Studio Kit

and I'm feeling good!

When I left you on Friday, I had experienced a minor disaster. Having painted my initial background in way that looked good to me in terms of proportions, when done, I realized that those particular proportions wouldn't work for my intended piece.

You left some really great comments with suggestions about what to do to alleviate the mess (thank you!!!), and I'll likely put one or two in place when I go re-visit that piece. But...

unfortunately, a very specific something has to be done to fit within the parameters of the call, and though I initially thought that I would fill up that street with carriages and horses and side walks and people and perhaps some Tyler-sized dogs; I realized that the street isn't the focal point of this piece, but the subject of the secret focal point ("SFP") IS. So I need to focus on it already! :)

So I took my "take two" as a way to experiment again, this time using two disparate pieces of fabric that I've had sitting unused in my stash for several years.

They're strongly patterned and not likely to be used as I'm moving away from patterns in commercial fabrics for the most part - and these were never to my taste to begin with as they were both gifts from friends. So they seemed like excellent candidates for being painted over! ;)

Here, you can see they're still wet with gesso - but this is where the experimentation part comes in - I decided to NOT put a coating of white acrylic over it before I began painting. I know the pattern underneath is very strong, but I'm hoping *fingers crossed* that that strong pattern will provide a neat effect under the paint.

I also realized that as much as I loved the colour of the sky and the painted clouds in the original background - the colour wasn't right for the night sky I was seeking to portray - and after some thought, I realized that clouds are really only going to distract from the SFP. (Here it is still wet.)

The background needs to carry some interest, but not be soooo interesting that the viewer is distracted. Anyway - I'm hoping that the SFP will be arresting enough to keep your eye on it, but we'll just have to see!

So. I forgot to take a pic of the cobble stone background in progress, but I used the same method as I did last week (except in darker colours), and once it was all dry, I cut my batting (Warm and White) and prepared for another experiment - one that's probably old hat to some of you - fusing the batting to the top.

I laid out the batting with some old Stitch Witchery I had around, and then unrolled the painted top over it bit by bit, ironing as I went, and in this way fused them together.