Cynthia St. Charles Store

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cairns V

This piece in the "Cairns" series contains rock chips collected at Earthquake Lake last summer.
I wanted to create some pieces that could be mounted on a 16 x 20" canvas.
I painted this canvas, then screen printed it to echo the printing on the art quilt.
I am going to have to do a bit more with it, as I am not satisfied with the way the canvas looks. I feel like it overpowers the art quilt. I want to do something to minimize it so the quilt is the centerpiece.
Your thoughts?

5 comments:

wlstarn said...

Maybe remove the quilt temporarily and put a layer of fine dark color netting over the canvas to tone it down without losing the designs?

Ruth said...

Thin layer of gesso painted on and then wiped down? That would tone down the background. You could add layers of glazed paint over top of the gesso so it would be less white.

Karen C Schoch said...

What do you think would accomplish this?
I think you are very brave to put this out there for others to give you feedback. Kudos.
I do like the addition of the rock chips and the way you have attached them. Very nice.

Some things to try might be:
Eliminating the pink border of the internal block. I like how you repeat the motifs from the art quilt in the center block. I am wondering secondly how you could tweak the colors or sizes of the motifs on either piece to make it "blend" more, if that is what you are looking for...
The third optionIi offer is to see each as separate pieces, just #1 and #2 in a series. Then ask yourself what do you need to add to each so that someone looking at them together sees the differences and similarities and recognizes the start of a series...
That is all i can come up with on the spur of the moment. I look forward to seeing what others say to this design challenge!

Unknown said...

I sort of agree with you about the canvas. If it were me, I might simply give it a "whitewash" effect to change the color value (which is almost identical to the quilt itself). But of course, if you want it to read darker than the textile piece, you'd go in the other direction.

Both pieces are truly wonderful, though.

Denise Aumick said...

If you don't want to whitewash the canvas you could make a glaze of watered down acrylic paint in - maybe - a warm tone since the art quilt has cool tones? I'm thinking a rich burnt umber or something similiar. The wash will push back the canvas images but they will still be visible, just veiled. Am I making sense here?