Mark-Making Through the Seasons


Book Description

A creative and practical guide on how to get in touch with your local natural world to create thoughtful works of textile art. Filled with projects and step-by-step techniques, this book is perfect for textile students and professionals alike. Renowned quilter and textile artist Helen Parrott explores the creative potential of your local surroundings and teaches you the processes and techniques used to create beautiful textile artworks. Drawing on the Slow Stitch movement, she explains how mark-making techniques can be used meditatively to record personal lives and surroundings influenced by seasonal changes of colour, energy and light. She encourages you to connect to your own locality, whether it be urban or rural, at home or on holiday, and its specific seasonal aspects in order to create a personal, working cycle of textile art. The book is divided into seasons; from learning how to spot the first signs of Spring to recording seasonal characteristics – equinox through to solstice – Helen teaches you how to be in tune with your environment. Each location will have different signs, so each artwork will truly be unique. Techniques and projects are also covered in this book: she first teaches you the basics of both hand and machine stitch techniques, working with free-form stitching, chain stitch, corded quilting and then moves onto appliqué, blackwork and dyeing. The techniques build in complexity ending with pieced textiles and collages. Helen also explores how to work with dot and line, repeating patterns, light and shadow, colour (and lack of colour), plant structures and people in landscapes. The last chapter consolidates techniques you've learnt in the book and showcases finished works from her exhibitions, as well as the Bradford Textile Archive, to help you better understand where inspiration leads.




Mark Making


Book Description

Discover how the simplest marks--stitched lines and knots--can be used to create graphically compelling art! In Mark Making, art quilter Helen Parrott, known for her strongly graphic and landscape-inspired textile art, demonstrates how marks can be used in textile work and explains the crossover between stitch and drawing. This fascinating book is divided into the different types of marks or lines that can be made on fabric varying in complexity, arrangement, and 'feel'. You'll also learn techniques in both hand and machine stitching, which offer limitless potential for surface effect. Mark Making aims to help you take inspiration from the world around you to create marks, develop your own mark-making skills, and strengthen your personal creative voice! This is an essential book for any textile artist.




Mark-making in Textile Art


Book Description

At its very essence, textile art is about mark-making. As an artist would use a pencil, an embroiderer or quilter can use stitch to make marks on fabric – a fundamental creative act. The making of marks often starts and underpins the entire design process, and a textile artwork is usually made up of repeated stitched marks. This fascinating book shows how marks can be used in textile work, both simple and complex, and explores the crossover between stitch and drawing. Author Helen Parrott is well known for her strongly graphic textile art, which uses marks to stunning visual effect. The book is divided into the types of marks that can be made on fabric, varying in complexity, arrangement and 'feel' – single, grouped, massed, regular, irregular, calligraphic, permanent, transient, and so on. It covers both hand and machine stitch, which make very different types of mark and between them offer limitless potential for mark-making, used both separately and together. It aims to help you take inspiration from the world around you to create marks, develop your own mark-making skills and strengthen your personal creative voice, and is an essential book for any textile artist.




Modern Mark Making


Book Description

Here is a complete volume offering lettering arts techniques as well as project ideas.




The Honest Truth


Book Description

Mark has been in and out of hospital his whole life - and he's fed up. So when his cancer returns, he decides he's had enough. Running away with his dog Beau, he sets out to climb a mountain - and it's only when he's left everything behind that Mark realises he has everything to live for.




Season of Life


Book Description

The bestselling inspirational book in which the author reunites with a childhood football hero, now a minister and coach, and witnesses a revelatory demonstration of the true meaning of manhood—Season of Life is a book that “should be required reading for every high school student in America and every parent as well” (Carl Lewis, Olympic champion). Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL football star and volunteer coach for the Gilman high school football team, teaches his players the keys to successful defense: penetrate, pursue, punish, love. Love? A former captain of the Baltimore Colts and now an ordained minister, Ehrmann is serious about the game of football but even more serious about the purpose of life. Season of Life is his inspirational story as told by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jeffrey Marx, who was a ballboy for the Colts when he first met Ehrmann. Ehrmann now devotes his life to teaching young men a whole new meaning of masculinity. He teaches the boys at Gilman the precepts of his Building Men for Others program: Being a man means emphasizing relationships and having a cause bigger than yourself. It means accepting responsibility and leading courageously. It means that empathy, integrity, and living a life of service to others are more important than points on a scoreboard. Decades after he first met Ehrmann, Jeffrey Marx renewed their friendship and watched his childhood hero putting his principles into action. While chronicling a season with the Gilman Greyhounds, Marx witnessed the most extraordinary sports program he’d ever seen, where players say “I love you” to each other and coaches profess their love for their players. Off the field Marx sat with Ehrmann and absorbed life lessons that led him to reexamine his own unresolved relationship with his father. Season of Life is a book about what it means to be a man of substance and impact. It is a moving story that will resonate with athletes, coaches, parents—anyone struggling to make the right choices in life.




