home
about the artist
gallery
blog
links
contact

Archive for the ‘Finishing touches’ Category

Better Art by Design

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I know I promised to post more of my work from Liz’s class – Better Art by Design. I have a class on Church History on Monday nights so I have heavy duty homework and the class to attend. We got home at 9, and I decided to watch “On Becoming Jane” instead of blogging. It was an OK movie. It took some time to capture my interest.

Without further ado, here is some of my work from week 5. The themes were rhythm, repetition and gradation. For this week, we started working in a larger format. The previous exercises were typically done on a 4 X 6 card.

The first assignment was to create 2 compositions to show rhythm using vertical and horizontal lines. I decided to use the same fabrics for both.

Here is the horizontal:

rhythmhorizontal.jpg

And, vertical, which I had to rework – very slightly. Can you see the subtle change in where the black lines end in the center. They were lining up in the first one.

rhythmvertical.jpg

ex241-verticalrevised.jpg

In the next exercise, we were to create 2 compositions showing rhythm using music.

Here is Jazz before and after a fix:

jazz.jpg

jazz3.jpg

This is Lullaby:

lullaby.jpg

For the next two exercises, I used two pieces that I started in a class with Rayna, last spring. They have been languishing on my reserve design wall, waiting to be finished. Here they are after using what I learned in Liz’s Better Art by Design class (click to find the info about her next class).

exercise24.jpg

exercise25.jpg

In the last exercise, we were to use subtle gradations of color and value from one area to another. I have reworked this one.

26colorgradation.jpg

26revised.jpg

I have not heard back from Liz, yet, so I am not sure if I nailed this one yet. You can see more student work on Liz’s blog.

Catch-up Time

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I am just so busy that I am finding it difficult to keep up with reading blogs and responding to e-mail. I have had new responsibilities added to my SDA website admin job and there has been a learning curve and some glitches to work out. Let me just say that if you belong to SDA and you received an e-mail from a region other than the one you live in, we are working on it. The web gremlins are at work.

While I was chatting with Derry, our webmaster in London, he told me that my personal site is one of their top 5 sites for traffic. Considering the number of sites that they have designed and host, I was quite happy to hear that. Thanks to all of you who keep my site busy!!

Look what I found when I was doing some reorganizing last month:

turquoiseswweater.jpg

This is a sweater that I started a few years ago. I decided that it was not going to fit me so I stopped knitting. The body was about two-thirds done. It now will fit me – yeah! – so I am finishing it. I lost the directions, so I have to figure out how to do the sleeves. I know I need to do some decreasing.

Today, I have been working on a couple of quilts that I want to enter in the PAQA South ARTQUILTSculture exhibit. I added some of the hand-dyed cheese cloth from Kristin to tone down some of the turquoise painting. I stitched it down with variegated perle cotton.

fragmentupdate.jpg

I am mounting another quilt on stretcher bars. I also did a fix on the Moonlit Aspen piece. This is the way it was with that annoying branch at the bottom center.

indigoaspens.jpg

This is how it looks now. I still have to do some touch up stitching. Better, don’t you agree?

moonlitaspenfix.jpg

I just saw a preview of the CD catalog for the Good to be Green” show that opens next month. The quilts are all spectacular. It is going to be a very good show!!

I keep forgetting to recommend a wonderful little movie that we watched over the week-end: Sweet Land. I really loved this one. I had not heard of it, but found it on Netflix.

A shout out for my candidate of choice, Obama! Nine straight. I hope when I wake up it will be ten. It would be kind of funny if Hilary took Hawaii, his home state.

Wednesday This and That

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Let’s get this out of the way — I lost a quarter of a pound this week. To make it sound better, imagine a stick of butter gone from my butt!!

I think I have finished the latest construction piece. I chopped off some magenta and lime green from the top. This is what it looked like before:

summerdreamscomposition.jpg

And this is after I trimmed the top.

fenceconstruction.jpg

I am trying to think of a name for this. I see fences. I feel the warmth of summer sunshine. Here is a detail.

fenceconstructiondetail.jpg

Things on my to do list.

  1. Twelve X Twelve chocolate challenge – due Feb 1
  2. Aspen quilt for Kristin
  3. Collage quilt of Japanese textiles — a commission
  4. Art cloth for the Jane Dunnewold project

Tomorrow is STASH at Beth’s house. Fun with good friends. Now, I am off to watch Project Runway.

B is For Binding

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

I don’t usually put bindings on my quilts. Abstract paintings don’t have bindings and since that is the look I am going for, I usually do an envelope finish, a facing, or a satin stitched edge. The current quilt was going to be compromised if I took too much off the edge to do a facing so I have decided to do a fused binding, using matching fabric for each section. After all the bindings are fused I will do some stitching to make them look more a part of the design.

constructionbinding.jpg

When I was looking at photos of the quilt tonight, I decided that I need to trim away some of the edges. I had too much of the magenta in the upper left hand side of the quilt so I will cut away some and shorten the lime green. I always find that looking at a quilt on the computer screen helps me to see how I need to work on the scale of elements.

Tonight, Terry and I went to our High Fiber Diet meeting. We received the sad news that we will not have our annual show at the Japanese Garden this year. This was the major activity for this group so it will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Thanks to Karoda, I found the Fiber Artists for Obama group. If you are interested, go to the Obama for President site and click on Join a Group. If you put fiber artists in the search box, you will find the group. There are currently 37 members. Come and be an Obama Mama with me.