Category: painting

Posted in painting

Patio Decor – Stage Two

Posted on by Laura Kate

Back in May, I started a painting on fabric for the purpose of decorating my patio.

https://wordpress.com/post/dailyfiberfun.wordpress.com/5098

It was May, and the weather for patio-sitting was perfect. But I didn’t finish my painting – I had become obsessed with the Shell Lake Story quilt, and could think of nothing else.

Now that the quilt is finished, AND lovely patio-sitting weather has returned, I got out the fabric paints to work on stage two of the painting.

At the end of stage one, I had a 15 by 30 inch canvass with a nice background on it.

The lovely green-colored folds already looked like geranium leaves. The blank-looking orange blobs will become geranium blossoms.

Using Jacquard Textile paint in colors green, ruby red and goldenrod, I started working from the right side of the canvas to the left. Here is the painting after my first two sessions:

Only one more blossom to go. Today I finished it up,

Hm, it’s pretty obvious that I got better at painting as I went along! While the far left blossom is more carefully painted, it lacks the bright highlights of the first two. This was caused by the tone of the underpainting, which was predominately violet instead of yellow, like the other ones. The only way to fix this is to apply opaque paint. The risk in doing that is overworking the painting.

So I guess I will leave well enough alone.

My next steps are to square up the fabric and staple it to the back of the frame.

Posted in colorwork, painting

Decorating the Patio – WIP

Posted on by Laura Kate

While rooting through the garage this week, I found this frame.

I decided that I could make a decor item for my patio, which also could hold various gardening implements on a row of hooks. But what I really wanted was to fill the opening with an abstract painting of geraniums. Something like this:

I picked up a remnant of solid white cotton twill. It seemed to be sturdy enough to stand up to outside conditions. After I washed and dried the fabric, I cut a piece approximately 3 inches wider and longer than the frame opening. Now the fun starts.

My fabric paint choices included green, emerald, red, and yellow. I mixed some violet into the yellow to make a gold color. After about twenty minutes of messing around I had a nice background painted.

To give a little variety to the patches of color, I scrunched up the fabric.

And here is my panel, fully dry and ready for further paint layers.

I’m excited by this result, and keen to work on this fiber object some more.

Posted in painting

Friday Finish: Time for Cranes

Posted on by Laura Kate

When I returned from Wisconsin last month, I made a vague suggestion about painting a watercolor of sand hill cranes. They are very impressive birds. In Madison the cranes are so acclimated to humans that they are not bothered with our presence. We even saw a couple with a dog on the leash approach resting cranes, and the birds never budged.

Because I think this will be a difficult painting, I decided to start with a simple close-up of a sandhill. This photograph was snapped by Bill. I zoomed in when did my edits.

  • This is a nice profile shot. It seems the bird is showing up its “good” side!

After making a quick pencil sketch, I used the printing technique learned on Wednesday. This time I stamped the background with bubble wrap and some rug grips using three earthy colors: yellow ochre, burnt sienna and ultramarine blue.

Once that was sorted, I painted the subject. It was a simple matter to follow the lines and colors of the photograph. I was careful to leave a little white. Masking fluid allowed me to represent the wispiness of the feathers.

After a few relaxing hours I was finished.

Time for a Crane

I wish all my watercolor attempts would go this smoothly.

In addition to the ochre, sienna and blue, I used alizarin crimson, carbazole violet and a little quinacridone gold and white gouache to bring out the eye. Painted on Arches hot press paper.

5/08 2022: Happy Mother’s Day all. I’ve been mulling about this painting for the past two days, not satisfied. It seems to me a little flat and unfinished.

So today I addressed the bits that bothered me. In the photograph, the light is strong, making crisp dark shadows and bright highlights. The light in the painting was too subtle. To fix this, I brightened areas around the face and beak with lifting and then applying white gouache. Once the highlights were as light as I could get them, I moved to increase the depth and complexity of the shadows. In particular, the gradation of the shadow along the bird’s body was inadequate. I added another layer, feathering the shadowed area over a larger section of the torso.

Finally, I looked over the background, deciding that the bright white section on top of the head just drew the viewer’s eye up and out of the picture plane. I painted it out with a wash of light tan paint that blended into the existing background color.

These adjustments may seem like not-so-much. Perhaps a big to-do about nothing.

I feel that the changes made the difference between a bland copy of a photograph and an interesting portrait with shadow, light, texture and all the compositional elements working together. To me, my crane is now more vibrant, existing in three dimensions instead of two.