Studio Kit

So, remember when I said that I thought I was going to have to add some washes to make my night time scene less "early morning" and more "night"?

Well, "Ta Dah!!!" :)

I started out with blobs of blue, black and red to make a purple wash...

...which looked sort of an eggplant-y once it was all stirred up. Even when I added the water, it still looked very dark, but when I tested it on the side, it looked like...

The bottom wash, which I figured was too dark.

So I added some more water in increments of about a 1/4 of a cup, and got the second version (above it) and then again (the very top version) which was my target colour.

After the first, wash, I had this. Better, but still not dark enough.

So I added colour directly to my wash, first a little blob of navy blue, and then added two more washes with more additions of navy blue...

and then added more black to the mixture and did two or three washes of the black. When I started getting into the navy blues and blacks, I was adding washes to the pond water as well, to darken it up.

And this was the end result.

No, right?

The water looks great, and it's certainly dark enough, but there's hardly any differentiation between the sky and the rocks.

So I got out those original teals, blue-y greens and purples I started with, darkened them up with the additions of a drop or two of black and a drop or two of Prussian blue...

And that's what I ended up with. Much better, no?

So, if you look at where it started, you can see that it's a big difference, and it doesn't look like morning or an overcast day anymore. Now, it actually looks like night. Yay!

You can see the progress side by side here (that pic is clickable if you want to look at it in a bigger size) - those four pictures represent 15-20 washes in total!

I'm totally in the home stretch now, I have probably only two or at the most three hours left on the piece. Phew!

Come on back on Friday for the big finish!

P.S. - It's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with the Needle And Thread Network - please check out what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!

I had hoped to show you a finished piece today, but I grossly underestimated how long it would take me to braid enough embroidery floss to make the mermaid's hair - not to mention, some of the hand quilting I've done hasn't turned out so well, so I need to re-do it. :SIGH:

But I DID make some rocks. I knew I knew how to do it, and I thought if I pulled out By The Sea from last year, just looking at those rocks would remind me how I did it. That didn't work - I pulled them out, petted them, and thought "how pretty", but couldn't remember how I did them, exactly.

Bu then I found and read my own instructions on how to make them (gee, I'm glad that this is a process blog!), except, this time, I broadened the colours of roving that I used, and put them on a gray silk background, rather than stablizer and pinned 'em all up.

Since I didn't have very much of that grey scrim left, I inserted into my rocks for more texture instead.

Once I had it all pinned down, I needle felted it.

And when I was done, I had this piece of fabric. It was sooooooooo SOFT, I just wanted to pet it like a bunny. :) Alas, I needed to cut it up...

...into rock shapes.

Which I put onto some fabric I wouldn't use for much else (a heavy cotton upholstery fabric sample I was gifted by a friend - said friend gave me banker's box full of such samples and they've come in very handy in a lot of applications.

There's a lot of that stuff in the "America Now" series, for instance. Painting them over covers a multitude of sins!)

But back to this piece, my rocks needed to be on that background, because I wanted to quilt them before I put them on my painted background.

So, we're getting closer!

I have to finish braiding Ms. Mermaid's hair and fix up my hand quilted elements - and though I've added the washes I talked about last week to take my background from early morning to the night I intended, I think I have to add two more washes of purple and blue (and maybe teal) to the sky to further differentiate it from the cliff.

But, we're in the home stretch now! Finished piece on Wednesday or maybe Friday.

Until then...

I was just being tongue in cheek, but how cool would it be to write a story about a mermaid and illustrate it with quilts?

But back to our current tale...there's not much to say, except that what you're looking at right there are hundreds of sequins and about 30 hours of hand beading - I'm sure someone else would be faster at it, but it took me quite awhile to figure out a: how to do it and b: how to do it in a way that worked!

These are the beads that auditioned for the piece,

And these are the ones I used.

Originally I was going to hand-cut her scales and sew them down, and then I had this "brilliant" idea that it would somehow be faster to make her scales beads. I laugh, laugh at myself.

That said, I do like the effect.

And this is the drawing that I started out with.

