textile paintings
Design
Design
Jack
414 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
The Story of Jack
Jack is the nickname of my father-in-law. I still don’t know why someone would use a nickname for John, but it used to be a very popular thing to do. So even though his name was John, he grew up using the name Jack, and when World War II started, he continued on as usual — as Jack.
But one day, Uncle Sam called him in and accused him of trying to impersonate someone else. They made him change all of his paperwork to John — and from then on, everyone called him John.
My husband found a picture of his father recently. It looks like an enlistment photo, taken at the very beginning, when he was eighteen. His hat is propped lightly on his head, askew, and his grin reflects the personality within.
The Face
When I start a face, I always start with the lightest values and work up to the darkest (with the exception of the teeth). It’s always hard to see where I’m going when there are only two values to see.
But when I get to the third and fourth value, the face starts to take shape.
At this point, I realized that I couldn’t do the next value until I went back to do the neck — which I had forgotten.
Once you put on the eyes, you can really start to see handsome shining through.
When I started the teeth, I started with the lightest value and worked my way up to the darkest. I completely forgot that this doesn’t work on the teeth — but it gave me a chance to snap a picture of the teeth done this way so you can see why it doesn’t work. When you’re working with the large shapes of the face, you worry about shadowing of one fabric under another — but the pieces of the teeth are so small & everything is in shades of white, shadowing isn’t really an issue. And worse, if you make the teeth this way, they look harsh — not rounded.
These look much better — and will pop even more when I quilt in the individual teeth.
The Shirt
Although the picture I had was sepia toned, I was fairly certain that the shirt was khaki — which I couldn’t do since I used khaki colors in his face — so I leaned more towards a light military green. The main color, the 2nd value, is one that I had dyed years ago & tossed aside, thinking I would never use it — but it was perfect for this.
The next value outlines the wrinkles in the shirt and shows how the shirt fits him.
The darker values always seem to make it come to life.
The Hat
I had no reference for how the hat should look — and the picture didn’t tell me enough. After Google searching for World War II uniforms, I found a similar hat that surprisingly did not completely match the jacket — or in this case, the shirt. The brim was brown leather, and there was a belt just above the brim of brown leather. So I used the shirt colors for the top of the hat . . . .
. . . . and used a rich brown for the brim and belt (the belt will pop out once it is quilted).
The medallion was another issue. I’m fairly certain it was round metal so I used gold toned fabrics. Hopefully, using a metallic thread around it later will help it pop out more.
The Background
I don’t always know what to do in the background, but in this case, the decision was simple: a waving American flag. I used Photoshop to try out the idea and it was so successful, I knew it would work in fabric. What better tribute for an American soldier?
This is the first time that I’ve made a completely separate design for the background — but it only took me a couple more days.
Now I move into appliqueing and then quilting. Not as exciting as designing the piece, but still needed steps.
The Month of December
114 years ago
I always think that I’ll have at least a couple of weeks in December in the studio. Once again I seem to have forgotten that all the details of the holidays must be done in those weeks and studio time is precious little.
So I suppose my target of finishing Bukonyan Elder in December was a little off the mark. I did finish the applique and have her pinned and ready to quilt. Ever wonder what the back looks like?
I use a tearaway stabilizer on the back. A few years ago, I found a tearaway that also dissolves — so the part I can’t tear off will dissolve in water when I soak it before blocking it. I like the idea of it all going away. I think that things that last a long time in a quilt — other than thread & fabric — can hurt its longevity. Not scientific I know — but I want my work to last a long time.
When I was done, I took a picture of it and looked at it on the computer. I initially thought that I shouldn’t add pinpoints of light to her eyes — the focus should be on her hands — but looking at it in Photoshop, I can easily add the points of white in her eyes — and it did make the piece look better. So I added them with white thread before pinning her up to ready her for quilting.
What else have I been doing? Tonight my Fiber Art Fusion group has our 5 x 7 holiday exchange. I played with a picture of the Statue of Liberty’s face — a model that they keep inside & is still copper colored — and came up with Lady Oxidation — which I kept green to show the oxidation that the outside statue of her visage has. To me, her expression is quite fierce, and it reminds me of the passion that our forefathers had when they broke away from England and declared their independence. The exact inspiration for her is unknown although some think that it was the sculptor’s mother, Charlotte Bartholdi, or his wife, Jeanne-Emilie Bartholdi.
