the tiny road between Santo Domingo de Silos, and Lerma inspired this memory drawing as there was nowhere to stop the car safely!

Lavender an Sunflower001Carol Naylor drawing

 

And now for Scotland. The wonderful campus at Stirling University

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Here are some if the wonderful pieces made by my students. The theme was The Land we Know so nearly all had images from the wonderful landscapes of Scotland. Many of them had only done basic machine embroidery before. It shows what you can achieve in under 4 days. Maybe the late evening wine helped! There were 15 students so I can’t really show all the work here, but I felt so proud of their achievements.

,20170827_172106 By Ruth Blakey, taught by Carol Naylor

20170827_171035by Isobel Shaw, taught by Carol Naylor

20170827_171838by Maureen Griffiths, taught by Carol Naylor

20170827_195234 (1)by Susan Gray, taught by Carol Naylor

I think these give an idea of what is possible if you are brave enough to fly on your sewing machine!

Spanish and Italian Reds

02 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Commissions, Drawings, galleries, Inspirations, Italy, Spain, stitched textiles, Textile Art

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I’m not talking wine here for those who know me well (!) but this is a follow up to my last post, where I looked at using the colour red in my work. Below you will see a number of contrasting pieces where different red tones and threads have been used either as one of the main colours or as highlights within the compositions. I always use first hand experience, even if its just a fleeting glimpse of something that can inspire a series of works. The first embroidery is called “Sol y Sombra” which translates as sun and shade. The image comes from the landscape of central Spain near Santo Domingo de Silos. The light  was pouring through the valley, with golden wheatfields, terracotta earth, and blue shadows reflecting the mountains, catching my eye. After drawing on  site, when back home, I stripped out the vegetation so that I could concentrate on the land’s surface, and the act of stitching took over.

I am always interested in hearing what readers think so your comments are welcomed.

Sol y Sombra cropped

This next piece is called “Winter’s Song”, memories of cool light and chillier weather and the changes wrought by these conditions on the landscape.

C Naylor Winters Song

I showed this next piece in my post entitled ” From Drawings to a Stitched Landscape” where you can see how I developed the piece, but its so very red it needs to be seen again here! The cascading fields were seen against a backdrop of wheatfields and distant blue hills, Spain at its hottest and best, rich with colour and the sounds of insects.

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From the fiery reds of Spain now to the rolling Tuscan hills peppered with poppies. I use a crimson rather than a scarlet thread in this series as I feel it echoes the landscape more softly. I called this “Tuscan Serenade”. I never tire of playing with ideas that take me back in my mind to Italy, with its cypresses, hills and late springtime poppies that permeate the fields.

Tuscan Serenade

Finally the following embroidery was a small commission for a French family who requested a red landscape. I took the reds from Spain and mountain ranges from France, and really enjoyed the challenge of adding richer scarlet colours combied with metallic copper and gold threads. Its about 20cm square.

Bouton 1_edited-1

Sketchbooks, the 90s

15 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Drawings, galleries, Inspirations, Processes, Spain, Textile Art

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My first entry for 2017 and it’s a look at my sketchbooks in the 90s. All the drawings here are from 1991-92 and there’s quite a change of direction. I started looking at architecture and architectural features, so here are drawings from France and Spain. I also show two embroideries that evolved from the drawings.

Carol Naylor Beach Umbrellas 1993

Beach Umbrellas, Costa Brava.( machine embroidery onto muslin) The embroidery came after making about six drawings. The first, which is the delicate pencil drawing below, was made in situ on the beach. Then I made several others, extracting shapes and lines until I felt I was ready to stitch. The final piece in no way copies my drawings but I hope shows the developing ideas

beach-umbrella-sketch001

beach Umbrella sketch 3

I visited France on a field trip with students, Chartres and the Matisse chapel at Vence were just two venues. Here are some designs I did after looking at Matisse’s amazing windows.( the on site sketches are difficult to show here) I eventually did a series of embroideries based on stained glass but with my own take! So you see. I didnt always makw landscapes! Art evolves all the time– The embroidery below was onto calico that I painted and then stitched.

matisse-chapel001

 

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Sketchbooks revisited, the 80s part 2

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Drawings, Exhibitions, galleries, Inspirations, Processes, Textile Art

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Some more drawings from my 1980s sketchbooks to look at, from a garden in France to a student field trip to Munich via Garmisch Partenkirchen. I  did not always draw with end products in mind, but to record where I was, what I was thinking and so on. Many pages are too messy or sketchy to put here, but I’ve found a few that show my journey They are shown in chronological order . Next post-the 90s! The first drawing was made in a garden in Cesson, France 1982. One of my followers might recognise the venue!

All drawings approx 20cm x 18cm French garden 1982 Detail followed by full page .

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french-garden-1982001

The alps at Garmisch in 1986 and yes it was cold drawing outside so it was done very quickly!

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Fruit bowl 1985, pencil and coloured pencils, drawing what’s in front of whilst the TV was on

fruit-bowl-001

This is a pastel drawing from 1989. I was looking at landscapes and playing with potential ideas for embroidery. I did work  up a series, but only have a couple on old fashioned slides!

landscape-abstract-001

In 1989 we seemed to keep coming across standing stones, dolmens, rocky formations on our travels, so lots of drawings did lead to a series of works in handmade pulp with additional stitch and fibres. Here’s a drawing and one of the final pieces which I made for an exhibition in 1990. The drawing uses pastel and a tippex pen

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carol-naylor-1988-dolmen

see you in the 90s next time!

