Deborah Colman Designs

04/02/2026

Following on from the photos I showed in my last post I made a mono print of one of them using a gel plate. What do you think?
It took a LOT of tries to get it to work but finally peeled off this nice one which I think has a nice feel. I’m trialing the process so I can layer fragments of my photos in my collages.
I have to thank & her YouTube videos for finally telling me how to prepare the image 🙏

19/06/2025

What I wish I’d brought with me…
While Iran & Israel are at war, & I’m not using this feed to make political statements but I’m posting this sketch of a beautiful traditional Persian instrument called a Tar because I heard about it for the first time yesterday when, as part of the What I Brought With Me Project, I spent a wonderful time in the company of 8 members of a book club for refugees. I asked everyone to write about a personal object that they wish they had brought from their homeland. Mia from Iran wrote the most beautiful piece about this instrument which she played as a child but was too shy to play for her father until it was too late. I’m hoping that with Mia’s permission I might be able to share some more of what she wrote, but for now, here’s my sketch of what I think from her description a Tar looks like.

09/05/2025

The artist of this Adoration of the Magi (c1340) was not only a skilled painter but also an expert in special effects for interiors of the time. The lavish gold decoration on the painting was layered underneath coloured paints and then scraped and punched through with sharp tools to form the ornate patterned fabrics and halos. This punch work was designed so that the paintings & alterpieces would sparkle and shimmer in the candle light of the churches where they were hung.

08/05/2025

13th Century Anatolian carpet similar to those imported into Italy at the time the Siennese painters were incorporating their designs into their ornate Christian religious images

08/05/2025

Niccolo Buonocourso’s jewel-like painting also including the striking geometric design of a contemporary Anatolian carpet, seemingly at odds with the Christian biblical scene but redolent of the luxury a carpet like this would have represented at the time

08/05/2025

08/05/2025

This 14th century textile with Kufic inscriptions is so similar to the background cloth seen in Ducio’s Madonna (next picture) painted in 13th C Siena that historians believe similar cloth was imported from Spain (at that time occupied by the Moors) into Italy & hung as purely decorative back cloths in Italian churches, used by the artist as a decorative addition to his composition