Interpreting Themes in Textile Art


Book Description

An inspirational and practical book on how to interpret and collaborate on different themes in textile art. With foreword by Marie-Therese Wisniowski, who runs Art Quill Studio. This stunning collection showcases the work produced by renowned textile artists Els van Baarle and Cherilyn Martin, and explores how – even when working from the same starting point – textile art can produce a myriad interpretations of shape, form, colour and technique. Els and Cherilyn have chosen six themes for their own starting point, each full of inspiration and artistic potential: Memory (both personal experiences and historical events); Graven (cemetery) images and idols; Books as objects; Pompeii and archaeological excavations; Walls; and Everyday items. For each of the themes the authors have provided a personal interpretation of the work and a description of the techniques they used, along with step-by-step instructions. In the chapter on memory, for example, Cherilyn demonstrates how old fabrics and textiles (which themselves have a unique history all of their own) can be recycled to incorporate your own stitched drawings. Alternatively, Els explores Procion Dye techniques to create colourful and striking fabrics that bear no resemblance to Els work on the same theme. The trend for collaborative textile art is increasing in popularity. This fascinating guide provides a rich seam of inspiration from two renowned artists, exploring how to get the most from your collaborations and produce beautiful and unique work.




Fragmentation and Repair


Book Description

Discover the rich creative possibilities of fragmentation and repair in textile art. Fragmentation and repair are two of the biggest buzzwords in textile and mixed-media art. In this fascinating book, renowned artist Shelley Rhodes explores both concepts, with a wealth of fresh ideas and practical advice. Drawing on her own practice, Shelley explains how she reconstructs and reassembles cloth, paper and other materials to create new pieces, often incorporating found objects and items she has collected over the years to add depth and emotional resonance. From piercing and devoré to patching and darning, techniques include: Fragmentation of materials, text and image. Repair using darning and patching along with pins, tape, adhesive and plaster. The Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi (finding beauty in imperfection) and mottainai (using every last scrap). Using salvaged and recycled materials, and repurposing household items. Methods of distressing and manipulating surfaces including weathering, abrasion, burning, piercing, staining and burying. Collage, working in a series and collecting fragments. Beautifully illustrated with Shelley's own pieces alongside those of other leading artists, this fascinating book is the ideal companion for any textile artist wanting to bring notions of fragility, fragmentation and repair into their own work.




The Artful Year


Book Description

Celebrating the seasons provides a wonderful opportunity to embrace creativity together as a family. It’s also a fun way to decorate for, prepare for, and learn about the holidays we celebrate. In The Artful Year, you’ll find a year’s worth of art activities, crafts, recipes, and more to help make each season special. These artful explorations are more than just craft projects—they are ways for your family to create memories and mementos and develop creatively, all while exploring nature, new ideas, and traditions. The book includes: • Arts and crafts, using the materials, colors, and themes of the season • Ideas and decorations for celebrating the holidays together • Favorite seasonal recipes that are fun for children to help make (and eat!) • Suggested reading lists of children’s picture books about the seasons and holidays The 175+ activities in this book are perfect for children ages one to eight, and for creating traditions that appeal to all ages.




Drawing Nature for the Absolute Beginner


Book Description

Have you ever experienced the peace of walking through the woods or the excitement of a storm gathering on a beach? Drawing Nature for the Absolute Beginner will help you capture these moments in artwork and share them others. In their fun and friendly teaching style, Mark and Mary Willenbrink offer a great beginner's course on drawing nature, showing you how to realistically capture the world around you. All you need to get started are some simple supplies, basic techniques, and inspiration. From field to forest, beach or mountain, begin with a structural sketch, apply values and textures, and, before you know it, you'll be drawing everything you see. You'll even learn how to render favorite wildlife such as chipmunks, deer and eagles! • Follow along with easy step-by-step demonstrations to draw rocks, seashells, butterflies and even more developed nature scenes. • Gain a working understanding of key concepts such as perspective, value and composition. • Discover simple tools and tips you can use right away to improve your art.




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