Sketchbooks revisited, the80s

06 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in Drawings, Exhibitions, galleries, Inspirations, Processes, stitched textiles, Textile Art

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With over 35 years of sketchbooks in my studio I decided to look back to see what I was doing at various times during my career. It has been somewhat revelatory! I drew differently, often more boldly, without holding back, used a wider variety of media, and  frequently explored ideas that I thought I could use with my students. Back in the 80s with a fulltime lecturing post and a young family, I did make my own work, and had several exhibitions in the south of England, but I have no real record of those in visual terms. Do take a look at my drawings and ideas from the 1980s. You might be as surprised as I was!

This is from 1986. I photocopied some images, including pieces by Henry Moore, cut fragments up, pasted them down, then drew freely from them, inventing a surreal landscape. It was an exercise I did quite often, I found several in different books during this decade. I did quite a lot of mono printing and also batik at this time.

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Here’s a more formal drawing from 1983 and its one of the few drawings I remember doing. On a field trip with students to Florence and Venice, on a cold, rainy March day, I sat in the Duomo in St Marks Square, and drew what was in front of me. You can see the date in the bottom lefthand corner. Its bolder and more direct compared to my current architectural studies and stays in the memory far longer than a photo!

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The following mixed media piece shows me playing with pastels and pencils, thinking about land and sea in an abstract way. Its dated 1986. I did a lot of papermaking at this time, and this would have been part of my thought processes. I rather like it!

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We spent several years as a family on a gite in France in Brittany. Here’s a drawing I’d totally forgotten, of the lake at Le Lendu. 1987 Pencil, pen and pastel

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and finally, from my 1989 sketchbook, an abstracted drawing from a friend’s garden using pastels. Now I’m thinking I need to look at these again and start stitching from them! More to follow in my next post–

journey-garden-89

Spanish Studies

02 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Drawings, Inspirations, Spain, stitched textiles, Textile Art

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Four weeks away from home in our favourite Spanish haunts gives plenty of time for drawing, absorbing and thinking about art. Each area we visit has its own charms, from the sierra south of Salamanca, to Sepulveda and Covarrubias, both stunning  little medieval towns, and finally to Isla in Cantabria in the north. Here are a few drawings that might simply act as my visual diary, or could lead to further work on stitching on my sewing machine. I have 35 years of sketch books in my studio. Maybe in my next post I will revisit some of those.

Las Batuecas, parque nacional de la Sierra de Francia

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Sepulveda

Sepulveda001

The road from Santo Domingo de Silos to Covarrubias

Road from Santo Domingo001

and our favourite beach in Isla in Cantabria

Isla beach001

News Update June 2016

18 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Drawings, magazine articles, Spain, Textile Art

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It’s been a busy few weeks for me with some great promotion. Firstly my first spread in an Australian magazine, TFF (Textile Fibre Forum) #122 June 16, which shows the way in which my work has changed and progressed over 40 years of making and exhibiting, and then a piece from the wonderful Diana Springall collection of contemporary embroidery was featured and discussed on “MAKE! Craft Britain”, an hour long programme presented by Martha Kearney, on mainstream UK TV BBC4 June 9th 2016. This foray into the world of stitching set about de-bunking the theory that embroidery is craft  rather than art, and Diana eloquently explained why  Britain is still at the fore of embroidery. From the mid 1950s art schools taught  embroidery students alongside the painters and sculptors. Students had to draw, and had to acquire the same skills as well as heir own technical expertise, and I was lucky enough to study at Goldsmiths Art School in the mid-late 60s in this way. Drawing has been fundamental to my own personal progress in textile art, and I have all my sketchbooks since 1980 in my studio, a permanent  reference library, as well as a visual diary.

Here is Spanish Lavender, the piece featured on the TV progamme, 43cm x53cm approx.Spanish Lavender DS collection

and here one of my many drawings Drawing Castille 2

and another

Cepeda drawing001

Sew ‘Scapes

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Be Creative with Workbox, Be Inspired by Workbox, Drawings, Inspirations, magazine articles, stitched textiles, Textile Art, UK textile artists

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Delighted to see my article called Sew’Scapes so beautifully produced in the Annual Be Inspired by Workbox magazine vol 4 now published. This magazine has really developed into a super read, with beautiful images well printed and displayed in all the articles. Having an 8 page spread is a real treat– Other artists who are featured include Michelle Cook, another UK textile artist who looks at the land in a very different way to me. Bethany Walker mixes cement with stitch, wonderfully different, and  other artists working in the Netherlands, Australia and Kenya have stunning work to look at as well. It’s good to see conceptual pieces alongside delicate botanical images and I feel honoured to be in such good company.

Here are a couple of the pages from my article. Even if you’ve seen the textiles before, I hope those who read the magazine will find that the text gave an insight into my working methods. I also rather like the way the pages have curled into folds when photographed Maybe I should try and develop this in my future embroideries–

Workbox article 3

Workbox article 2

You can find out more about the magazine on facebook, twitter and pinterest