My Red Man Quilt was at the SAQA show in Little Rock and the quilters had the opportunity to have their quilts critiqued by this wonderful artist (whose name I forget but will add to this blog once I look it up). One of her comments about the quilt was that I should make it larger so that it would be more of a "presence". I agree with the comment and decided to try it with this quilt.
The Red Man face was 18 inches tall - so initially I made this drawing 1/2 again as large or 27 inches tall. Math logic is NOT one of my best skills. When I printed out the face at 27 inches it was ENORMOUS. More than I wanted to try. So I adjusted the size to 23 inches tall.
This is a picture of the initial drawing with the values indicated.
The next step is to select the fabric. This entire portrait is from one single yard of beautiful hand dyed fabric that my good friend Jan made.
Each small piece of the puzzle that makes the face is selected using a process designed by Esterita Austin (thanks for the great class Teri!). Complicated to explain but if you stay organized it is do-able.
This photo shows all of the pieces pinned to the paper pattern. The next step will fuse the pieces to a piece of black fabric.
This is the really scary part of the process for me. You can tell that this is a face but none of the real detail is there yet. That is all added with paint. I am going to try to use transparent Set-A-Color paint this time instead of opaque. I am curious to see how it works.
When I looked at the photo above, the dark green section at the bottom of the chin looked a bit too dark to me. I am learning that if you are needing to check the values in a piece of art, it is helpful to take a black and white photo and then look at it on the computer.
So I did just that. And I do think the piece on the chin is too dark. I will try a more medium tone tomorrow and see if it works better.
Watch for a photo! barbara
No comments:
Post a Comment