Also, remember this:

that I did just about a year ago? I did it AGAIN while I was quilting the background -hence the switch to beading the mermaid.

Only this time, it was a 70/10 rather than a 14/90, and it was just at the tip; so no hospital visit was necessary - after a short, intense argument I managed to convince BSP to pull it out with a pair of pliers (this time, is was just straight in rather than curved through) and I've had no ill effects. Be careful out there! ;)

See you on Monday with some rocks - and maybe the finished piece!

It was Canada Day yesterday, so I was golfing and generally celebrating being Canadian and forgot it was Monday and that I was supposed to post!

So, the background is done now - as you can see, from when I left you last, I've added foliage and the pond. This is the background in it's "finished" state (I'll be adding quilted elements to the background and foreground later), but I thought I was already finished earlier.

You see, this little section originally looked like this. And, don't you think it looks like there's a wee tsunami happening on that shore?

So, I painted it out ...

...waited until it dried,added in some more rocks, waited until they dried, and then added some more trees and bushes.

And this is what it looks like now. I think the background's done, but I may end up adding some washes of blue to make the sky darker - we'll see once I've quilted the background and added some quilted elements.

Anyway - stay tuned... more on Friday! And for my American friends, enjoy your holiday tomorrow!

* and linking up with WIP Wednesday at the Needle and Thread Network. Go and have a look at what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!

Hi everyone,

I had hoped to get some work done on the new piece that I could show you today, but BSP was sick on Wednesday night and last night, I conked out at 6:00 p.m. (!!!!) and didn't wake until 6:30 this morning, so I have nothing to show you, except...

Called "Winter's Wane". It was a piece I made but didn't make the cut for the show at Rochester Contemporary Art Gallery - which is just as well because someone absolutely loved it, and it currently hangs above BSP's desk in the office.

I'm on vacation for a week starting today, so I'm actually typing this in front of my current piece - and will be painting more as soon as I'm done.

See you on Monday with more mermaid work. Until then, have a great weekend!

After doing my research, I decided that the easiest way to complete this task was to make a representation of the mermaid at Little Karoo.

Little Karoo is an oasis in the desert of South Africa (an oasis, by the way, that evidence shows used to be completely underwater.)

One of the features of this area is that there are huge underground caves, filled with water - and there is a waterfall falling off the edge of cliff that forms a pool. It is at this pool that a mermaid has been glimsped for 100's of years - even , if local legend is to be believed - to the present day.

I decided that this nameless mermaid was the one for me - to make a representation of the Orishas or mer-goddesses was going to take more research than I had time for!

I began with a lightweight canvas, to which I first applied a layer of gesso and then let cure for 24 hours, and then I painted the canvas with thinned out white acrylic paint. I had to do three layers - I supposed if I hadn't thinned it out, I wouldn't have needed to do three layers, but when I did the first stroke at full strength, it felt too thick and gloopy. So I decided three thin layers (like what they used to tell you about nail polish) would be best.

After that had cured for about 48 hours (it really dries much faster but because I was going to be doing a lot of layering of paint over it, I decided I wanted it to be very, very dry.

I mixed up some colours first - a light grey, a light blue/gray and two blue greens, as I had decided to paint my mermaid at night. (I did sketch all of it out first on my background, but it didn't show up in the photos, so I didn't bother posting them.)

I began by using the light grey to paint out my moon, and used the lightest of the blue greens to begin adding the sky.

Then I added in the darker of the blue greens and daubed my paint on over the lighter version.

Added some washes of the light and dark blue/green...

and then painted in more of the darkest of the blue greys.

Then I took those four paint colours, and darkened them considerably with the addition of black to each, for my rocks.

Using the same process of layering my colours

Using thinned out washes (I didn't mind if they ran onto the fabric below because it was an easy clean up.)

If you'd like to see the inspiration photo (which I didn't have permission to use here) just google "Rust en Verde waterfall at Little Karoo".

Next up - I'm going to be blocking out the pool and the foliage on the cliff tops and at the bottom.

See you on Friday!

Linking up with The Needle and Thread Network for WIP Wednesday -go and see what other Canadian fiber bloggers are up to!