Bonsai - Fabric Selection

And now we move on to the fabric palette for this art quilt:

I have been collecting silk fabrics for some time and thought this piece had an elegant look to it that would suit the use of silks perfectly. I used the orange background fabric and my watercolor painting as a guide to help me select. The two most important features in the painting are the tree trunk and the plant foliage. The tree trunk needed to contrast well with the background, and I had a vanilla colored raw silk fabric that seemed perfect for it.

I didn't want to use fabrics for the foliage, but instead I wanted to use a mass of stitched threads and yarns. I will talk more about that in a future post, but for the purpose of selecting fabrics I knew I wanted this mass to be blue/green primarily.

The pot fabric needed to coordinate with the foliage, so I chose a Japanese blue green print that I had picked up at Road to California a couple years ago. I had another raw silk in a light value blue-green that I used for the lip of the pot.  

I am so glad to use the Japanese fabrics in my stash for this quilt. It obviously makes sense given the Bonsai subject matter, but that’s not the main reason. There is a vendor at Road that carries Japanese fabrics and I have been attracted to them for a long time. Each year I buy some. They are a little pricey, which is fine if you use them. But for a few years I was just buying them and putting them in my stash. Last year I decided I wasn’t going to buy more until I used some of what I had. So here I am, using some of it. That justifies my past purchases and the ones I am sure to make at next year’s Road to California show. A win all around!

The table fabrics were also from my stash. I had some dark reddish brown prints that seemed to work perfectly with the orange background and blue-greens.

An entirely stash made project. That’s a good feeling!

Here are all the fabrics together:

My next post will be about the tree trunk.  Thanks for visiting my blog! 

Bonsai - Background Fabric

Bonsai

This is the background fabric that I used for my Bonsai:

background fabric

It was painted at a workshop with Teresa Shippy. Teresa conducts workshops each summer on tin tile fabric painting. She owns several tin tiles. These are the pretty tiles that are found on ceilings of some very beautiful buildings. The impression on the tin tiles is painted on to the fabric. To do the painting, you lays the tiles flat, then spread your fabric on it. Wet the fabric, apply paint and let dry. Once it is dry you then apply additional paint using a dry brush technique. The dry brush paint adheres to just the raised area of the tin tile, accentuating the impression on the fabric.

If you want to attend one of Teresa’s workshops check out her website - Teresa Shippy website  They are a great time and good value. You will come away with several fun backgrounds for art quilts.  I highly recommend them.

The process described above is what I did here using orange as my primary paint. The orange looks brown here, but trust me, its orange.  After the tin tile impression dried, I splattered on yellow paint using a Jackson Pollack technique -  fling it!  I love the look of this piece, especially the lost and found parts where the impression comes and goes.

tin tile impression

Once the background fabric was chosen it was time to transfer the image to it.  I traced the painting I had done and enlarged it.

tracing

Then I laid the orange fabric on my enlarged drawing and used a Frixion pen to mark the location of the key features. The Frixion pen erases with a hot iron, so its safe to use it without worry that the marks will show up later

enlarged drawing

 In my next post I will talk about the fabric palette that I chose for this art quilt. Thanks for visiting my blog!

Bonsai in Fiber

This is a photo of a framed watercolor painting that I did several years ago. I painted this from a photograph of a bonsai plant at the Getty Museum in LA. It was a large, very old bonsai and it looked incredibly stately in that setting.

I always wanted to do this as a fiber art piece, and now I have. Here is the fiber art version of this bonsai:

This fiber art piece is on display in Temecula as part of the Textures show at the Merc Gallery. The Merc is located at 42051 Main Street, and the phone number is 866-653-8696.  The Textures show be on display until November 2nd.  I'm going to describe the making of this quilt on my blog next. And I hope you have a chance to catch the Textures show before it closes. 

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Moon Shadows - Using Derwent Intense Pencils

As I have described before on this blog, I used oil paint sticks for the majority of the painting on this piece. But, for the owl and the rabbits I used a white Derwent Inktense pencil. These are my pencils.

I switched to the Inktense pencil because I thought the large size of the oil paint stick would not fill the smaller area that the owl and rabbit shapes took up. The pencil point also gave me more control for the tighter curves and crevices on these animals.

To apply the Inktense pencil I poured a small amount of liquid painting medium on a dish, swirled the pencil in the medium and then stroked the pencil on the fabric. The medium I used is shown here:

I stroked in the direction that the moonlight illuminate the area of the animal to give it shape. I added more of the white pencil to those areas that are closer to the moon or that had more girth. Here is a photo of me applying the pencil:  

I let the pencil/paint dry and then pressed the area to set it.

It’s was as simple as that!

 Here are finished animals. Thanks for visiting my blog!

SAQA Poway Show Reminder

I hope you will be able to see the Southern California SAQA member show, "Shades of Passion".  I  have two of my city-scapes in this show, "A Slice of the OC" and "It was a Cold and Stormy Night".

This exhibit runs October 2 -31.  There is an artist's reception on Friday, October 10, from 5 to 8 pm.  The show location information is listed below the postcard. I hope to see you there.

Poway Center for the Performing Arts

15498 Espola Road

Poway, CA 92064

858-668-4693

Moon Shadows – A few more oil paint stick tips!

Moon Shadows

My last post talked about applying the oil paint stick to this art quilt. Today I’m going to give a couple more tips about this process.

Preventing oil paint from getting where you don’t want it to be:

I like to keep a shallow plastic container to rest my oil sticks in while in use. I place the business end into the bottom of the container. This prevents the bar from rolling around and getting paint on other things.

shallow plastic container

As mentioned in my last post, after removing the skin, I put the scrapings into a trash can right away to prevent them from falling onto the carpet (it’s happened) or getting flecks all over.

Protective gloves:

I try to use gloves when applying paint stick to keep my hands clean. I’m not always good about this, but it does help.

gloves

Storage of Paint Sticks:

Before storing the paint stick I wrap it in plastic wrap,

plastic wrap

zip lock bag

After wrapping them I place them in a zip lock plastic bag. This helps prevent excessive drying out.

Clean up brushes:

I use Murphy’s Oil Soap to clean up my brushes. I always keep a 50% water, 50% Murphy’s Oil Soap solution handy in a small plastic bottle. I squirt a bit in a coffee mug and place the brush in the solution for a couple hours.

clean up brushes

Then I wipe the brush clean with a soft dry cloth or paper towel. The amount in the coffee mug is just enough to cover the hairs on the brush. I don’t like to soak more of the brush because it degrades the ferrule area and the brush falls apart faster. It can also cause the wood in the brush to expand.

brush soaking

And that’s it for today. Next post will talk about Derwent Inktense Pencils, which I also used on this piece. 

Thanks for visiting my blog!