A week in knitting | Shortbread Inspirations

When this thumbnail turned up in my feed, I was immediately attracted to it - the bright red colours, the slightly abstract look and the rich texture all caught my attention. I have stared at it fascinated for some time now, not least because of the story ideas it conjures up.

Shortbread - a picture modified by @katharsisdrill using a Creative Commons licence (explained in this post). The original picture was by @shortcut published using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence in this post of four paintings.

I have become increasingly interested in how to render complex colour effects in knitting. My ideas were about creating garments that contained commentary in their patterns and designs. Two that I have started to look at were inspired by the 100th anniversary of votes for (some) women this year, and FC United of Manchester - a supporter owned football club. Both of these are social movements and come with a rich cultural history.

This slightly blurred cropped picture of a Kaffe Fassett design combines two visual effects that I like. On the one hand, a dense, rich pattern and on the other hand, a peeling, disintegrating surface revealing the substance below. I particularly like the effect of colour barely covering the canvas, like a worn pavement or much-used embroidered cushion. Some of Cezanne's Bathers are like this, creating a tension - where does the colour and apparent solid form end? Again, the colours are very appealling, just like Shortbread above.

Here's another by Louisa Harding, using a Fair Isle pattern and stripes. Here the colours are more subtle and muted, creating a dense, rich texture that I almost want to bite.

I wondered how I could take Shortbread and use it to inspire me in my own designs and expression. Yesterday's there is always snow above by @neumannsalva reminded me of her method of using leftover paint in her palette as the inspiration for new ideas and paintings.

Long ago, I worked in Slater Street in Liverpool. It was run-down then (and has probably been regenerated within an inch of its life now) and its main claims to fame were the site of the Jacaranda Club where the Beetles had played in their early days and the Cream nightclub. During the day, Slater Street was a sleepy backwater, by night, it was heaving with throngs of people going to and from Cream and the other clubs and bars. The nightlife in Liverpool was something else.

I worked in one of a pair of lovely three story early Victorian houses where we ran a training centre. Unlike many buildings and centres, we suffered very little vandalism or pilfering, the building and everything in it was much loved by everyone who used it. When once someone put a brick through the window (for the fax machine - it seems strange now), many people were sad that something they valued had been damaged.

Down the road was an old-fashioned artists' materials shop, still with its original facade, gently decaying as the years passed. The tiny shop windows were always crammed with items and the interior quickly disappeared into an all encompassing gloom. I had never been in until they had a closing down sale when I went and bought a tube of every colour they had of something they called designer's colours. Looking at them now, I think the idea was to add a small amount of the intense colour to another medium.

They were packed in a fairly small but quite heavy box. I carried them with me through various moves around the country. At one time I gave them to some young friends and then asked for them back for some project I had in mind (my young friends had graduated to computer painting programmes, they didn't understand these material paints). My head was aching yesterday, I've had an intermittent migraine for several days. About four o clock in the afternoon, after a little sleep, I wondered what I could do to feel better.

I remembered the paints. I tried to remember where they were. I wondered if I had a palette knife and other painting tools. I looked for my sketch-books. On the way to gathering together everything I needed, I found some other lost treasures - embroidery threads, fabrics, my button box (with buttons from when I was a teenager), small sketches and notes from exhibitions and talks, an embroiderer's magnifying glass, my video camera.

Finally, I had found everything and set myself up at the dining table, materials to hand, a cup of tea, and some classical music on the iPad. I looked through my ninety-two tubes of paint and chose some that were close to the colours in Shortbread - a beautiful array of names (and one or two more prosaic ones) - bordeaux red, deep madder, alps red, brilliant pink, middle cadmium and yellow brown.

I realised afterwards that I had squirted far too much of each colour on the small saucer I was using as a palette. I ended with enough paint for four waiting-to-be-an-artwork paintings. The colours were interesting, some were translucent and others opaque, and sometimes, this wasn't revealed until they dried. The first painting was so thick and dense and crusted, I was able to take a print of it. I struggled with the palette knife, learning how to apply the paint, discovering how far it could (would) go.

My first attempt. The paints were different textures (well, they had been sitting in various cupboards for over twenty years), some were very dry, others very wet and runny. I picked up too much paint at first and was clumsy with the palette knife. It was also too pink and unbalanced for Shortbread, I decided.

I was happier with this one (my second try). The colours were more balanced and I liked some of the effects I was discovering. I still had paint left after this one and created two smaller paintings using a different base colour each time. I was amused to notice my strokes changed as the music changed and the last one (not shown) is very choppy - the Toreador theme from Bizet's Carmen was playing.

The paintings have dried overnight and I'm curious to see where I take them when I next sit down. Coincidentally, John Lewis (one of our big department stores) has a clearance sale. I was unsuspecting as I walked into the haberdashery department and discovered ...

Possible yarn for Shortbread II?

Thank you to the other artists on Steemit - @katharsisdrill, @shortcut, @neumannsalva.

Incidentally, my headache cleared.