Back on Track

Well, it's been an eventful time for me recently, and I'm back to my textiles after a few weeks away. I had to take time out to send away some painting work for assessment, and afterwards to sort out some personal and work issues - however, I'm back, and looking into this section on printing and painting on fabric. My initial thoughts on this technique revolve around a couple of points:
1) Printing can certainly be nice, but it doesn't have the lusciousness and tactile qualities of embroidered fabric, so, at the moment, has less appeal for me than embroidery.
2) My ideas concerning printing on a professional level mostly spring from William Morris wallpaper, which is, of course, a very natural starting point for someone that is working alone, and has never tried the medium before. Using blocks, he printed pieces such as this piece, Acanthus, in the V&A collections. It's a beautiful thing, though, as it is printed on paper, there is far more refinement in line than I feel I will be able to achieve on fabric without hand-painting. This kind of repeating pattern, building up a dense surface with plenty of layers of foliage, is what I will be using as a guide for this section. 

3) Another influence I will be turning my mind to, should natural themes prove out of my league, will be something a little bolder - perhaps like this piece, the far bolder print on the dress of the witch, Sidonia von Bork, in the painting by Edward Burne-Jones.

"Sidonia von Bork 1560", Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1860, Photo: © Tate, London, 2014. 

Next, I'm taking a trip to the library to get out plenty of printing books, so I'll be posting some more photos soon.