WEEKLY ART PROJECT #48; DAISY CHAIN

There are so many lovely flowers out nodding their happy little heads in my garden at the moment.  When I was wandering around saying hello to them, I noticed that quite a few are daisy-like in appearance.

Whilst some ARE daisies, other's have no reference to daisydom on their  name tags, yet still have that characteristic look.
Therefore, I decided to work with all 5 of them today in a hope that I might create a design that can be used to include each of them.

I began with pen & paper, where I recorded each flower's unique combination of petals & centre.
Simple as they are, I am VERY pleased with these & like the way that they aren't all centred in the square.  Just with these rough sketches I can see the potential for them to become something more developed.

I chose one to base my design on, found a few fabric scraps in the appropriate colours & then began stitching through the lot of them.  I had decided to use a contrasting thread colour around the centre & REALLY liked the effectiveness of the yellow on the black.  For a moment there, I considered doing the rest of the stitching in yellow too....but, reminded myself to stick to the plan & continued with black instead!!

Do you recall my use of the word scraps?  I wasn't joking!
 "WOW!  Doesn't it look impressive...a giant black daisy against a patchwork of colours.

I could have quite easily left it here, but no....I stuck to the plan!

Before cutting back any of the petal interiors, I created a stem first!

Cutting the black back reveals a shiny white satin as daisy petals & again, I could have left it at this stage too, but I wanted to see my 'what if..." experiment through  to the end.

Further cutting back revealed the end result & I'm quite happy with it.

Even so, If I'm honest, were I to do this again, I would leave it at the black daisy stage & develop it a bit more from there, because to me, that is the more interesting of the 3 transitional daisies.

Once again, it has been a very worthwhile exercise & a good place to try out possibilities.

WEEKLY ART PROJECT #47; BURST OF ORANGE

The weather is definitely getting warmer & it is consequently an exciting time in the garden.  Our orange pig face flowers are just on the cusp of opening up.  They look so elegant as buds though, that I decided they were a worthy muse for this week's art project.

As I've mentioned before, time is a little stretched these days as I try to balance some study, work for exhibitions, life AND a weekly art project!  However, even the few preliminary drawings I did, helped me get a sense of what I wanted to produce & how.  One of the things I had to forgo because of technique & size restrictions, was the proportion of the bud.  In real life it is more narrow, whereas I needed to make it wider to be able to get more detail in as well as being able to fit my scissors around stitched lines!

My raid on the fabric stash resulted in some fabulous options & I must admit that these happy colours did make the process more enjoyable to proceed with. :-)

What I needed for this piece, were three separate 'sandwich' layers.  The first was topped with the lime green (which you can see peeping out above) and stitched through with the outline design for the background pattern.  That was a 4 fabric sandwich including the background.  The next sandwiched layer was for the orange bud & that also included 4 layers.  You will notice that in this case I am sewing in the outline design before putting the next sandwich layer on top. This is quite risky, as it is very easy for the layers to move, so I had to make sure that the top & right hand side of each piece lined up.

Finally the top sandwich was applied & that only had 3 layers of fabric.

At last it was time to get the scissors out & start cutting back.

It was no time at all before I could start carefully cutting back the orange bud.

I was very pleased with it. Now it was time to cut back the background pattern that was inspired by the sharp little criss-crossing succulenty leaves of the pig face plant.

All in all I am quite pleased with this outcome & I am particularly pleased with the colour combination.  I like the effectiveness of the black background, which, although not accurate in terms of the garden, it is aestheticly more dramatic & pleasing to the eye!  Well....mine anyway!

WEEKLY ART PROJECT #46; LAYERS LINES & LAVENDER

As I sit here to write this blog, my eyes are streaming, my nose is dripping & I want to scratch my eyeballs out!  It's Spring!

We've had a lot of lovely rain lately, which translates into LOTS of spring growth!  The bees are loving my garden at the moment & I am happy to help them out...they need as much help as they can get!!

My lavender speckles the green foliage with it's purple heads...so beautiful...and a worthy muse for this week's art project.

Short on time, my initial planning was whipped together pretty quickly with felt pens.

I knew I wanted to play with the linear cutback work I've been developing, but still needed this all important part of the process to help get me on my way.  The green striped background came together well, but I wasn't sure where to go with my lavender stems!!  Tempted as I was to do them as straight vertical lines, I chose to stick with their various curves, which made a more interesting combination of lines.

I raided the green fabric drawer!

I composed a background of various greens, before...

...covering them up to stitch lines across, which I then...

...cut back!  Call me crazy...but I LIKE this!!  It seems a shame to put lavender stems in the foreground, but that's the plan, so that's what I needed to now do!

To make the stems a bit more interesting, I used a variegated thread & stitched a double line down the length of the lavender stems.  I was pleased with this look.

A fair bit of cutting back later & this is my end result.

Aside from realising that I got a couple of the purples the wrong way around, I am relatively pleased with it as a sample piece.  Were I to try it again, I think I would like a less contrasting stem colour & I'd carefully place the purples on top of the stem colour, so that they become the more dominant feature.  I certainly see potential for an interesting piece here & am a teensy bit frustrated that I can't drop everything I'm working on at the moment to explore this further!  Such is life!  At least I have a starting point for future work!

WEEKLY ART PROJECT #45; GARDEN GREEN MAN

 Throughout Europe & the UK representations of the 'Green Man' can be found on buildings, in churches & hiding in gardens.  He is an intriguing character & I have enjoyed 'finding' him on my travels.  Even here in Adelaide, there are a couple of figures amidst architectural features who could be described as being a Green Man.

I have one in my garden too!

He is actually a planter, & for many years a succulent has grown from his head to create the most wonderful dreadlocks!!  Unfortunately, I am very good at forgetting to water his hair &, let's just say, his dreads are not in the best of shape at the moment!!  I've recently had to give him a hair cut, removing the dead bits, so with a bit of perseverance, his flourishing locks may yet return.  Inspite of my poor care, each year his hair sprouts the most wonderful little flowers.

He was my muse for the weekly art project this past week!

As I've recently started a 10 week study course, time was even more pressed than usual.  My WAP was not the priority & when I did have a slot of time to produce something, it was very limited.

I used pencil to draw the various componants of the photo above.  I wasn't too fussed about accuracy, I merely wanted to feel the shapes and observe what went where.  This is one of the values of drawing!

I raided the fabric stash in order to make a start.

My base fabric was a loose weave cotton/linen mix that came from curtain swatches.  It was a perfect texture for drawing onto with my prismcolour pencils, which have a waxy softness to them.

My composition was split in half after I layered the 'leaf' fabrics on & cut back to reveal their lovely tear-drop shapes.  Using a shiny fabric as the lighter colour, provided a splash of energy to the piece.

For the flower, I confess to little planning. It was most definitely a rush job!  I am pleased with the use of this old shirt sleeve as the top outline though, it had a good blend of colour tone.

Cutting back & cutting back some more, the flowers were revealed!

Here is the final outcome & although I really should have taken more care with the placement of the flowers (instead of panicking that I needed to start cooking dinner), I'm quite pleased with the result.

It is a reminder of what my Green Man's dreadlocks looked like...in healthier days!!