textile paintings
Posts tagged values
Cardinal Longing
110 years ago
After I finished Worry, I had no idea what my next project would be. I get so involved in one project that I don’t tend to think ahead to the next — can’t really split my focus. I concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of other things.
But when I was done, I decided to make a small piece for the SouthEast Fiber Arts Alliance (SEFAA) Square Foot Fiber Art Pin Up Show. No theme — the piece just has to be 12×12 or smaller. I don’t usually work in this small scale — but I needed a rest and working on a small piece seemed like a good way to do that.
I had seen many pictures of cardinals in the snow being posted on Facebook — and I think that this is what I had in my mind’s eye when I began — a piece of hope flying across the frozen tundra (a little melodramatic, but we’re currently iced in for the second time in a couple of weeks and this southern girl is more acclimated to sunshine than snow.)
So I searched through all my reds and picked out a decent range. I wasn’t really happy with my first value — but then, what could I do? The weather was too iffy for me to risk a trip over to Marietta to pick out fabric — so I was limited to what I had on hand.
Just as I was getting ready to iron my WonderUnder templates down, I had the funny realization that I had paid for both sides of my fabric (obvious, I know, but a fact often overlooked) — so I ironed the templates to the front — so the back would show — which was exactly the shade I needed for the first value.
This is the second value — you can begin to see the outline of the cardinal.
The third value gives you even more — although I should have added to the lighting in the room before I took my pics.
The fourth value was all I got done before I heard that the news was telling me (I had the TV on while I was ironing) that I might lose power for several days — and I realized I needed to add a few things to my pantry. It was at this point that I ran out the door with fading daylight before the roads became truly impassable the next day (and they did).
I returned to this yesterday and added values five and six — the sixth one being black. Not bad but I really miss the eye.
Again, other blurry shot. I think the ISO on the camera I was using was way down — but you can see how I built up the eye in a similar way to the eye on The White Raven. I did add a larger highlight than I usually do — this guy has a small eye and the light coming off it gave the impression of the dimension of the eyeball.
Once he was done, I added the branches. I thought about adding a bunch of detail and then decided that it was so small, it made more sense to let the fabric do the work for me — so I found a brown wood batik and fussy cut it so I roughly had highlights and shadows where I wanted them.
And finally, I added his claws. They are really similar in tone to the branch — and I decided to stay with that. I used a purple with a lot of gray in it — but they are obviously the same value as the branch. I’ll define them more with texture in the quilting stage.
The last part is to add a background. This was my first pick. It’s a really bright acid green but it makes the cardinal pop. I tried other greens from my stash — but the greens with more gray in them make the cardinal more sedate — more like it’s a common wildlife scene.
And I could try something other than green — but the color wheel shows the green is the best choice — and holding up colors — it’s the one that makes the most sense visually — even if I did originally imagine more white and gray blues.
I’m not sold on this yet. I would love it if I could go to store and see if I could find something better — or validate my choice here — but there is still too much ice on the roads. I may go ahead for something to do. Sewing is a good antidote for cabin fever.
Stress and Family
210 years ago
When I started working on this project, I needed a name for this project’s folder on my computer. In the beginning, it was Depression — since it’s based on a Depression era picture. As I worked on the mother, I began to see it has a reflection of the stress of mothers — so I changed the name of the folder to Stress Project — knowing that that wouldn’t be it’s final name. And as I get closer to Christmas and I see the insanity that is family that comes out during the holidays — this has becomes a difficult project for me to work on — much less talk about.
But — I should share my progress from last week. I had finished the mother and her son & began work on the daughter that is on the mother’s other side. This shows her neck, arm, and fingers curled up.
And her hair. I think it turned out well.
I snuggled her up to her mom. You may noticed that I’ve added some darker tones to the son’s hair. I also changed the fabric just under the mom’s hand — they were previously shirt fabrics but they were too close in tone to her skin so I just changed them to coat fabrics so you could see the back of her hand clearer.
The right hand side of the daughter is an extension that I’m creating because the photograph has something obscuring the view here (I think it’s a pole). I decided to lighten the lower shadow.
I like it better here. I also did the babies face. I don’t like how her face comes together but have decided that I’ll work on it after I’ve made her blanket. I’ll probably have the blanket wrap over the top of her head.
The blanket will extend across the bottom of the piece.