I confess that I used several of the greens that I used in Bukonyan Elder. They were on my working table and perfectly suited for what I needed — and all of the threads were all ready matched. In a month of not enough time, it saved me some.
Still Working Away Here
214 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
So here it is — almost the end of the month — and I’m still working away. I’ve FINALLY finished cutting it all out. I had great momentum last week — and then I had a week of Thanksgiving and other things to attend to.
Today I came back into the studio and added the background. This always takes longer than I think it will. Rather than a whole piece, I went with a small range of yellows. Since the bottom of the piece is so grounded in cool colors, I knew I had to use a hot color to spark interest. The piece just shouted that it wanted yellow. It is interesting to me to see how I have come to understand the color wheel working through fabrics.
Can you see her squinting into the sun?
Now I go into the stitching. It looks done — but there is actually quite a lot left to do. I have three weeks until Christmas break. I should have enough time to finish the applique and quilting — at a dead run — but I’m planning to get it done and start something new in January.
Forget What Lies Behind You
214 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
“Forget what lies behind you.” Forgetting is an active verb — it requires purposeful action to NOT do something, even when provoked.
The people of Rwandan have to face it every day. Every day, they walk into other people that created a nightmare for them. I am awed at their ability to find redemption and move on. It takes a strong strength of spirit — and a partnership. I wish everyone were as willing to step forward to work on relationship together.
My latest piece is a little larger than the current size that I’ve been working on since I’ll be working on it over November and December with several weeks of down time in between to accommodate the holidays. I picked as inspiration a picture of a Bukonyan elder leaning on her walking stick (with permission by Karen Houghton/Kim Jackson). So often, the focus of a portrait is a person’s mouth or their eyes — but in this one, all of her personality is centered around her hands. I haven’t worked on hands before and found them as engaging as a face.
Although the light is hitting the front of her face, she is looking away from the camera — and there is no pinprick of light hitting her pupils. Even her mouth is closed.
But under her chin lies her hands, resting together. All of the primary light is hitting her top hand — so that is what you see develop first.
I spent some extra time on the wrinkles in the knuckles — just as I did with the wrinkles in the face. It’s the fine details that show age.
This is her without her hair — just her face and hands.
I have since added her hair — she has white scattered in her black hair — and a golden walking stick.
Her cloak is next. I’m still deciding what to do with that.
Celtic Woman
414 years ago
I lost my blog yesterday — an experience I don’t care to ever repeat. It was running really slow so I added a 5 star add-on called WP Tuner. After I activated it, I learned what the white screen of death is. It’s a little like the blue screen of death you see sometimes in Windows. It means that your blog has disappeared. No error messages — just nothing.
I can say that I learned a lot. I learned how to access phpMyAdmin on my hosting server and change settings in the raw code. I restored all of my database files from a backup, deactivated all of my plugins, and changed to the default theme. Still gone. I finally went back into my history files to find the WordPress page from which I had found WP Tuner — and although it had 5 stars, as I scrolled down, I found that it was considered “broken” in WP3.0. Reading on, I found some discussion that led me to the realization that this plugin had changed my wp_config.php file. I went back upstairs to my clunky PC that I keep just in case & looked at the php files on the server. There was a new wp_configPCTuner.php file (something like that) — so I erased it. There was no mention in the wp_config.php file — but the site still wasn’t working, so I uploaded the copy of the file that I had stored on the PC from my original install. Finally — it worked.
What a nasty plugin. I have to be much more careful in the future. It made me worry about putting the entire website in WP. I’ve loved WP & have wanted to move away from Dreamweaver — but Dreamweaver really saved me yesterday.
On to my original intent for posting . . .
I was scanning prints into my computer recently and found an extraordinary picture of my sister-in-law. It was taken at Christmas almost 10 years ago, and she had just received a beautiful black cloak. She has red flowing hair that is very striking against the black, and the picture of her taken in the side garden of our old house captures her personality in such a striking way.
This is the first value layer — not much to see — the white muslin that I use for a base with a few shapes in a light value.
This is the 2nd value layer — you begin to see a little more contour in her face. You’ve got her nose — her chin — suggestion of her cheeks.
Then the 3rd layer — now she really starts to come out.
This one shows the problem I was having with her eyes. She has light green eyes — but that would be lost in this picture of her. Too light and yellow on the left — too dark on the right.
