Painted Doodles

This whole cloth piece fits the theme of "Pattern" but it is too small and would require a border of a few inches.  I doodled with resist and painted with fabric paints.  I have always loved this piece of fabric, but it looks too sloppy to me now.  The paint ran and I am not sure it is up to my standards as a stand alone piece.  This one was probably painted 8 years ago,

Flinging Paint in a Rain Shower

 Most often, the fabrics I use in my art are carefully hand painted in a watercolor style, blending and controlling things to some extent.  By the time I had decided to try a grayed color palette for my Earth Stories piece, I was down to just one month from the deadline!  I had been working a full year on my other (sunset color scheme) idea.  I was waiting for the rain to stop falling so I could paint a large swatch of whole cloth outdoors on the flat driveway.  Alas, it rained for days and days.  Flat on the driveway was just not going to cut it.  Desperate, I cut a 3 yard piece of 60" wide white broadcloth and mixed up some gray, grayed purple and grayed blue Setacolor Pebeo transparent paints.  In a brief lull between rain showers, I hung the fabric on my clothesline and started pouring and brushing the paint on the fabric.  This is not my usual style at all, and there was a bit more running and dripping than I planned on, but I really did not have time to do it again. 

This last picture is a photo of the whole piece - all 100 x 60" of it!  I had no idea whether or not this was a waste of my time or not.  Lacking time or proper weather to try again, I moved ahead with the project, with a plan to try using this piece of fabric as a whole cloth foundation for what would come next......

Stymed by Sunset and Wind Turbines

Here is the giant collage on my design wall.  It barely fit and it was blindingly bright.  The deadline was just 6 weeks away and there was still quilting to be done.  I found myself unhappy with the design.  I found myself unhappy with the whole thing.  I was really having a hard time getting through this piece......

72" Hand Painted Turbines

 As I moved forward and was getting near the deadline, I painted black wind turbines on the giant sunset collage.  I thought this would be the easiest way to do it.

Earth Stories 72" Sunset Collage

 I spent many days hand painting fabrics to look like sunsets. I had 10 yards or more for the project.  I ironed fusible web onto the back of the best ones, and collaged them into a 75" wide fabric collage - all fused to a single fabric so I could work with it.  Then, I began screenprinting with gold paint using my grandmother's recipes (below).

Petroglyph Canyon Collage Piece View

Well, here we are with all the black foundation fabric covered by hand dyed or hand painted, printed fabric.  My petroglyph canyon may need a little tweeking, but I am liking it so far.

Happy 4th of July to all my blog friends!

Up on the Design Wall

I have been working on this piece flat on my ironing table.  It is hard to get a good read on the imagery that way - especially for something so large.  This measures about 45 x 50. So, I went ahead and fused the pieces I had in place using my iron and then I moved it to the design wall to get a better look at it.  There are spaces yet to fill in, but I think I am heading in the right direction.  The black is the foundation and it should all disappear.

Adding Sky Fabrics

Now that the "rocks" are all in place, I have moved to the top and am adding sky fabrics in muted blues, grays and purples.  Again, I am working with strips and filling in.  This is a new twist on some of my previous working styles.

Starting the Fused Collage Inspired by Petroglyph Canyon

I am working on my Teflon covered ironing table.  The chosen fabrics have been cut in very long tapered strips and are being fused to black cotton lawn, which is very light weight.  These are all fabrics I had on hand and most already had Mistyfuse on the backside.  I did print some petroglyphs on some of these fabrics in purple ink, but the other fabrics came right out of the leftover fabric stash.  I am already loving it!

Painting on Fabric

 The next step would be printing.  Here is a shot of my paint palette (a disposable plastic plate) with puddles of three colors I chose for the screen printing.

I tap the sponge brush into the paint to blend the colors just a bit.

Painted and Printed Sky Fabric

Here is the background fabric - I started with white.  Painted it by hand, block printed and screen printed it to create this unique fabric that contains direct quotes from the ProCon.org website information on the pros and cons of Alternative Energy vs Fossil Fuels.

Hand Painted and Hand Printed Cotton

 This piece of hand painted / hand printed cotton measures 60" x 3 yards.  (I can't get the whole thing on my design wall so the photo doesn't show the whole thing).  A closer detail is shown below.

I feel like this is a bit darker than I might have wanted it to be.....however, I do plan to use white for the next layer of printing.  That should change things significantly.

Back to the Studio

 Well, based on what I see on the work table - this is the effect I am going for.  I look forward to putting it back up on the design wall when the paint is dry.  And I did not drip any paint!

Painting Inside the Lines

 I put some black fabric paint on a plastic plate and used a paintbrush to fill in between the lines I drew from the overhead transparency.

Eath Stories - Back in the Studio

 I am back in the studio, working on a piece for a SAQA exhibition called "Earth Stories".  The idea of the exhibition is that the pieces will depict some organization or group or event that is bringing benefit to our planet.  We are required to identify an organization, and mine is ProCon.org.  This online forum offers pro and con arguments for controversial social, cultural, and economic issues from reputable sources. 

 

We are being asked to create something to fill a space 72" square and I plan to make a single very large piece.  To do that, I painted many pieces of sunset sky fabrics, fused the backs with Mistyfuse and created a fused collage that is 75" wide.  The piece is eye popping, and had me sort of stymied.  

But there is a deadline, so I created these Thermofax screens from text I lifted off the ProCon.org website regarding the controversy surrounding alternative fuels vs fossil fuels.  This is a very relevant subject for me, since I live in Montana where coal and oil are being pulled out of the ground every day.  There are also a lot of alternative approaches to creating energy.   Water and wind are being used for electricity, as well.  All of these sources of energy have environmental impact.  I am trying to create something that is striking in both the appearance as well as the message.

Screenprinting the Sunset

 I decided to try screenprinting with metallic gold paint.   The prints are converted from my grandmother's recipes that were written in an old ledger book for the Road District.  The picture above shows the full piece (which is about 30" wide).  The images below are details.

A Smaller Sunset Collage

I have put together this smaller collage of fused hand painted sunset fabrics.  It is about 30" wide and I feel I can experiment with this smaller size as I figure out what to do with my much larger piece (which must be 72" wide).    A different fabric will go on the bottom - this is to be a landscape - so it will be the ground.

Collage of Sunset Fabrics

After painting a lot of sunset fabrics, I felt like I had enough to put together a large sunset collage.  This piece is potentially for a special exhibition - the size needs to be 72" wide x 72" high.  It would be very difficult to paint a single sunset fabric that size - furthermore - it might not be very interesting.  Plus - it would not be in my style, really.  So here we have my collage. ..... It is up on the design wall and it is so vibrant as to be quite overwhelming!  I do have plans to overprint this with multiple layers......but I am sort of stymied at this point.  I know what printing processes I wish to do, but am wavering on the colors.  I usually make a trial piece to troubleshoot, so that will be my plan with this one, also.

Blue Painted fabric

 This piece of painted blue fabric was gently scrunched after painting - creating those wrinkle lines across the surface.  The plan for this piece is to cut it up for a collage.

I folded this fabric in half when I painted it to get it to fit on my work surface.  The paint soaked through to the bottom layer just fine.  Lately, I have been layering fabrics for the painting process - especially when I am also painting something sheer like silk organza or cheesecloth.

Painting a Sky

Here's a painted sky that is still wet on my work table.