Answering Design

A beautiful middle eastern tribal design from Fibercopia

So many things to be inspired by!

I love it's inexactness, makes it much easier to look at.

Also the random colour changes, let's do more of this in our work!

I received a question in our online design class in The Wanda Way Studio about where I find it appropriate to use my painterly approach. This references an article I wrote long ago for Rug Hooking.

In it I talked about using the natural light to dark rotation of the colour wheel to inform our shading, and various other way to understand what we do when we make something take "form" or use up 3-D space in our work.

This person asks me the most wonderful questions. This question asking is the greatest thing for me. It makes me think about things to a deeper level which I appreciate so much.

Dear Design Class Student

About my painterly technique ... I use it in everything I do.

I don't hang by techniques saying to myself now there is a place that I could use Joe McGillicuttie's stained glass style.

Yes, try new things, you will mostly find they are old, give them a whirl anyway because they have worked for eons. But don't let you work or your learning rest there. These bits of knowledge you are garnering ... accumulate them, accrue them put them away into a savings account. And when you are ready to blossom out with your own work spend them like MAD.

Using this "painterly" way and look out for that language, many instructors use it. Does the person's work look like painting? If not keep looking for proof of a deeper understanding of it.

It is something I do everywhere in everything. It is what comes out.

For instance there are millions of styles of painting, yet all are using a painterly way.

It is that way with hooking too. There are a million ways to represent something, which one comes out of you and how?

That's the one to be respected. After all we learn about basics at rug school we really have very little to hang onto when it comes time to stride into our own domain.

This is because we are learning the wrong basics. We are learning applications instead of foundations. We are learning to put on wall paper instead of how to build a good wall.

There are fundamentals to be learned in the art of visual representation, that is what we are learning and will continue to learn right here. This is the basis for all we will do. This is painterly as it's finest.

Learn these and you will never be bound by parameters again unless you want to be.

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.”

Nancy Willard