I think that I’ll continue as much as I can in the studio to try to black out the insanity of the holidays. It gives me a peace that’s hard to explain.
Mama’s Clothes
010 years ago
I have a dream to finish cutting out all this entire piece before the Christmas break. It’s ambitious but I’m putting the pedal to the metal and seeing what I can get done in the time that I have.
I started this week with her shirt. It’s hard to see hear since it’s white.
Here I’ve completed her jacket and her shirt shows up better. She’s actually hanging on my design board — that’s why the background is black. When I take a picture of this piece on the ironing board, I can’t get high enough above it to take a pick that doesn’t have some distortion. You can see some of that in the pic above.
The only issue I have is that some of darker values of the shirt are blending into her skin. The two pieces under her hand I can easily swap into jacket fabric. The lower pieces on the left will probably become lighter values.
Although it looks red in this picture, the colors are an orange red — more rust colored. I wanted the mother to have a hot color — and then the children will have cool colors. A bright red would have been too cheery — the rust conveys a more worn feeling.
Then I started on the son leaning on her left shoulder. He is turned away from the viewer so you only see the back of his neck.
I did use the same fabrics that I used for the mother. When I made Beach Guardians, the two sisters have the same fabrics. I think it gives a feeling of relationship between the two — unlike the duet piece A Walk in Twilight when I used different fabrics for the two friends.
And this is his hair. I like that he’s more blond relative to the darkness of his mother. He is, however, tucking himself into her side & behind her so I will at some point have to add some darker tone to the crown of his head where his head leans into his mother’s hair.
I was free to make his jacket any color I chose — but really, the smart thing is to let the color wheel have a say in it. Since I chose an orange red for the mother, I chose a green for her son. On her other side, her daughter will have a blue — probably more on the gray side though.
And the baby in her lap — I just don’t know at this point. Today I’ve finished the daughter’s neck, fist, and arm — but her hair will take some time.
Golden
010 years ago
As I’ve mentioned before, I was lucky enough to have two pieces in the recent Sacred Threads show in Herndon, VA — Beach Guardians and The Bowl Judgments. It’s a biannual show and I haven’t participated in about four years — so I was delighted to find that the show published a book with all of the pieces from the show. Not having the ability to see the show in person, it gave me the chance to enjoy the exhibit from home and read all of the artist’s statements with time to study them alongside the work. You can order a copy of the book here.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I received a manila envelope in the mail. Inside was this new copy of Machine Quilting Unlimited and nothing else. I don’t have a subscription (although I might have to get one now — it’s really well done) — so I was confused until I saw the little strip at the top that said “Sacred Threads 2013.” I flipped to the article for the exhibit — and Beach Guardians was one of the highlighted pieces.
I was really stunned. I have never had my work included in a magazine before. I felt like I had reached a milestone. My 15 minutes anyway.
I have not been writing much on the blog lately. Part of me thinks that to have a blog, you need to write at least weekly. Another part of me really despises blog writers that fall off subject or write about nothing just to get a post out. I try to prepare something interesting and present it in a large enough piece that you can see progress. If I just showed you one day at a time, the blog would show everything in reverse order and it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting — to me anyway.
Once I had the girls back in school in August, I started thinking about my next piece. I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I started sifting through pics I took in the Spring and came across one that I really liked of a golden retriever. She is looking over her shoulder at her owner and has such a look of love in her eyes. If I found it captivating, maybe someone else would too.
I spent about a week drafting her. I typically bring the pic into Photoshop and reduce it to values only, adding lines of separation between differing objects — like the dog from her harness — or even her eyes and her nose from her fur. Then I spend a lot of time drawing in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet pen. Not only do I clean up the light scatter, I deepen shadows, add shadows to create definition, redraw the eyes, and simplify shapes.
From there, I continue the drafting process by pulling the final pattern into PosteRazor as a BMP file & scaling it to what I wanted. In this program, I can then tile print. Then I take the puzzle pieces, cut off the margins, and tape it back together. Now my pattern is back together — but larger.
Then I outline everything with an ultra thin black Sharpie. It bleeds through to the back giving me the reverse image that I’ll need for WonderUnder templates. I’ll have to go back & re-draw the lines on paper overlap — but it’s otherwise done. And FINALLY, I place a layer of see-through vinyl over the top of the pattern, tape it down, and trace it. I can then sew the vinyl to a piece of muslin (using a teflon foot that won’t stick) to use as my guide when I fuse the pieces down — or I can work on a very large fusing sheet and tape the vinyl pattern over that.