This is her with her teeth and the eye color that I chose. The eyes look really strong up close — but make sense once all of the values are on the wall and you step back. The mouth was fun — this is the first time that I’ve shown the inside of the mouth — just a little peek.
Also eerie about this is that it is just the face — so at this point, knowing the family as well as I do, I can see other people in the family peeking out at me, not just my sister-in-law.
Her face is also shadowed in an interesting way. This will make more sense when the cloak is added around her face.
I started her hair with a very brash orange. The more I looked at her picture, the more I realized that I needed more of this color — and I ended up using this for value 1 & 2 in order to get enough of it. The darker colors are nice — but the bright orange is needed for the highlight. It will make more sense in a minute.
For her, a lot of the effect is the hair.
And then the cloak. The top of the cloak is the lightest as that is where the sun is hitting her. There is still a blank edge around the rim of the cloak. I had to figure out a clever way to show the braid on the edge.
I decided to use a black stripe cut on the bias that I could manually curve around her face. Most of the black stripes I found were black & white — too much contrast — but I found this homespun with black and neutral tan/taupe that seems to work fairly well. I cut it wider than what I needed — and then ironed it down as I curved it to fit the line I needed — but I just ironed it down a little on that one side. Then I went back and cut the opposite side to match the other line. I took artistic license in getting it where I wanted it to be.
In the end, I think you get that feeling of the rolled edge — and the neutral in the stripe doesn’t shout.
I also added a green background which I’ll show later. I’m working on the applique now.
Pushin’ that Bull-Dawg
415 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
I finally finished the applique on the bulldog. This is what it looks like before I quilt him. I changed his right eye a little, but I think that is the only big change. Finding good thread matches was challenging, but it isn’t very obvious unless you look at it closely — and most people view my quilts from 4 feet away or more. I did re-use a background that I’ve used previously — but it was the only thing that I really liked. It makes it look like he’s standing out on the field on a beautiful sunny day, full of excitement for the players on the field.
I have four days next week to quilt him & bind him — or put him in a frame — before I have to deliver him to the auction chair. Let’s hope I can do it.
I received the news yesterday that my quilt Duodecim will be included in Art Quilts XV: Needleplay to be shown at Visions Gallery in Chandler, AZ. The exhibit will run November 5th through January 15. From looking at the list of those juried into the show, I think it will be a phenomenal show, and I feel blessed to be included.
If you notice a few changes here & there, I have been working on my blog. I recently changed my theme to one that accepts menus, and I’m hoping to re-write my entire website into WordPress. It has been many years since I created my original website in DreamWeaver, and it has everything on it that I’ve done in the last ten or so years. I think it is time to pare it down & bring it into line with the blog so that it is all seamless. I may even write a blog post about how I do it.
Pedal to the Metal
315 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
I was asked by my husband recently to give a piece to an auction — something I don’t ordinarily consider — but for various reasons, he wore me down & I decided to make something. In deciding on something that would do well at auction, I started thinking about framing it — which I haven’t done before — but I am starting to think that there is a larger art market out there that appreciates the simplicity of hanging a piece on a nail. It has become 2nd nature for me to hang my work on a rod — but when I gave a piece to my mom last year, I started to understand the frustrations that a hanging sleeve will give to an average person.
So it is my intention to frame the piece. I’m being a little noncommittal because I want to be able to change my mind. But in making the piece, I intentionally started with a standard framing size — 20″ x 24″.
And subject matter was another issue. In the great state of Georgia, what would appeal to the masses? That was an easy question to answer — football. And the most beloved symbol of Georgia football is its bulldog, a majestic animal that would make a fine subject for a portrait.
I really sweated the fabric choices on this. The bulldog has white fur — and I could have gone white and then started adding B&W fabrics in different degrees — but the end piece would look more graphic than familiar — so I attempted <gasp> solids. Or almost solids.
Interestingly, I’ve found that I’ve started segregating beyond basic colors — I now look for shades of pink reds — and shades of orange red. I tell myself that it is more about the shade than the color — but if you have 2 different kinds of red in a piece, it makes a difference.
I started with his mouth. Why? I don’t know. I try to start with the lightest colors & move to the darker colors so that I don’t have shadowing problems. Sometimes the muse moves us in mysterious ways. The pink looks like it goes too far to the right and left — but trust me — a bulldog’s mouth opens really wide & parts of it hang out.
