A Little Green Witch

I'm starting to show the steps I used in the making of the art quilt shown to the right. The little green witch is the centerpiece of it, so I'll begin with her.













I had this photo of a little girl dressed up for Halloween as a green witch.  She's got a scary expression, a broom to fly on, and of course a pumpkin for her candy. 




My first step was to trace the outlines of the major features and key lines on a piece of paper.

You see that here, with some preliminary design ideas. I used the line drawing to enlarge the design to full size. The full size enlargement became my pattern for the face, hat, dress, broom, etc. 

I traced the outline of the parts on fabric and then cut the fabric pieces out. The fabric pieces were all painted to give them a three dimensional appearance. 

For the face and hands I traced the outline on to white cotton fabric and painted the skin tones. The skin tones were green this time, a first for me! Below you see the face painting in progress:

These are the Tsukeniko inks I used to create the green skin color:

The hair was also painted. I used Tsukeniko inks and Derwent Inktense pencils for the hair color. I made her hair color a little lighter than in the photograph so that it would be more visible against the black hat. 

In my next post I'll talk about the hat and dress. Thanks for visiting my blog!

Skin tone, and hair for Roy

  This piece required painting skin tone for the face and arm/hand. I painted the face, head, beard and glasses on the same single fabric piece. The arm, hand and cigar were done on a separate piece.

My preferred colors for Caucasian skin tones are yellows, browns and pink/red tones. The shadow areas are created with blues or blues mixed with reds.

Here are some in progress photos:

    Arm and hand...











and here is the face and neck.



In progress stages often aren't pretty. You just have to have faith and keep going, knowing once you get the value contrast in it will look better. Practice, practice, practice.

  This photo shows my painting palette while I was doing these pieces.


  Here is a practice piece for the glasses. I thought the reflection and eye shadows would be a little tricky, so I did a test painting first.


    The hair and beard can be seen here.  A lot of white, gray, silver and blue were used to get the look of the hair and beard.

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Mary, Matilda and Me - Face, Arms and Hands

"Mary Matilda and Me" top

I thought I'd do a post today about how I did the human skin in this art quilt. I've seen some people use purchased fabrics for skin very successfully, but I've never tried that. Whenever I've had to do skin, I've painted it on white Kona fabric using Tsukeniko Inks. I blend the inks with Aloe Vera Gel to give me control over where it goes.

Tsukeniko Inks all have a number, which is what I know them by. These are the inks I like to use for Caucasian skin tones.















The yellows, browns and red tones (53, 90, 92) are for the main skin areas, and the blues (19, 62) are for shadow areas.  I create a few different intensities and values of each.





I start by doing a line drawing on the Kona fabric of the face or hand. I use a Frixion ink pen so that the line will go away once ironed.




Then I put in lighter values of the mixed colors.




I work my way up to the darker values and blues. I try to "sneak up on the darks", as one of my painting instructors used to say. That means I try to be careful not to use darks too early in the process.



This is how the faces, arms and hands ended up on this art quilt.

Grandma lecturing one last time

Mom listening intently

Thanks for visiting my blog!