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

On the Wall ... Turquoise and Green

My design wall is usually filled with work in various stages of design and construction ...   at the moment there are a couple of pieces.... monoprints in blues and greens .... basically complete with stitching and facings, just waiting for the next steps in the process.

I recently completed work on the latest Stepping Stones piece "Lake in the Clouds"  which includes some favorite turquoise fabric, the same fabric that I had use to complete the monoprints.

The two monoprints looked a bit unbalanced when I hung them as a pair because of the way I'd placed the turquoise fabric.  But when I set them with the new Stepping Stones piece and a miniature piece, I thought they looked terrific as a set .......

                " Turquoise and Green"  © 2017 CarolynCollinsArt   Set of 4 pieces

This got me thinking ....  while many of my pieces are relatively small they have the potential to work really well together in sets.  

 I've recently been working on upgrading my Pinterest site so I've added a new board  "On the Wall"  and  started pinning ideas for grouping art on the wall  ... here is a link to the board if you are interested ....

 https://au.pinterest.com/carolyncollinsa/art-on-the-wall/

Do you have any tips or suggestions for hanging groups of art or photographs ?

Thanks for reading   .... CC

Stepping Stones in Greens

Over the last year or so I have been working on my Stepping Stones series and have recently completed a couple more pieces.....

I love making these pieces because they let me try out all sorts of ideas on a small scale within the parameters of the series,  but I often wonder what others make of this work ..... 

When I was reading the Introduction in the David Hockney exhibition (see previous post)  I came across a description of his approach by Simon Maidment, Curator of Contemporary Art at the NGV    " [David Hockney] does things his own way and forges ahead in the direction he finds most interesting"  and this encourages me to keep going  .....  

Having made a total of 16 Stepping Stones pieces I thought it would be fabulous to see them all in one place ..... like the David Hockney portrait series at the National Gallery of Victoria !!!

The best I've been able to do is to create this gallery block.  Here are a collection of the green pieces   .....

   © CarolynCollinsArt  2017 'Green Stepping Stones'  Hand dyed & printed fabric, batik

It's got me thinking about a larger Stepping Stones design .....

Do you have a series you are working on??

Thanks for dropping by ...CC

New Grevillea .... experiment

With all my new found Photoshop Elements skills .... I am doing the second module of the "Photoshop Elements - Essentials 2"  online class with the Pixeladies,  Deb Cashatt and Kris Sazaki ....  I've been playing with ways of creating simplified/abstracted grevillea designs!

This is terrific fun and as you might imagine I now have a stack of design possibilities!!!!   

The next questions is how to translate these into fabric!!

My first idea is to try a version of shadow applique ...  working from the abstract design  to create a base layout made up of geometric shapes and then combining this  with a digital image of the flower printed on organza,  as an overlay.

I found an interesting piece of fabric with a range of shades of  plum and pink .... not a piece that inspired me when I dyed it some time ago but perfect for this experiment and a soft mottled green to use for the background.  After fusing the geometric shapes .... some very thin and too small to applique with my usual technique ... I added to overlay of printed organza.  This is how it turned out ......

"Grevillea 6"

CarolynCollinsArt © 2017

8" x 16"

Hand dyed and printed fabrics, digital image

After some time contemplating the possibilities, I decided on a mix of hand stitching  .... a running stitch and some seed stitches  and a simple horizontal machine line to finish.   The overlay makes working with thin strips and small shapes very stress free!!!  

I like the results of this experiment .....  but there are more ideas to try !!!

What have you been experimenting with lately??   

Thanks for dropping by .....CC