This is the beginning showing the first & second value. The first value is almost impossible to see as it’s white like the muslin background.
The third value gives you a better idea of the face.
The fourth value shows the outline of the entire dog.
The fifth value begins to give shadows and therefore definition to shapes.
The sixth value goes into an orange. There is only so far you can go with yellow — even cream. The color that shows for this value will depend largely on what is placed next to it. In the pic, it looks a lot more orange than it actually is.
The seventh value gives more depth and tones down the orange.
I debated having an eighth value — I though about just making it black — but between yellow and orange, I had room to move into a dark brown cinnamon. There isn’t a lot of it anyway.
Now the eyes. The pic normally gives me useless information here. I’ve found it best to draw them myself. The pupils are wide — and the irises are brown but has more gray in it than the brown tones in her fur. The outline of her eyes is black. You have to have a deep contrast here to feel the depth of the eye and most dogs can easily take the rich black for that function.
The nose is an experiment — although I’m leaning towards keeping it. You would think that all the fur around the mouth would match her other fur — but it doesn’t. It’s shades of back and gray.
Seeing a full picture of her, I think the nose makes sense. The gray and the black have to work together to give the impression of a snout — which I think they do.
The open patches around her shoulder are for a harness — which I’ll work on today.
I ripped off the orange under her left eye — I found it distracting.
I’m not sure about the light gray at the bottom of the mouth — I’m still considering it.
I made the entire piece without extra around the edges — which I should have done since I put her right on the muslin. Making her this way, I should have fused her to a fusing sheet where I could detach her & place her on a background. I wasn’t thinking through it — I was too excited to get to my favorite part — the cutting! I love the meditative process of fusing the shapes, cutting them out, and layering them until I start to see recognizable shapes.
I’ll have to think around what to do to correct this.
Just the Basics
010 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
My mother is an impressionist oil painter, and when I was young and she went back to college to receive another degree in art, I remember her talking about the bias against realism in the art world. Abstract work was more highly valued — and for a very long time, I’ve disagreed with that opinion. I do like some abstract work, but I tend to be more engaged with realistic work. In fact, I’ve always felt that realism was harder to achieve than many pieces I’ve seen. That’s a huge generalization obviously — but I thought that abstract art was more about serendipitous exploration than intentional exploration.
At this point, I realize that that isn’t true — at least it isn’t true of good abstract art. It’s based on a deep understanding of color theory and how to make it work for you. I also understand why some consider it more difficult than realism. With realism, you have a point of reference from which to work. (It may not be a good point of reference, but that’s a different issue.) With abstract work, you are working entirely with theories and attempting to turn them into something engaging.
I have respect for both points of view. I work primarily in realism because that is what I like to do — but occasionally, I challenge myself to do something different — and that is what I have started here. As part of my art group’s annual exhibit, we were given playing cards to interpret. I had all ready made Jacks Are Wild — but I was given another card that I thought I could play with in a more abstract way — the six of Diamonds.
Using my color wheel, I chose six colors — starting with cyan — and then every other color around the wheel: blue, magenta, red, yellow, and green. I then picked out a light and a dark in each of these colors. Below are six 6 1/2″ squares of the dark. I know the yellow screams a little. It has a tight black pattern on it. It will make more sense when it is seen smaller and in the context of the entire piece.
Then I made six diamonds from the light values and placed them on opposite sides of the color wheel — for example, the blue background got the yellow diamond.
Of course, at this point, I know I have to make the piece longer. The challenge requires it to be 36″ long, so I decide to add squares in the light values.
They look awful blank so I decide to add a common shape — a circle — in the dark values — to place on the light colored squares. I used a round container I had in the studio for a template. It was just the right size to fill the space in the squares I had cut.
I am, by the way, appliqueing all of these shapes. I had considered piecing the diamonds onto their backgrounds — but I wasn’t going to attempt to piece a circle — so I decided I would stick with machine appliqué. This is a Wonder Under template you see below.
I have two rows of blocks. This is how they were originally laid out on the design wall, but I decided it was too predictable. I left diamonds next to diamonds and circles next to circles, but I changed the color placements so that each color wasn’t clustered with its cousins.
This was very straightforward playing with color theory. Below you can see the two strips of shapes. Not exciting enough on its own though.
