Background Decisions

I decided to use this rust colored fabric for the background of "On the Boulevard".  It has nice contrast with the main subject and has a subtle design. The close up below shows the design more clearly.
















So what to do on the background? I like the storefront angles and the flags in the photo below. One option is to put that design element in the background.



Another option is to have a couple of figures in the background area. This is what that would look like:


   The figures would be done in tulle so they are subtle as compared to the main subject.

I opted for the storefront instead of the figures. I thought the figures were too dominating. I will use couching of yarns and thread painting to put in the background features. I'll show that as I get more of it done.

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Progress Update - "On the Boulevard"

  I am leaning towards "On the Boulevard" for the title of this piece.  I'll try it out here for a while and see what I think.

I have been making steady progress on  this one, and I'm going to show some details of parts of it with this post:

Bags;

There are three bags in my Mom's hand. I chose three different red fabrics for these, and used paint to add shadows and highlights.  The red is a nice contrast to the blues and grays. Here is a close up of them:












Pin:

There is a gold colored lapel pin on the jacket. I can't tell exactly what it is, but it could be a bird on a branch. It has that look to it. I initially cut out a gold fabric for this, but it looked too flat and artificial to me.




I had a scrap fabric that I had been using to remove paint from my brush. It had a lot of white and a mix of other colors. I painted that fabric with a gold paint, and then touched it up to add some variation to the color. This is what I came up with:




It seems to look more natural than the first one, so I'll use this one.

Jacket fabric:

I love this dark blue paisley for the jacket fabric. I used paint to give it shadows and highlights, but the main thing I wanted to say was, I love that fabric for this jacket!



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

My Mom - On the Boulevard!!!

My Mom loved to shop, and this is a photo of her doing that when she was young. She grew up in the Milwaukee area, so this is the shopping district in that city, I believe. I love the movement in this photo, and the clothes they wore!  I am making an art quilt based on this for my "Attitudes" series.























I've been painting the image of my Mom in this photo, and this is what I have completed as of this post:



I think it's pretty good so far. I need to darken the value on some of the face shadows, but I find it best to do that in gradual phases. As one of my painting teachers used to say, "sneak up on the darks". That way you are less likely to over do it.

I'll post more progress photos of this as I go along, and give some other details about my process.

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Finished Photo of "Fashion Plate"

This is the completed art quilt I call "Fashion Plate".

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. But I'm on to new projects, so that's enough of this one for the blog. As always, thanks for visiting my blog!

Background Construction

 Here is the little girl after the clothing and body parts have been painted. I fuse them to a piece of muslin to keep everything in the right place. I will cut the muslin away close to the fabric so that you can't see it, but here it is before trimming.

In this post I'm working on the background fabrics. I usually just start pulling various colors out and see what works well with the colors I already have. In this case, maroons and browns seemed to work well. Here is a stack I pulled to consider for this project:




Once you think you  have the right colors, then it's a matter of arranging them in a pleasing manner.
Here are some in progress photos of the background design process:




































You get the idea. It's trial and error and you keep building until you are satisfied. Thanks for visiting my blog!