This is a photograph of sea buckthorn, taken last autumn on a footpath near the lighthouse at Cromer. Until then I didn’t know what it was, although I have seen it growing in several coastal areas – apparently you can make an unusual jelly with it (although you have to add in a few apples). I really love the sharp orange colour against the greyish-green leaves and have used it as inspiration for several experiments in my sketchbook this year.
Above is where I used the same picture, collaged around it with a mixture of papers, distressed the actual photograph and then used oil pastels to continue the berries into the background. Below shows the same image torn up but collaged with other textured papers to make an interesting ground.
I also used the my buckthorn sketches to try out the Elmer’s Glue resist technique that I played about with earlier in the year. You can see that I’ve kept to the same colour scheme throughout.
Yesterday I wanted to put together a quick holiday project because I am going to have a lot of dead time while travelling. I gathered together lots of pieces of fabric in the sea buckthorn colour scheme inspired mainly by two ‘wipes’ that I have saved while clearing up a while back (probably after the Elmer’s Glue sample). You can see one of them quite clearly on the bottom right of the photo below.
I tore up lots of pieces and arranged them on two long strips of calico. When I was happy I bonded them down and then stencilled some more leaves on top and dabbed once again with bubble wrap to give the impression of berries. Hopefully I’ll have time to quickly machine down some of the layers with some sketchy outlines but below you can see how the project is progressing and the collection of hand threads (thick, thin, shiny, matt) and tiny buttons I have put together to take away with me.
JOLLIETEXTILES 