Then the 1st fabric for the white. After I laid it out & started the 2nd value, I realized that the 1st fabric was not right — it was casting a yellow cast that I didn’t like. I needed whites that were more blue — so I tore off what I had done of the 2nd & re-did the 1st — and then re-applied the 2nd.
It looks a lot better — although I don’t know if the camera catches the subtle shift in color. No matter — trust me, it wasn’t working. The 2nd layer adds a lot of character.
This is after the 3rd & 4th values. I really wondered if this was going to work after the 3rd value — but the 4th helps pull it together I think.
Adding the different shades of black add the spark to his eyes and nose.
There is still a lot to do — I have to be done by the end of the month. I’m considering making a piece a month this year in about this size. That way, I could make 8 instead of 3 or 4 larger ones — and I think that the exposure to more subjects is what I need right now.
We the People
415 years ago
In the past year, I’ve started to show my age. I’ve spent time looking through photo albums, archiving pictures in digital form, researching relatives (with the help of DAR, I’ve gone all the way back to the late 1700’s) — I’ve wanted to know where I came from. And part of that journey has been looking at how my lovely country developed — why our founding fathers here in America made the decisions that they did. Probably my best exposure to the Constitution, however, was provided by School House Rock.
So I’ve been considering this lovely document — hand written by our founding fathers — created at a time in which typewriters had not yet been invented. There is some beautiful calligraphy for the titles, and the majority of it was transcribed by James Madison’s cursive script. Cursive is a personal thing, unique to each individual. I’ve heard that there are some schools that have stopped teaching it — a shame. It is a beautiful and artistic expression.
All of this finally came out this past week — my kids went back to school and I had time on my hands. I also have the unique opportunity to include the piece in my local group’s art show — but I have to work fast. I only have a couple of weeks.
So this is where my muse led me — running at an insane pace.
I took white muslin & dyed it overnight in coffee. Coffee gives such a wonderfully rich color — very antique. I did not completely wash it out — I wanted to be able to add water stains to the piece to add to its age & make it look like old parchment.
Did I mention it was a lot of muslin? One & 2/3 yards. I thought that that would do it. Oh naive. For some reason, I thought that I could fit the Constitution on this. Well I was wrong. But I did fill it up with as much as I could. I tried to follow the calligraphy, but the rest is my own dear cursive hand writing. Did I mention that my hand cramped a lot? I forgot about that part of hand writing. But I kept going. I got through Article II Section 1 (although the final piece won’t show all of Section 1 because of how it’s cut out).
In copying it, I was struck by the number of capitals, the most wonderful of which is People. We the People — we are capitalized, just like President. We are important and have a soul in this document. It felt so beautiful and empowering. It is a document for us — We the People.
I decided to use Peltex for the inside — which was challenging. This is a large piece and required a lot of Peltex. It was my intention to quilt it after I sandwiched it with Peltex — what was I thinking? My domestic machine was no match for this. No — I would have to cut it up before I could begin to quilt it.
And did I say something about cutting this up? I’ve developed an interest in deconstruction — a fact that disturbs my DH — but I find fascinating. The Constitution is a living document that we have been amending — or deconstructing & rebuilding — practically since it was written. I wanted to make this hard edged piece fluid.
I started by marking my pieces on the top — I was lucky & found the perfect circle to use that would cover the entire width in exact repeats — and then I added tape numbers — because once this is cut up, putting it back together could be tricky. The circle seemed the perfect shape to me.
It was so large, I had to cut half of it on the floor — and I’m very sore today. You wouldn’t think that crouching on the floor would use muscles that you don’t usually use — but it does. After I was half done — it was small enough, thankfully, that I could finish at a table.
My first thought was to only use the circles, but now, looking at it on the design wall, I think I’m going to keep the diamond intersections.
After I took this picture, I sprayed it carefully to create more water marks.
My next move will be quilting each piece — and then the difficult task of edging each piece with thread — and when that is done, I have to think about hanging it. I’m still mulling it over in my mind — but the circles will hang horizontally, each from the piece above it — and the diamonds in a similar way but at an offset to the circles. I may use thread, I may use chain — I may add tea bags since they symbolize the freedom that we grasped by turning away from British imperialism.
It’s a work in progress — not like my illustrative work — but something the Muse commanded me to make.
