Crazy for Fiber | The artful creations of a high fiber Grandma with occasional political rants

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Master Class Update

January 19th, 2015

I decided to do the one color value study of the leave photo. Here is the mockup from the sketch. I need to get it quilted and finished by the end of the month. It is 12 x 12 so I think that is doable.

I tried to work on this here at home in my multi-purpose room, but I have way too many things going on here and I work better at a higher table like I have at the studio. I have been avoiding the studio. It is such a mess, but I went there today and I got this done and I feel energized and ready to clean house, er studio, and get on with my creative life.

I pulled out these sort of icky yellow green pieces, but truth be told, I love working with colors like these.

The looked like a good enough value change to do what I wanted to do.

I started cutting leaves and laying out my piece.

Here is the mock up that I sent to EB.

I felt the lightest value was to light and was not working in the composition. EB agreed. I was following the values in the sketch. I used some color pencil on the light yellow/green and used it in smaller pieces in the central area of the piece. That is what is up at the top of the page.

I spent the week-end doing SDA work and living on Aleve. I was in serious pain after working on the studio at Trinity! I did get my hair cut and the color freshened on Friday and also saw the eye Dr. I went in because I lost my red glasses in San Francisco and needed to get new ones. I am glad I went in as I had a big change in my prescription. I have been having headaches and irritated eyes of late. Here are the two new frames I selected.

Can’t wait for them to come in next week.

Posted in My creations, My hair, Stuff I Buy, workshop | 1 Comment »

This and That

January 16th, 2015

This week at the drawing class, we reviewed drawing 3-D objects and then focused on drawing the human figure. The head that I have here is the last drawing of the night and I did not have time to “flesh”it out.We started with a sphere with a protuberance for the chin. We learned how to divide up the sphere to get the correct location for eyes, nose and mouth. I only took a couple of photos because I was busy doing the drawing.

Here us the body in movement that I did. I quite love this. If you look closely, you can see how it was made up from a series of cylinders that were then fleshed out to become this lovely dancer.

Not sure how I will use this newly gained knowledge, but I am enjoying the process. It is the journey, not the destination, right?

Yesterday, I went back to Trinity to help clean and organize the studio with the kiln. Half of the space was taken away for a nursery bathroom. We are not going to have much space to have classes there, but at least we hope to get the kiln up and working and have a space for doing wet work for a few folks. I am going to use the space to create the large pieces of fabric for my solo show.

I have a load of stuff to donate to SCRAP today. We found this antique printing press for which we would like to find a new home.

I found a better photo online:

It is a big heavy thing. If you are in the Portland area and would like to take this off our hands, let me know.

Posted in Drawing, My creations | Comments Off on This and That

The 100 Fundraiser to Fight Cancer

January 13th, 2015

I have been remiss at posting my contribution to Virginia Spiegel’s 100 Fundraiser to Fight cancer. I am going to donate my obsessively stitched Fiesta piece. It just arrived back from Interweave where it was photographed for the current issue of Quilting Arts Magazine.

It is mounted on a gallery wrapped frame and is 12 x 12.

The fundraiser happens on February 14th. Artwork by 100 artists will be randomly distributed to those who make a $100 contribution to the American Cancer Society – we hope to have a total donation of $10,000 in one day. Here is a link to the website. These are all accomplished fiber artists and so the art will be awesome. You can see a pinterest board of donated work, here.

Posted in FAFC, Inspiration, Quilting Friends | 1 Comment »

Master Class with Elizabeth Barton

January 10th, 2015

Regular readers of my blog may remember that I started a year long master class with Elizabeth Barton last year. Then, I had to drop out because the selling, buying and moving house took over my life. She said I could pick it up again this year so, I am giving it a whirl. Our first assignment was to make value sketches of 3 photos. Here is the sketch for the wind turbines photo. I really like this and want to do a piece with turbines. So this sketch will come in handy.

This is a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge that I took from Land’s End, near the Cliff House.

And here is the sketch. EB thinks this would be better as a painting because of the expansive sky and water. I have other bridge photos and I think I will try cropping in on just a portion of the bridge for a later work.

This is a photo that I took this fall and I pushed the colors in photoshop and loved the composition.

Here is my sketch. It is quite successful for a value study and I think it is the one I will work up in fabric.

I have been working away on the kid quilts when I get a chance. I really like the green sashing on Lisa’s fabric.

I am managing all my projects fairly well. I even got several rows of knitting done last night. My goal is to embrace my busy life and celebrate that at my age, I am healthy and able to do so many things.

Posted in Inspiration, My creations, workshop | Comments Off on Master Class with Elizabeth Barton

Using Geometry to Draw

January 8th, 2015

I started the month long drawing class at Trinity last night. Randall, our teacher, is a classically trained oil painter. He is teaching us to draw in the old classical method used back in the Renaissance. It went out favor in the early 1900’s , I think. I took a drawing course at Cornell and it was not this method, more the contour method, I think.

Randall started us out drawing basic geometric shapes and then turning them in to 3-D shapes. I was a bit perplexed at this point. OK – all you artists who have gone to art school are probably thinking how naive is she!

Then, he showed us how to look at animals and human bodies and see geometry. We began by drawing cubes which we turned into faces. We did not spend a lot of time on each drawing – he kept moving us forward.

We moved on to drawing dogs. We used spheres and cones.

Then, we were given photos of dogs and piece of tracing paper. We traced the geometric shapes from the dog and then drew those on our drawing paper and with the charcoal added details to create a dog that was supposed to look like the photo. I really love the dog that I drew.