Art Every Day, January 14, 2013,
Good Morning,
Here is today's new piece and boy did I learn a lot. This process is affording me so much growth with just a little bit of work... who knew!
On this piece, I started with black batting and layered it with a collage of various values of hand dyed gray fabrics. That layer was then topped with a scattering of warm colored strips. It wasn't very interesting, but I had hopes. I began the quilting by stitching down the strips with matching thread color. Next, I loaded two threads in my machine; a pure white one and a slight cream colored one, and stitched the large swirls. It then started to feel overwhelming. But, tight stitching in the background with a medium valued gray fixed it right up. I put no stitching inside the open ended swirls which allowed them to rise to the surface with the warm "sticks" behind them and the grays in the far background.
I really love the movement and depth in this piece. I love it even more when I'm able to prove my idea.
Till tomorrow,
Heather
P.S. I'm ready this fabulous little, ditty of a book by artist/poet, Austin Kleon. It's called "Steal Like An Artist". It takes about two hours to read and is filled with all kinds of inspiration and tricks to keep you on the artistic track. Check it out!
3 comments:
I am so enjoying the blog, and the glimpses into your creative process. Very inspiring - thanks! Chris
Aaaack!!!! I have been away and I am SO behind!!!
I read through your description of this piece and identified all of the things you said you did.
Over and over you have said that quilting makes an area recede, and this piece is a superior example of that.
The swirls, having no quilting within their boundaries, indeed do float right on the top of everything! I never would have thought it possible to push the warm bars back a bit, it seems they would push to the front anyway. But they don't.
Your hand-dyes add a lot of depth too, they are so alive and don't seem flat.
This is stunning and just draws me right in.
I love this piece too. In fact it might be my favorite so far. It is so full of energy, bordering on the chaotic. But manages to hold on to reality!
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