When Is It Time To Move On?

     Do you ever get to a point when you are creating art and get stuck? I was working on my series "Transformations" and wanted to create at least two more large works and several more small collages. I dyed some fabrics for backgrounds and started to collect some photographs to use for imagery. But, I couldn't decide on the right colors or images. I tried sketching, painting, and auditioning digital attempts at compositions. After a few weeks, I realized I had lost the inspiration and energy I originally had for this series. And I found myself daydreaming about another series. So I decided to declare to myself that "Transformations" was done. Perhaps, someday, I'll come back to it.
     I'm feeling very good and excited about starting a new series that I may call "Journey". Over the years of traveling that I've done, I've seen a lot of exotic and wonderful things and have become enraptured with many of the cultures I've encountered. I didn't try to create art based on my travels because I'm not excited about recreating landscapes or images of people. Instead, I want to capture moods, styles, feelings, etc. and didn't know how to do that. But my latest trip to Morocco has given me ideas. In the  abstract patterns of the rugs I could see the mountain and desert landscape. In the abstract patterns on the textiles, I could see the plants and architecture.
     So I've decided to use patterns in local textiles as way to express types of journeys we all experience. I began my exploration into this by printing a couple of exotic patterns onto gray fabric with my printer and using Misty Fuse to attach them to pages in my sketchbook. Then I started to let my imagination take me as I sketched and free-associated words and phrases. I used a mind map like this to inspire the previous series.

sketch book pages

Then I used some markers to add color. On the next pages, I'm going to try to come up with ways to use the imagery of textiles to express some of those ideas and develop them into a form I can put on fabric with dye, printing, stamping, and stitching. 

     The other evening, I started a small piece with fabrics I had leftover from dye experiments. I fused them to felt, thermofax printed over them with transparent white paint, and added some stitches just to see what effects I could get.

experiment

     So that's where I am now. In the experimental stage, which I find very fun and full of inspiration. This has helped me to know it's time for me to let "Transformations" go and begin a new journey.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art blogs. Please leave comments for the artists so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How Do You Help Your Series Along?

     When working on your series, do you ever need a push? I'm working on my fourth piece in my series for my homework in my Master Art Cloth Class due in October. One of the nicest things is that they don't have to be finished. I dyed the backgrounds and added layers on top with fabric paint with thermofax prints and stencils. We are going to critique them together and then can work on them more. They each had strict requirements, however. The first one I did had to be monochromatic. I chose blue-green and I could choose up to 4 colors in that hue. The second one I did was complimentary. I chose blue-green and red orange. The third one was analogous. Again, I stuck to blue-green, green, and blue. And for my last one, it is a value study in blue-green. I decided to stay with the same color family for all four so that I could have fewer variables to deal with and focus on design as I moved from one to the other.
     The theme for all of mine was "Cycles". I used the same design elements in each, varying the values of them to see how that affected their importance in each piece. Also, I changed how often I included some of the elements in each piece. I don't feel that I can show you any of the works at this time. Maybe when I come back from the class in October. Making a map was the last assignment in the creative summer camp I've been involved in. I'll miss it. It has been so valuable. For my map, I decided to make a mind map I made last night to help me along in designing the fourth assignment for the Art Mastery Class.

Mind map in my sketch book

     The large leaf is a thermofax print I'm using on all of the pieces. The spirals are stencils that I'm also using on all of the pieces. The topographic diagram I drew in the sketchbook is an image that I created and am using in various forms on three of the pieces to represent eddies. It was very difficult to get onto fabric in large sizes. Too large for a thermofax screen. In the end, the only way I could think of applying those thin lines, was with freezer paper stencils ironed onto the fabric piece by piece. So tedious, but it worked. I plan on hand stitching a running stitch at the end inside the topographic diagrams.  

     This mind map actually led me to new designs in my head for further work in the series. And a new color palette. So in pushing a series along, a mind map is the way to go for me, using a combination of words and imagery. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How Do You Start A Series?

     Have you ever decided to start a series of art quilts or other types of art media? I so much enjoyed making my last composition and was pleased with the result (even though I haven't yet finished it), that I've decided to try a series based on the images in it. Rather than just get going making one piece after another with those images, I decided to think about why I liked the composition so much.

The Puppeteer

     One of the reasons is that the images had deeper meaning to me. The fossil ammonite symbolizes several things. It stands for cycles, antiquity, and messages, just to name a few. And the image of the girl (besides being my dear niece) symbolizes one who is on a journey to discover, to make change, and to become changed. So I decided to focus first on the words and a good way to start my series would be to make a mind map of the words. Choose a word that is central to the theme and then start free associating words that branch off of that main word. Once I did that on a scrap piece of paper, I had the idea to make it more artistic to make it more inspiring to me.
     I got out my sketchbook and drew out a fossil ammonite in the center with a gel pen and wrote the main word with an Inktense pencil on top of it. Then I wrote out the other words in other colors with Inktense pencils. After I had that part finished, I decided to add the other image to the sketchbook page of my niece and add words that pertained to her and noticed that there is some overlap between ideas of the two images. As time goes on, I'll probably add more words and images.

mind map

     The plan is that the mind map will help me design my series and spark ideas to provide deeper meaning to each art quilt that I make in the series.
I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Are You Allowed Do Overs In Art?

     Do you ever look at your art that you made and wish you could have a do over? Sometimes I do. I posted about it here where I redid a couple of my pieces. This past week I worked over another one. When I made this piece, I liked everything about it except the monk never looked quite right to me. Originally, I struggled with choosing a color and a fabric for him. I used a color wheel to choose the color, but he always seemed to stand out too much. This week, I took the quilt to a meeting with some art friends and they agreed. They suggested to change the color of him, perhaps make him smaller, or perhaps make him sitting.

     When I got home, I decided to explore what I wanted the piece to say. I made a mind map. I wrote the title, Contemplation, in the center. Then I wrote words and phrases coming out from the center that came to my mind. These are some of them: meditation, balance, passageway, questions, answers, searching, finding, being open to hidden messages. This process was amazing to me because it made me realize that some of the elements that I had already put into the quilt were telling me a story that I didn't realize was there. All I had to do was make it more clear. Here is the quilt before and how it is now. ( I did a blog post about how I made the sitting man here.)

before

Contemplation (in final form)

I painted veins in the rocks and I couched fibers on the sun to match the patterns in the rocks. They resemble stick figures of creatures and symbolize that nature holds many answers. The patterns of the "bulls eyes" that I put into the ground and sky here and there are the answers that are traveling through the air. The gold "window" in the center symbolizes when a passageway or window opens in the mind when a person is opening up to receiving answers to questions they are seeking. 

     I also redid the shadows. Before, I had embroidered the shadows. While I still like that treatment of the shadows, I think that it didn't work on this quilt. I used Shiva paintstiks to put them on after I painstakingly removed the embroidery.  The last thing I did to modify it was to cut off the yarn edging and put on a pillowcase facing.

     Here's a close up of the sun and the rocks now.

couched with 6 strands of embroidery floss

rocks painted with "creatures"

     So now I'm much happier with Contemplation. I think it delivers its message, the composition is much better, and the symbolism is strong. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.