A Question of Background ....

The most recent pieces in my Grevillea series have used strip pieced backgrounds ... a mix of hand dyed and hand printed fabrics to add some variation.  

This approach worked nicely but what if I 'push the boundaries'  a bit ...

Artists often create compositions from small areas of detail in a drawing or painting, scaling up the size to create and new composition.  We used this approach in my weekly drawing class recently.  

We started with a still life drawing and then using a small area of detail from that drawing created a new composition and then added tone and color ......

From one of my Grevillea drawings I made a number of detail sketches looking for compositions with 5 to 7 shapes.  I picked  3 to try out and made them up this week .....

I'm pleased with the way they look ... the shapes and the color combinations.  The plan is to stitch my Grevillea flower drawing onto these backgrounds ... so I'll need to work out the color and weight of thread and the best way to place and mark the design.   

I'm hesitating a little bit about the stitching so I keep telling myself I can always make a new background piece if I mess it up!!!!  

I'll let you know how I get on......

Thanks for reading  .....CC

Painting Fabric

I've been trying our some ideas for painted backgrounds this week as part of my plan to only use fabrics only my own fabrics .....    In each of the samples I painted Permaset Textile Ink applied with a sponge/palette knife, a stamp and a brayer .....

Text

Gesso

Collograph

Seed Stitch

In the text sample I used a Pigma 05  micron pen in black and rust to write on the fabric before painting.  The Pigma pen works well without leaving any build up of ink.  Writing on hand dyed fabric works well ... in this sample I wanted to test the effect of painting over the written text.

For the gesso sample I painted white gesso with a paintbrush across areas of fabric and allowed it to dry before painting.  The gesso adds a subtle texture.

The collograph plate was made with a hot glue gun - the plate didn't work as a stamp directly onto fabric, so this time I stamped onto a Gelliplate and then printed the sample as a monoprint which produced an interesting result.

The seed stitching used Perle 8 and Perle 12 threads prior to painting. This results in a nice texture .... I have contemplated removing the stitching to see the result.

I'm going to use the handwritten text for the background in the next Stepping Stones series piece .....