Living This Creative Life

I have two favorite quotes. The first one is by Emile Zola, "If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I would tell you that I came to live out loud". I don't know who the second one is by, but it goes like this, "If you're not living on the edge then you might as well jump". Both of these sentiments sum up my personal philosophy of this experience we call life on earth. Enjoy!

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Art Every Day, Saturday, March 23, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Snow, snow, snow.... so much snow my design class was cancelled today.  So I got to take my time on today's piece and happily made this little ditty.

It began with black batting layered with several pieces of yellow green which was in turn topped with a decorative piece of red violet with black stitching and some plain red violet.  Because both of these colors are temperature neutral and tend to sit in the mid-ground, I experimented to see how/if I could create depth. So, I quilted the red violet with a liner design in a thread that was just slightly darker than the fabric color and extended the black circles out from the black stitching on the red violet fabric to both move the eye across the surface of the piece and to help that piece of red violet along the bottom move to the surface.  My hope was that if I could make it come forward it would bring the rest of the red violet in front of the yellow green and I think I succeeded. The background is very, very heavily quilted with a minute micro-stipple. I think the depth experiment was successful.

The balance of the piece is a little questionable.  Normally we humans like to start with a bang and end with a whimper.  Meaning, we are more comfortable with heavy focal points on the upper left (mostly because we English speaking people read from the left to the right) rather than on the upper right.  

I like the color combo. The sense of motion and rhythm and it was a blast to stitch.

Till tomorrow,
Heather

1 comment:

me said...

The layers of this definitely stand out. This always fascinates me. I KNOW this is a relatively flat piece and yet I can see INTO it.

The small quilting in the yellow green really sits it firmly on the black visually, and the batting provides a solid frame to hold it all in. Using heavy black quilting for the ring chains and the beautiful flower creates this bold sense of unity. I love how it moves my eye around- and that there is so much variety to look at.

I think only black could have done that job. Both of the colors might be temperature neutral but there is nothing else neutral about them! They are bright and gorgeous and they both speak up loud!

The linear quilting in all of the red violet really suits the shapes while the small, more winding quilting in the yellow green suits the ring chain wending its way through the piece.

This is a piece that just screams joy to me. I hope that means you are feeling better today!