I turned to my old pal deconstruction for the next part. I made a background with black, white, and a couple of grays.
Then I cut the strips of shapes into 1/2″ sections and fused them onto the background.
I’m still working on the appliqué. Even though it’s just shapes and color, does it sing? I definitely think it has a sense of movement.
I don’t know that I’ll ever work exclusively in abstract, but it’s good to dust off my skills and try something new once in a while.
Jacks Are Wild
010 years ago
I am currently working on a piece for an invitational show — my third animal portrait in a row. It’s not that I’m done making portraits of people, but I’m acknowledging the marketability of an animal piece over one of a specific person. People typically see one of my portraits and say “I’d love to have you make one of my grandchildren” — which is great, but moving people from the inspiration of a commission to the commitment of one is much more difficult than them finding inspiration in a piece you’ve already made and then committing to buying it. I’ve found that if I make a piece centered around a particular breed, everyone that has had that breed as a pet can see their cute little snuggly in it.
What I’m considering here is an antelope jackrabbit. This is a very large and muscular rabbit with huge ears. This pic shows the highlights — the beginning.
I’m using my new large pressing sheet — but it still wasn’t big enough to capture the tip of the ear — so I have taped my old pressing sheet behind it to catch the space at the top.
This pic shows the second value.
This shows the third value.
Once I cut the pieces small, I realized there wasn’t as much contrast between the second and third values as I saw in the comparison of larger pieces of fabric — but that’s ok. It happens sometimes. There isn’t enough of two or three to matter much.
The fourth value definitely shows the creature emerging.
The fifth value is a fun brown I found with creatures leaping across it — rabbits as well as deer. It’s a fun detail for someone that looks close enough to find it.
Then I finished with the sixth value of brown and then black. I completed him with an orange eyeball. This is him on my black design wall. I brightened up the pic so you could see the prints better.
He looks at home there.
Tomorrow I’ll start thinking about where he’s going to live.
Working With Color
211 years ago
by Virginia Greaves
in Design
Working with color can be very confusing — almost as difficult as working with values.
Since my last blog post, my figure was complete, but she needed a space in which to inhabit. She is holding up an iris on the back of her hand — so in adding color to the piece, I have a wonderful deep purple to add to the green in her eyes.
I also decided to pull the green down into the sliver of her shirt that is just peeking out from the towel draped around her shoulders.
And then this is where things got interesting. At this point, I had not added color to her mouth. I was ignoring that for the time being and trying to decide on a good color for the stripes in her towel to alternate with white. The actual photograph was a pink — but that didn’t seem to add to the piece for me. It seemed too close in color to purple.
According to the color wheel, if you have purple and green — then you need orange — so I went headlong into orange for the towel. I also added color to her mouth in rusty orange tones. I tried pinks and reds in the mouth and they all ended up looking like lipstick — so I went with something closer to browns.
It’s not that the orange in the towel is wrong — but it is too much. You no longer look directly into her beautiful green eyes. I kept this on my design wall for a while. It just didn’t look right to me.
So I switched to this cooler color of blue. Now you see her eyes first and the piece is in greater harmony. I still have the orange in her mouth to go with the purple and green. I think this composition of color works much better.
I did make two other adjustments. The water is a smoky blue with hints of purple so the iris melted into it. All I had to do was add a small border of a lighter value around the iris where it touched the water fabric. Now it stands out.
I also darkened the light spot on her nose just a little. It was too bright before and didn’t look natural.
Why did I choose what I did for the water and sky? I didn’t want anything overly complicated to compete with the figure and her engaging gaze so I originally planned to have just one fabric in the background. I had nothing in my stash and the only thing that I found in the fabric stores was the smoky batik. I decided that the pattern gave the impression of reflections on water and would be great. In reality, it overwhelmed the piece. I used a sky piece that I had on hand for the top part.
Strictly speaking, I should have used the rule of thirds when deciding on the horizon line, but I broke that rule. I liked it much better when the horizon line brought the viewer’s eye across to the bottom of the figure’s eye.
Her eyes are what is important in this piece, and visual cues like color and line bring up the supporting cast in the overall design.
Drafting, Drawing, Sketching, & Photoshop
111 years ago
I am always asked about how I draft a pattern. Yes — I start with a digital picture. Yes — I use the posterize tool in Photoshop. And yet — if it were that easy — everyone would be doing it. Beyond the mechanics of the process — it’s a skill. The truth of the matter, as any good photographer will tell you, is that cameras lie. The more pictures you take, you’ll begin to see why. They don’t have the ability to record things in the same way as the human eye.
