With the arrival of a wonderful book on the paintings of Ian McKeever, time to limber up with a few watercolour sketches of honesty seedheads, thinking of the next quilt.
I've already got one layer of it, printed on 16 sheets of silk organza, which I'd decided not to use for my last honesty quilt.
What I'm aiming for this time is on the lines of this journal quilt where the stitched shapes of seedheads below add texture to the surface painting.
So 2 experiments of printed organza ( with different scale images ) stitched to gessoed old Durham quilt, background organza removed and then floating seedheads painted with acrylics.
This is a piece of more heavily quilted sateen Durham quilt
I wasn't sure whether to leave the white or paint the background so as it's experimental , decided to go for it. Well at least I now know what NOT to do!
This is on the very old tatty durham quilt I used to have as a door curtain
Much better results although in my rush to attach the organza I didn't rinse it and the excess ink was released on painting. Lesson learnt. Again, I'm not sure about leaving the white, I think it might distract from the large ovals which I want to be the focal point. Although I don't think the pale grey I tried in one area is quite right either. Suggestions?
I'm glad I tried 2 different pieces of Durham Quilt - I thought I would prefer the 'newer' one but it's too densely quilted and a more open weave for this project. Time to gesso a large piece of quilt and get stuck in!
3 comments:
Love your watercolours, and look forward to seeing how this piece develops - not to mention seeing your Breakthrough quilt in York. And thanks for your really encouraging comments on my blog!
i really like nº5 and nº8, very powerful. which sort of answer your question about the white background.
love what you're doing and share here... printing two scaled pix on organza is a great idea -- I like the ones with toned backgrounds A LOT.
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