Monoprinting - First Results

This is the mainly blue monoprint that I did first. I basically just dripped turquoise and mixing blue all over the surface and took a flat scraper and moved it around. Later I filled in some yellow and a little red. It is about 30" x 60" on cotton twill.

This is a closeup of the previous piece showing a bit more detail.

This is the mostly warm color piece. I used mixing red, strong orange and some yellow but added a bit of turquoise later on. I used a foot wide tile scraper to apply the color to the monoprinting surface.

This piece and the next are just closeups of the warm colored piece which is about the same size as the first piece.

These were two very small pieces (maybe 6" x 12") where I played with using a brush to lay down some color. I added salt to the one on the right and just applied color later filling in the white areas.

The heron piece which is now called "Oh No, Not Another Heron Standing in the Reeds". This was in honor of the person on the SAQA list who was bemoaning the fact that another heron standing in reeds was not her idea of art! Well, maybe not, but I like him. The quilt blocks along the left edge are called Great Blue Heron. If you have followed my blog, he used to stand right in the middle of the piece but I decided that compositionally he was better placed closer to the edge and so I needed something on the left or it would be very boring. In the original picture that I took this from, he was standing on a fish filleting table but he does look more at home amongst the reeds.

It's Spring!

Coming up the street today, I could see that our front yard was ablaze with color from the crocus (croci?)! Warren tries to plant more each year and has since we moved in. Unfortunately a skunk ate most of last year's crop, but I am sure he will be at it again late summer. As the temps are supposed to be in the 80's this weekend, I know these will all be gone by Monday but they are at their peak of color today.

These are amongst my favorites as I love purple and orange together. Has to be a quilt in there somewhere.


And finally the beginnings of the Great Blue Heron!! Usually I piece the background first but decided to go for the bird first this time. Because the background looks kind of plain in the original photo, I have decided to do some piecing in those areas to make that negative space a little more interesting. I am calling this one something like "From a Fish's Perspective" as I am kind of looking up at him and there is some foreshortening of the neck because of this. He was sitting on a post in the original photo but will be in the water in the quilt -- ah, artistic license! I am using a lot of blues in this even though they read as grey or black as he is called the Great Blue Heron (even though he looks grey to me...).

Now I have to put this aside for a couple of days as I have homework to do for the weekend and I have cheated for half the assignment already. We were supposed to construct a series of blocks using exercises from a design book. I chose to use EQ6 and design them there instead of in cloth. (The good part of this was that I learned several new things I could do in Electric Quilt which is always a plus!) The second part of the exercises is to use specific paintings and create value studies from them. I will actually do that one in cloth (although fused instead of my usual piecing). So will have to hop to it!

What's Next...

Well, have almost finished all the updates to the lilies so now onto the next projects. As I will be on vacation some this winter, I need some projects to go along with me. I also want to get a start on the Great Blue Heron before I leave as well so this after noon was spent gathering the fabrics for that project. To the left is the original photo but I have decided he would look better with his feet in the water. It will be challenging for sure!

In addition, three days next week will be spent on the "turquoise jacket challenge" with my favorite sewing partners, Priscilla and Marcia at Marcia's wonderful studio. We can barely fit one person in each of Priscilla's and my "sewing studios" and I use that term very loosely for mine !! I did manage to clear off the floor though and all the fabric from the lilies is put away (well almost all the fabric). There is quite a pile of turquoise fabrics and "stuff" though.

I spent some time today also trying to decide which photos need to be captured in cloth as well. As I had not moved LJ's "best Africa photo" folder over from my old computer, I did that and decided to see if I could find an image that screamed out to me. I did -- it is one of my favorites from her last trip. I have always called it the lion king as it reminds me of the movie (or play). I am now really excited about getting started on it so I ordered some more tracing paper and will head over to Staples to enlarge it a bit. You can see my progression here. The above was the original shot Lisa took.

I cropped it to emphasize the faces and then "posterized" it which emphasizes the values. You probably need to double click to see this.

I then used another filter in Photoshop called pen and ink or something similar and converted it to black and white, again emphasizing the values even more. This is the picture I will get blown up so that I can begin the process of making templates from the different areas.

I LOVE Photoshop!

This is my lovely daughter Zann, her husband Justin and my beautiful granddaughter Amelia celebrating Halloween.


George decided that Cheney wasn't the only kitty to go to the top of the pole and be "king of the mountain"!

Both kitties were really curious about Warren outside blowing all the leaves from the backyard!! They were totally enthralled!

Today they are checking out their new kitty crates of course not knowing that these will be used to transport them to NC with us!