So my starting point is the photograph — but making the pattern believable requires some drawing. The eyes and the mouth are always wrong. The chin is rarely defined. The dimples that create character in some people’s faces are easily obscured in the light. And Photoshop isn’t perfect either. I use the information I receive from posterizing to start a value painting, but when you posterize, you often lose details that you want to keep and you have to add those back in. This usually takes me 3-4 days.
I have a Wacom tablet — not a big one — it’s the 2nd smallest — and I pick up colors and use the electronic pen to draw in Photoshop. I have the original picture in another layer that I can use for reference.
This is my latest piece, a small girl holding up a flower on the back of her hand and looking up expectantly. The important shape here are her eyes — and I’ve exaggerated some of the detail in them for that reason.
The value painting isn’t really my pattern — but it has everything I need. I used to take my value painting, export it as a BMP, pull it into CorelDraw, and then create my drawing in CorelDraw by drawing lines around all of my closed shapes. Then I would tile print it. It looks very professional when it’s done — but it does take longer than my Sharpie method.
I still export the file from Photoshop to a BMP file — and then I pull it into PosteRazor (which is shareware). I make it the size I want it, and then tile print it. (Tile printing, by the way, is sorely lacking in Photoshop.) At that point, I have to start putting the puzzle together.
This shows 2 sheets of the bottom left that need to be joined.
First I take off the right hand side of the first sheet (starting from the left) — and using a rotary cutter and a ruler, I take off the white strip that is not part of the pattern. (I also crop the bottom a little. If this wasn’t the bottom row, I would take off the white strip of the bottom as well.) I always take off two sides — the right and the bottom — so the pieces will fit together with overlap.
Now I can take the first piece and lay it directly onto the second piece.
Once I tape it, it’s seamless. Use clear tape and keep the tape within one value if at all possible. If you cross over values, your Sharpie won’t touch the paper and the ink won’t be visible on the other side of the paper.
The trick comes in putting it all together. I used to not be very good at it and my pattern would ripple with my mistakes. Don’t worry if it does. Retape it. You probably won’t lose much of a shape. But if you cut out the overlap carefully and tape it together carefully, you’ll have a flat pattern when you’re done.
You don’t want seams to fall in complex areas like the eyes. One reason I printed this out in landscape rather than portrait was to avoid that.
Once that’s done, outline your shapes using an ultra thin Sharpie.
This has the added benefit of creating the reverse of the pattern on the back — so from one tile printed & taped pattern — I get a front (used for the vinyl overlay) and a back (used for the Wonder Under patterns).
You can see here that this works great — except for the joins where the paper comes together.
Just grab a lightbox & draw in the missing lines. If you can’t see it, you can flip the paper back.
And finally, go back and label everything with value numbers. I always number the face F1, F2, etc. and then think up other prefixes for other things. In this drawing, FL stands for flower. And then grab a highlighter and mark the lines between areas — like the face, her shirt, her hand, the flower.
And since this is a value painting, you’ll find that your value shapes won’t always stop between objects. You have to go back in and add those lines yourself. I use a pencil until I get the lines where I like them — then go back over them with a Sharpie.
And — then you’re almost done — you flip the pattern back to the value side and tape vinyl over it and trace it out. Then you’ll sew the vinyl onto white fabric (using a Teflon foot that won’t stick to the vinyl). The fabric acts as your canvas, and the vinyl overlay is your road map showing you where to fuse your shapes.
Then flip the pattern back over to the back side — where there is no value distinction other than the letters & numbers you assigned to shapes — and you’ll use this to start tracing Wonder Under shapes.
That’s a lot of work before you even begin to look at fabric — but it’s time well spent. Keep in mind that whatever you draw, you have to be willing to cut it out and sew around it. Sometimes, you can use patterned fabric that will do some of the work for you. Often I draft tiny pieces that don’t end up in the final piece. And I’m always ready with a pencil to draw out changes at the last minute if something isn’t working out. Just because it’s been inked doesn’t mean it’s written in stone. If it’s wrong, change it. Sometimes you won’t see it until you start doing it. In this particular piece, one of her eyes was clearly wrong — and I sketched out my changes with a pencil and kept moving forward.