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!

Wednesday, June 5, 2013


Art Every Day, Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Good Evening,
Here is today's piece.  I guess you can tell that I'm on a machine quilting bender.  I really enjoyed the hair that I did on my woman a few days ago so today I decided to do a tree using the same "herky jerky" stitch out.  I began with a piece of hand dye that had a folded resist on it that didn't turn out to well; the negative space was just too light so, it ended up in my pile of fabrics (yes, I usually only get the  'junky' fabrics to work with).  The fabric looked like it was just perfect for a hazy summer morning picture.  
I set the fabric on top of some green dye painted batting and selected several green and yellow green threads plus some brown for the tree trunk and horizon line and a blue green variegated for the sky.  I stitched the trunk and limbs first then did the horizon line.  I added the 'leaves' next by doing the herky jerky.  I layered on three different green threads before I was done.  I used the lightest green to add in the bush on the left and the grasses around the tree trunk. The lawn was done with a tone of yellow. 

I really like the overall hazy yet crisp feel of the piece.
Till tomorrow,
Heather

1 comment:

me said...

Ha ha ha, a machine quilting bender!

It's interesting how you didn't like this negative space and put it in your junky pile- yet it really suits this picture of a hazy summer morning :) I guess things are really all in what you are looking for.

This piece is all about the power of line and color- or maybe I should say tints, tones, and shades, because the palette looks like all of the color could be from one of the green cards of the color charts, including the brown.

Just by varying your using of line, with your herky-jerky for leaves, horizontal for sky, heavy horizontal for the horizon line, diagonal zig zag for grass, vertical and outline for the tree, and grass and bush shapes, you have drawn a very specific picture for us. And though it's quite precise in what it all represents, we can see that the lines themselves are quite simple.

Just having the tree slightly in front of the horizon line, and the air behind that gives depth and dimension to the whole thing.

This is such a great reminder that we have so much power to show great things with just a few brush strokes or pencil lines or machine stitches!