Hooked Rugs as Sketches 101

Magazine Issue: 
January/February 2012

Ask the Experts

Author / Craftsman: 
Michelle Sirois-Silver

 

Series 2 Wildflowers, 10" x 47", #5- to 8-cut hand-dyed wool on linen, unfinished.  The wildflowers were hooked first and the unhooked linen background is later cut away from the hooked surface leaving exposed raw edges of hooking.  Designed and hooked by Michelle Sirois-Silver, Vancouver, Canada, 2006. 

Sketchbooks are commonly considered a tool for those who work with oil paints, charcoal, and pastels. But don’t overlook the use of a sketchbook as it applies to other art forms—especially rug hooking.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), an Edo period artist well known for his series of block prints titled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, was the first artist to use the term manga meaning “playful sketches” or “light feeling” to describe his humorous block print images published as a fifteen-volume manga sketchbook series.

To read more about learning to use a sketchbook as part of the rug hooking process, please see the January/February 2012 issue of Rug Hooking magazine.  To purchase a copy of this issue, please click here or to subscribe to Rug Hooking, click subscribe.