Today I am in an organizing and collecting mood. I have found that I have quite a lot of these Anni Albers inspired line drawings. They are something I always return to.
Sometimes when I look back on my image library I feel frustrated, like I am forever circling around something and not quite getting where I need to be. I wish I could be more focused on one thing and make a finished work. Other times I just try to make sense of what I’m looking at. It’s helpful to look for patterns and try to figure out what graphic styles are working the best. Today I want to take a positive spin on it. As artists, we need to make sense of what we are doing.
These Anni Albers inspired line drawings are standing out to me today. I have consistently made these over the years, and Anni Albers, has always been a source of inspiration. When she joined the Bauhaus school she originally wanted to study painting, but was prevented from doing so. Women were only allowed to study things like textiles and pottery. As frustrated as she may have been by this, she took up weaving and eventually became a master at it. In the course of things she would make these sketches that seem to be inspired by threads:
Here are some rough ones, straight out of the sketchbook:
I now have a pretty good process for digitizing them, using a combination of iPad apps. Inkpad is great way to smooth out the lines, and then Vector Q can be use to vectorize them. That way I can scale them, and make them into a proper resolution for printed products. Like this t-shirt for sale on etsy. I think the ones at the beginning of the post will eventually become large scale prints.