Studio Time
515 years ago
I had to remind myself today to hold studio time more sacred. I realized that I have just over a month to complete my current quilt if I want to enter it into Houston. So I ignored the ringing phone and did everything I could to finish cutting out the appliques on my latest quilt. I had to re-do the turban — I really didn’t like the fabrics in my 1st effort & the actual drawing in the turban needed some tweaking.
Even though the light is at the back of her head, all of that white just looked wrong so I switched it with my medium tone used on the front of the forehead to add balance. I then added some deeper tones in the folds and ignored the final value I had in the drawing — I didn’t have enough in my new fabric range & I decided it looked fine without it.
I am so pleased with it. Strange that the turban would be the part that gave me the most trouble.
Tomorrow I will begin covering the raw edges with an applique stitch — I use a narrow zig-zag. That will take me about a week — although it will be next week until I finish it as I have company coming tomorrow for a few days. Nose to the grindstone.
Rwandan Redemption
115 years ago
One of the great things about being in the Anglican church in Atlanta is that we fall under the diocese of Rwanda. Years ago, when our priest went to Rwanda to talk to our bishop, he asked him if there was anything that he could do in return to help Rwanda in exchange for all of the blessings that they had provided him — and the bishop answered him simply “sell our coffee”.
So Jonathan started Land of a Thousand Hills which owns three coffee houses here in Atlanta & sells coffee directly to many churches in our area. It is a beautiful opportunity to provide the people of Rwanda a living wage while giving others the gift of their wonderful coffee.
Jonathan returns to Rwanda about once a year and as I was sitting in church a couple of weeks ago, he started talking about the friendship between a man and a woman — one Hutu, one Tutsi — who were personally linked through murder during the genocide of the 90’s but who now accept redemption and forgiveness — and work together in the coffee fields.
That is an amazing thing — to ask for & receive — or to give — forgiveness for murdering family members — all through the grace of God.
I had been struggling with my next project — which sounds like a meagre anxiety in comparison to people familiar with machetes — but it became clear to me that it was important that I make a portrait that would capture this beautiful story. Jonathan (and his coordinator Karen) were kind enough to allow me to choose one of the many pictures that he has taken on his trips. After looking through many, there was one of a woman bending over the grates, sorting coffee beans, with a relaxed and happy expression on her face — a light in her eyes.
I am Caucasian and all I’ve done in the past have been Caucasians so I was nervous about working on an African portrait — I knew that the palette would have to be different — but I surprised myself. I walked into the fabric store & came out with a wonderful value range. It was strangely easier — but I do think that my eyes are becoming more trained to see value over color. The more you do it, the more you can see it.
This is what she looks like with the 1st 3 values. You can’t see the outline of her face well with only the 1st 2 so I thought I would skip to the 3rd. I was really surprised at what I chose for the 3rd value. It is a dark brown with taupe circles with green, red, black, & blue in the centers. It doesn’t seem that it would work — but the print is small enough in relation to the overall piece that it does.
This is with the 4th value — you can really see her coming to life.
This is with all of the values — and her eyes. I will admit I had an uh-oh moment — I had 6 values & realized I needed 7 but all ready had 5 fused. The last value is a jet black — so I used a black for the 6th that has a pattern on it. Although the effect is subtle — and you probably can’t see it here — it works OK in the piece. I could have technically eliminated one of them & just used the jet black — there is only one place where they are touching — but what I did works fine.
And the eyes. Most Africans have brown irises — but with the brown skin, I thought it important to use another brown altogether. I think that the more yellow brown helps her eyes pop a little more. Also, in Caucasians, I have used the face colors to make the sclera — or white part of the eye — and it’s always worked. I’ve always preferred that to just white fabric. However, with this piece, I couldn’t re-use the face fabrics for the eye — but it was easy to see that I just had to go pull the fabrics I used in previous pieces & that would work perfectly.
The mouth was another challenge. The teeth were made the same but the color around the mouth was an issue. I realized that I had to choose something that would be darker in value than the skin tone just around it. I tried browns, reds, purples — I had half my stash out of the closet. After thinking about it for a while, I decided I needed a really deep purple — which I did have to run out & get since I didn’t have any on hand. I also shortened the mouth & used the printed black for the corner of her mouth as the purple extending beyond her gumline made no sense.
I’m really pleased with how she is turning out. Next week I will work on adding her hair turban and shirt as well as a background. In the photograph, she has an orange turban & blue shirt — but I may well change it. I’ll take this last in-process picture into Photoshop & decides what looks best on her next to her skin as I have recreated it.