Denise Lach - Designing with Letters - Part 2

I'm just back from a lovely week spent in the south of France and I had every intention of post the 2nd set of pictures from Denise's course before I set off but by the time I had got one piece finished and ready for the framer and another ready for stitching on holiday, I just didn't have the time. 

So here they is some of the work from the 2nd half of the Denise's course and you will see that I started to work in a less controlled way.

This basic design was built up using a few selected words, with the letters elongated and stretched to make a pattern. I then took photocopies of the design and started to work into and over it by blocking areas out using pens and using ink and tools that were less controllable and dripped ink down the page. 

When I was on holiday these buildings reminded me of these designs, minus the dribbles, obviously. This idea/link might be something worth following up when time permits.  

So going back to the course... I also started exploring how I could use lettering to represent a landscape and started by creating tree trunks and under growth with letters.

I then tried using some coloured ink and a slightly different approach to creating the landscape but still using letters..

...and then a slightly looser style...

You can see from my design board below, that the work I was producing in the 2nd half of the course was much looser and that I have only shown you a fraction of it. My aim was to explore as many ideas and avenues and possible, rather than creating a finished piece of work and I think I did that, I came away with lots of ideas to develop. 

You may know that last year's holiday inspired my Barge in the Mist piece piece and so I was hoping that I would come back with inspiration for my next 'must-make' piece but unfortunately I didn't. I saw some lovely landscapes, architecture and wildlife but when I look back at my photos, it's this one that's giving me food for thought:

This was taken from the train in France and I wanted to see how much blurring I would get when I took the photo from a moving train and whether it would create any interesting images. I didn't get any blurring at all and I guess that's down to the wonders of technology but I did like the way my red top and yellow fabric reflected in the window and created a colourful and interesting landscape.  Something else to think about because a lot of landscapes can be very green, certainly in this country and this could be one way adding some additional colour interest.

And when I returned home this is what I found on my doorstep....

...what a lovely surprise! I had won Gina's giveaway and as ever, Gina had presented the buttons beautifully. I'm not sure how I'm going to use them yet but in the meantime, I'll just enjoy looking at them as they are.