Can Color Challenge You?

     Have you ever mixed colors and gotten a surprise? I've been doing some color studies to learn more and to get the hues I want for my series. One of the hues I want to get with Procion MX dyes is a mustard hue. I know that they sell a dye color called mustard and it looks close to the hue I want to achieve, but I'm trying to make my colors by using the colors I already have. I'm in the mode of using what I have before I buy more. And theoretically, I should be able to get a nice mustard by mixing the right proportions of purple and yellow. I proved this with a paint study I did. I made a color wheel on watercolor paper and then started with pure yellow at the top and added purple paint little by little and painted a space at the bottom of the wheel with as neutral a color I could get with yellow and purple mixed. On another wheel, I painted purple at the top and went towards the same neutral color at the bottom. Here are the two wheels of reducing color saturation or intensity.

intensity wheels

     I used Profab opaque textile paint for these.  As you can see, I got some nice mustard colors in the top wheel. So I thought if I took Procion Sun Yellow dye (which is the same hue as the yellow paint) and Procion Grape dye (which is the same hue as the purple paint) and mixed them, I would get close to the same hues on the fabric that I got on the paper.

     As you can guess, that's not how it came out. Here are the results on cotton broadcloth.

Yellow with Grape added

The yellows turned more green as I added grape.

Grape with yellow added

The purples aren't too far off the paint samples, just lighter. Isn't it interesting how the paint samples compare to the dye samples? It's all about chemistry. How the dyes react with each other and with the fabric. On silk, it would look even different. Bottom line, I'm still working on mixing mustard. I came close with bronze dye and tangerine, but the tangerine splits out a little too much and gives orange streaks. 

     So while I'm working on that, I've started one of the pieces in the series, because I did successfully come up with the blue-gray that I wanted.  And this week brought good news. I sold my piece Inner Balance 2 to a doctor. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a fiber artist and gave him my elevator speech about art quilts and what I do. He was interested so on my second visit, I took two of my works to show him in person what an art quilt looks like. He bought one of them. What a nice surprise. 

Inner Balance 2

     The other good news is that my piece Rise was juried into SAQA's exhibit Growth. It will be in Dunedin Fine Art Center from June 9 - August 18 in Dunedin, Florida.

Rise

So I'm continuing with my color studies and creating a wealth of a dye notebook and working on paint studies, too. There is so much to learn about color and I'm finding it fascinating. I'm linking this with Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Ever See Art Quilts Honored On Television?

     There are lots of television shows that honor paintings and sculpture, but it is rare to see art quilts even mentioned, so it was a delight when I was watching the Sunday Morning Show on CBS September 4 when they featured quilt artist Susan Madden as an artist in residence in Mesa Verde National Park. Video and Article If the video doesn't play for you, you can try to scroll down to find the link on its page and click on it. Some times it played for me and sometimes it didn't. At the end of the vignettes on The Sunday Morning Show, they always show a sun created by an artist. I sent them an image of a quilted sun I made several years ago and they showed mine several times. It was a thrill to see it on National TV.

zendoodled sun

     It is for sale on my website. It is one of my early quilts that I did when I taught a workshop on how to to do zendoodling and painting on fabric for my art group. It would be a nice artwork to hang in a child's bedroom. And it led to me writing an article for Quilting Arts Magazine in their June/July 2012 Issue. It's nice to see that art quilts are expanding off the pages of magazines and onto the screens of television. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please leave a comment on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How Do You Switch From Sketch To Fabric?

     Is there a favorite way you switch from sketch to fabric? I vary in my ways. This time, I painted my sketch here first. Then I painted a set a fabrics. I put plastic over my cutting table and set out all of my paints, fabric medium, sponge brushes, dishes for mixing, tub for putting the painted fabrics, bowl for water, and put the three cats out of the studio so they wouldn't get paint on their paws because some of the paints might be toxic. I forgot something so I quickly went to get it and left the door open a crack and came back to find this.

Opus snuck in to help

After I locked him out again, I painted my background fabric. But when it dried, it was way too blue and too saturated of a blue. I loved the color, but it wasn't the color I wanted for this piece. So I decided I could either save it for the back side or for another art quilt. I painted another large piece of fabric, and it came out a little more green than I had planned, but I decided to go with it. Then I painted the other pieces. All came out as planned except that I couldn't get the large rectangular rust piece dark enough. I'm going to repaint that one.  Here are the painted fabrics.

Painted fabrics lined up

The one on the left came out lighter than intended but looked alright when first pinned up on the design wall on top of the background fabric. I even painted some whited eyelet cotton fabric thinking that might come in handy since this quilt is about wildflowers. In the layout above, I included a piece of fabric I rusted a few years ago.

     Next, I cut the fabrics as per the sketch and pinned them onto the background on the design wall and made some changes. This is what I have so far. The girl and window are digitally printed. 

in-process

     It's a little boring, but it's on its way. A main part of the design is a group of wildflowers that I want to put in the bottom right. I had thought I would machine stitch outlines of them there, but I need some good photos of some flowers to get the outlines from. I know I can always find copyright free photos online, but I prefer to use my own photos so today, I visited a wildlife refuge looking for some wildflowers to photograph and I got a nice surprise.

     I wanted to place a piece of white paper behind each plant I found for each photo so that I could isolate the lines of each plant. Then I could sketch it later from the photo and from the sketch do a stitching onto the quilt. Here's how I set up the first photo.

taking photo of wildflower

     But what I noticed was not the plant, but how great the shadow was! So for all the photos I took, I set up photos of shadows of plants.  This next one is one in particular that I love.

plant shadow

I took that photo and played with it later using the App Snapseed and got the next photo that I may use for something, maybe on this quilt somehow.

photo from App

I took about ten photos that I think I can get good outlines from so I'll play more with those tomorrow. The fabrics need more oomph, too.
     As I was deciding how to do the wildflowers I came up with all sorts of ideas. Some were very interesting and elaborate. But then, I realized I should stick to the processes that I find fun and that I'm good at so I abandoned most of the other ideas. The answer to the original question then, for me, this time, is to get the fabrics ready first, layout the design, then figure out how to add texture and alter colors to make it more interesting. All fun for me. Opus (and Andy and Rosie) are glad the painting is done so that they can be back in the studio to play with me. 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.

Distraction

I took a break from my work on a larger quilt yesterday to make a small one (8 inches x 10 inches). There is a store/gallery downtown that has some of my quilts on display for sale. It's called Funky Trunk Treasures and if you visit the link you'll see that its logo is a peacock feather. So I made this quilt for Kimberly, the owner to display in her shop.

Kimberly's Feather

It was a lot of fun to make and I finished it off by sewing some glass beads onto it. 

Today, I painted the background of my larger quilt with some textile paints. The weather was beautiful today and some migratory birds have been coming through the yard lately. I'm expecting Indigo Buntings any day now. They always visit in mid April for a few days and I don't want to miss seeing them so I set up my fabric and paints outside on our screened-in patio. One of my cats sat on the table with me and watched every move I made. He occasionally grabbed my paintbrush as I used it. Eventually, a box turtle came out of the woods and Opus, the cat, was distracted and left me to watch the turtle make its way across the yard. I was going to go on a bike ride and take my sketching supplies but it was too nice at home.