Summer in the Studio

Some days it’s good to just go upstairs, turn on the A/C and crank the tunes.  Today was one of those days.  On the turntable: The B52’s, Billy Idol and Aerosmith.

On the art table:

“Flower Girl” 4” x 4”, reclaimed cereal box, color photocopy of family photo, silk  flower and shell button.  I had painted the canvas last week, today I put the elements together.

While that dried (I attached the pieces using Golden Heavy Gel medium), I took this:

Added this:

And this:

The bird is from ArtChix Studios, while the circles are punched out from copies of my beaded moon piece.

I also played with another reclaimed cardboard house

The basic house shape waiting for embellishment.

The found textile I used to embellish the bottom half of the house.

Auditioning another bird (also from ArtChix Studios).

The bingo piece I chose to put in the gable.

The house is currently drying in the studio, while the cow awaits the decoration on her dress.  I haven’t yet decided whether to go with more collage images or to paint or stamp shapes using Lumiere paints.  We’ll see what inspiration hits tomorrow.

Shows, Shows and More Shows

Over the past week I’ve managed to put in some good studio time.  Some of the work has been for specific shows, while others have been play/spec.

First, the play.  I have a set of Liquitex Basics 22ml acrylics, and I’ve been practicing my painting:

Cow Bird in process.  This painting is based on my quilt of a similar cow and bird couple.  Right now I’m still building the layers of color.  I love how the table underneath is its own piece of art with all the layers of old paint on it.

Bunny Pierrot II, one of three rabbit pierrot paintings I’m planning.  This one will be on the far right.  The full piece will be 8” x 24” when finished.

I also committed to sending a shoe piece to a show at Ten Women Gallery, so I applied some of my painting practice to this piece, still in process:

I drew the shoes using a regular #2 pencil, then began layering in colors.  The fish are a silkscreen I made based on a stamp I carved several years ago.  This piece is 10” x 10”.

And finally, I mixed the media up in this piece for the Art Quilt Network Fire and Ice show at Galleria Evangelia:

 

So far it’s untitled.  It’s based on the bead drawings I did last month, and I used hand painted paper which has been screened with the fish print.  I sewed fabric onto that to fill out the image.  It measures approximately 15” x 15”.

Detail of the painted paper and fabrics.  I really like how this piece came together and want to play more with the painted paper concept.  I would love to be able to get such painterly colors and crisp images on fabric.  Maybe Jane Dunnewold’s new book Art Cloth: A Guide to Surface Design for Fabric will have some good ideas.  We do have several dry days coming up and there’s nothing like painting in the yard. :)

Tomorrow I will share images from my work for The Sketchbook Project. 

The Last Completed Artwork of 2009

Last week I shared the embroideries for my new series “Alice and Friends”, including The Queen of Hearts and The Frog Prince, both of which were in progress. 

I like to end the year on a high note, and try to wrap up at least one piece, and have another piece in process so that I can carry the energy into the new year.  With that in mind, I present the last completed artwork of 2009:

The Queen of Hearts 14 3/4” x 14 1/2” hand embroidery on hand knitted felt, backed and bordered with hand-dyed twill.  Commercial polyester felt and Crafty Chica embellishing glue  from Duncan Enterprises.

And the pieces which carried over into the new year:

The Frog Prince

Alice

I am actively working on completing The Frog Prince first.  As you can see, all that is left of the embroidery is half of the lily pad.  Then it will be up to the studio, where I will find some backing and bordering fabric.

I learned a lot between making the two pieces.  The first piece was made on a background which was a knit checkerboard.  I had left the floats between each color change, since there were only five stitches for each block.  I assumed that I wouldn’t need to wrap the yarn in between, and so made sure the floats were a little longer than normal, to account for the shrinkage which occurs when the knitted fabric shrinks in the felting process.

Overall, that idea worked, but as you can see here, there was a bit of puckering.  The hand-stitching really helped to push down the ridges, but it involved stitching a lot in some areas because the initial stitches would get lost in the gaps.

 

For The Frog Prince and Alice, I wrapped the floats every three stitches, regardless of where they fell in the color change pattern.  When I felted these pieces, both came out a lot flatter and a lot more even. 

There is still the rough surface that comes with the hand-felted surface, but the ridges from the first piece are practically non-existent.  I am fairly confident that this is due to wrapping the floats rather than the choice of yarn.  I chose to use Lana Loft for the first piece, while the second piece is made with Ella Rae Classic, and the third piece is knit in Cascade 220. 

The next piece will be a mermaid, inspired by some floss I found while searching for colors for the last three pieces, and the background of it will probably be a beautiful gray and blue colorway I found in Plymouths’ Boku yarn.  The colorwork in that base will be provided by knitting it in the entrelac technique.  I am excited to see how that turns out.

But first I’m going to finish The Frog Prince and make some more progress on Alice. 

In the words of Willy Wonka “The suspense is killing me.  I hope it doesn’t end.”