Needlework Notebook: 2016

I am very lucky to be living a couple of miles away from Sutton Park.

The park was given to the people of Sutton Coldfield, by Henry VIII in 1528. It covers more than 2,400 acres with a mix of heathland, wetland, marshes, and extensive ancient woodlands. It also has seven lakes. Icknield Street runs through the park for about a mile and a half. It is said to be one of the best preserved sections of Roman highway left in Britain.

'Queen's Coppice' Planted in 1953 as a Coronation memorial.

It would be wrong of me not to take advantage of such a wonderful source of inspiration for research on 'woodlands, forests and bark surfaces', so, armed with my lovely new dslr camera, that I bullied off my dad (and my dslr idiots guide!), I went on a few walks, getting quite excited by the different textures that could be found.

When I got home I added a few filters in 'GIMP', a free image editing software programme as recommended by Ros, in an attempt to intensify the appearance of texture.

My first image was a close-up of leaves on the woodland floor.

50101 - original photo

50102 - increase contrast and posterize

50103 - Cubism

50104 - invert colours

50105 - increase contrast, desaturate and photocopy

50106 - desaturate and posterize

I love the colours in the first three, especially cubism, but they don't really exaggerate the texture. The curvy, irregular, random texture is displayed better in the last two black and white images.

I'm not sure what kind of tree I photographed next, but I loved the deep texture of the orangey bark with its contrasting soft green moss.

50107 - original photo

50108 - cartoon

50109 - desaturate and posterize

50110 - invert colours

50111 - posterize

50112 - threshold and invert

I rotated the original photo by 90 degrees to get a different view of the image.

I love the fibrous, sinewy pattern created by the 'negative space' in the inverted images.

Pine bark

I was drawn to the unusual blues, pinks and yellows in this bark, but also noticed the amazing contrast in texture. The smooth flat surface, made up of little circular flakes was surrounded with areas of rough tightly rippled bark.

50113 - original

50114 - less brightness, more contrast

50115 - photocopy and invert

50116 - photocopy

50117 - threshold and invert

50118 - threshold

50119 - cartoon

I thought the black and white versions look like aerial photos of island groups surrounded by choppy, bubbly water!

Silver Birch

This bark has a very obvious, deep craggy texture surrounding smooth shapes of flaking layers. The inverted images give the impression of linear paths with very deep crevises.

50120 - original

50121 - more contrast, less brightness and cartoon

50122 - photocopy

50123 - posterize and invert

50124 - posterize

50125 - threshold and invert

50126 - theshold

Silver Birch Saplings

surprisingly, this image gave a very low relief, scratchy texture when manipulated in image editing software.

50127 - original

50128 - cartoon and invert

50129 - cartoon

50130 - photocopy and invert

50131 - photocopy

50132 - posterize

50133 - threshold and invert

50134 - threshold

Queen's Coppice Pines

There are so many lovely contrasts in this linear texture.

Horizontal bands of rough and smooth. Some have horizontal texture within the band, and some have vertical texture. This is particularly noticeable in the 'inverted' images.