Selecting Delphinium Fabrics

fabric palette

Hi and I hope you are having a good day.

I'm still focused on my Delphinium project, and  now its time to pick the fabrics for the rest of the piece. I've got 5 pots/pitchers, background fabric and the table top that all need fabric choices.

I store my fabrics by color in plastic bins and I place them vertically so I can easily see the edge of each fabric. This way I find what I am looking for without removing a whole stack of fabric. That is the theory at least behind the plan. The reality is a bit messier, but you get the picture, I hope.

Anyway, with my color plan in mind, I pulled out my beige, yellow, and brown fabric  bin and started to rummage through it for brownish reds for the pots and pitchers. I want something that looks a bit different for each of the 5 earthenware pieces. I have a nice Cherrywood reddish brown fabric that I have been wanting to use for some time. That fabric and a couple more printed browns should work for the pots.


On to the blue and green bin for the background wall fabric. The color plan is a blueish green, but I found a piece of fabric that leans more towards green than blue that I thought looked good with the other colors. It is a strange textile that has machine embroidered designs and sequins. I think it is used for Sari's, but I loved the way it looked and have wanted to use it for some time. So, that is the background wall fabric.

The color plan had another blue green for the table top, but that didn't look so great in real life. I chose a raw silk cream color fabric instead. I will add some blue green ribbony curlicues to it to tie the whole color plan together. The foreground fabric has the curlicues in it so I plan to cut those out and "apply".

The stripe at the top is what I am planning to use for the binding. It pulls all the colors together, I think. Next step - cutting out the pots and doing some painting to them to make them look three dimensional.

Thanks for visiting my blog!




Painted Flower Bouquets

In this picture you can see the completed flower bouquets for my delphinium project. I painted them with Tsukeniko Inks and Inktense pencils. They will be placed in the clay pots that I will be making next.


So onward and upward to the clay pots! Thanks for visiting my blog!


painted flower bouquets

Flower Painting

 I was given a piece of hand dyed yellow fabric from Teresa Shippy and Deborah Stanley to use somewhere in my delphinium piece. I decided to use it as the background for the flowers in the pots. You see it to the left.


I drew the outline of my flowers that will go in the pots on the yellow fabric with a color pencil. I used a light peach color because I figured that it would blend with the flowers and be visible enough for me while painting.


I used Tsukeniko inks, and Setacolor paints for most of the color. I also used Inktense pencils for some of the details and darker colors. I like to mix my paints and inks with aloe vera gel because it gives me control and avoids bleeding through the fabric. Painting this way reminds me of oil painting on a canvas.


I have shown a few photos of the flowers to the left so you can see some of the detail.

Once I finish the bouquet paintings I'll show it to you. Thanks for visiting my blog!

Dephinium Color Plan

 At this stage of a project I need to figure out what my colors are going to be. I know that my flowers are yellow, so that is my starting point. One of the things I have found helpful for color selection is to be able to refer to color combinations that I know work because they are in professional publications and well respected art work. If I come across a postcard, magazine advertisements, or some other printed piece with colors on it that appeal to me, I keep it and put it in a folder.  Then I open that folder and refer to it when I am doing a new color plan for a painting or art quilt.

Above and below you see a grouping of postcards, fabric, magazine ads and articles, etc., all with a similar color combination. Those references all have a yellow that I like with warm sienna's, and blues. Those are the colors I want to use for this piece.

 

 

 

And below you see my sketch painted with those colors that I will use as my guide for my painting. I will have this up on my wall to use as a reference and have it handy when I am selecting fabrics.

Delphinium Art Quilt Initial Planning

 As I mentioned before, I am making an art quilt using the theme of "Delphiniums" for a group exhibit. The group is Artistic Expressions and you can find a link to the group's blog at this site. There will be eight of us making pieces based on our individual interpretations of the theme. We have varied the colors of the flowers to give the exhibit additional interest, and I chose the color yellow. I have since learned that there really aren't true yellow delphiniums (at least I can't find photos of them), so I had to take some artistic license with my piece. Fortunately my artistic license was recently renewed so I won't be breaking any laws.

To the left you see a close up of a delphinium stem. I used this and a couple of other delphinium photos to give me some ideas for my sketch. I like to do still life's with flowers and pots, so I did a few sketches and came up with the drawing shown below for my plan.

I selected some pitchers and pots from my own collection and other sketches I have made.  Then I put flowers in a few of them, and went from there. I am a collector of pitchers, so its always nice when I can include them in a painting or art quilt. It helps to justify the next pitcher purchase, you know what I mean? Now its on to the color plan, which I'll show in the next post.

 

Thanks for visiting my blog!