More painting

Hooray, the painting on Valley Mist is just about finished! Once I heat-set today's painting, I can wash out the masking medium and see what I actually have. It's tricky, because the paint goes on over the mask quite happily but, in an ideal world, doesn't adhere to the fabric. However, the masking medium dries clear, so it means you aren't quite sure exactly how thorough your coverage of the fabric has been, until you discover paint where you didn't want it!


All I did today was add the darkest tone, which is the foreground. I lightened that tone a little and used the resulting dark-medium tone to paint in some shadows on the other hills. I think I might need a little more of that before I start stitching. There are also a couple of areas that got masked that shouldn't have, so they will need painting once the medium comes out.

I'm really enjoying the process of this, but it doesn't help that the deadline for finished work is Jun 2!

Like Honey from the Rock

This is how the background for this piece looks, stitched together. I haven't begun stitching on it yet, and you can see the noticeably lighter area I mentioned. I decided against a paint wash all over it, as I'd lose the lovely colours in the other rocks. I'm hoping once I've added stitch, the lightness will not be such an issue. If it is, I'll deal with it then!

Flowerpot

While I was painting yesterday, I managed to put a little more detail on this paint rag. The Love-in-a-Mist flowers are suitably spiky now and I added shadows to some of the flowers and the pot. It's really starting to look like I imagined! I think I might need to give this piece a bit more sustained attention, instead of just adding a bit when I have the appropriate colours mixed.

Winnie the Pooh

There is one reason why I might be heard humming the hums of Pooh*, and that reason is that I am busy. If I'm busy in a run-off-my-feet kind of way, I might be overheard humming, "the more it SNOWS, tiddley-pom, the more it GOES, tiddley pom, the more it GOES, tiddley pom, on snowing...". But when you hear me murmuring, "I could spend a happy morning being Pooh. For it doesn't seem to matter, if I don't get any fatter (and I don't get any fatter) what I do," it's a sign of much contented activity.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I have had a very happy day by myself, getting on with many different things.

Today I finally got to paint another layer on Valley Mist. Actually, it was two layers of darks. One more masking and I can paint the final darkest shades, and then wash out the masking medium to see what I have. I hope it's worth all the work! I know I'll have to add some little details at the end, before I can stitch it.

Valley Mist 18 1/2in x 13 1/2in

*If you have no idea what I am talking about, you have clearly had a deprived childhood and it's way past time to rediscover your inner child by reading A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young and Now We are Six.

Baby steps

I am so frustrated! I'm not getting much done just now - too many other things happening in my life. Nice things like sitting in my sunny family room sewing and chatting with friends, and going to the ATASDA Social Day. But no actual textile progress, except for:
* sewing one of the three patchwork friendship blocks I am making each month for friends - Secret Women's Business, so I can't share them here
* piecing together the sections of Like Honey From the Rock, which worked out well. Except one section of rock has printed out noticably paler than the others and I didn't really notice until it was too late. I need to find some time to put a colour wash over the lot to bring them closer together in colour, before I start stitching.
* masking Valley Mist ready for painting again
* sewing a little more on the jacket I have been making since February. I desperately need some winter clothes, so I need to get this jacket finished so I can move on.
* sewing together some of the last blocks on my son and daughter-in-law's quilt - they might actually get it one of these years!

The price of creativity

My daughter posted a comment on her blog from Jeanette Winterson about the price of creativity. It reminded me of comments by Rainer Maria Rilke,in his Letters on Cezanne.

He wrote, "Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no-one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible and, as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity."

He also quotes Cezanne's last letter, Oct 21, 1906:
"I believe the best thing is work. I continue my studies."

How fantastic to be working at creation right to the end! (He died on October 22nd.)

Your computer as a tool

This topic came up on a list I belong to. So I thought I'd share some of the ways I manipulated the photo I used in the Forest piece. There are literally hundreds of ways to change a photo if you have access to Corel PhotoPaint (the program I use) or Photoshop or similar programs.

I showed you the original photo on 20 April and the finished piece on 30 April. Here are some ways I manipulated the photograph before deciding on one to print for stitch.


This one has used "dabble" to change the colour in the photo to dabs of colour, like paint strokes. (You might need to look at the larger image to see what I mean.) There are other paint-type changes in most programs, but I usually start with this one, because it basically tells you what's there. If you're not a painter, sometimes it's hard to see the colour changes in a photo. So this is a useful tool, regardless of what you're going to do later. You can use it as a basis for stitch, if you want a traditional look.


This one has changed the photo to a water marker image. It's also useful for seeing the colours that make up the image, but it generally makes the colours brighter, and that can be interesting too. Often, all I do with these images is look at them and see how the colours go together, where the shadows fall and so on.


Isn't this interesting? It's what happens when you use the invert function. Invert is useful in lots of ways. It tells you about the balance of a piece - you can see that the right hand tree trunk has gone white, so this indicates that, in the original, this is going to be a very dark area that might dominate the finished piece. But inverted images are also very interesting in their own right. I actually printed this one for stitching, because I loved the eerie feel it gave to the forest.


This version has had light effects added (under Render in Corel PhotoPaint). You can decide where you want the light to come from and how much light you want. I liked this one, which really feels like a full moon shining into the bush.


All the images so far have basically been representational - you can still see that it's a forest scene, since that's what I needed for the challenge. But while playing about with the image, I also saved this one. It's from Alchemy, smoke effects and isn't it interesting? Couldn't you do a lot with that by adding stitch, and maybe other media like paint, beading...?


And finally, this one. It's using an effect called Icecubes, also from Alchemy. I loved this one too, because it really reminds me of flowers and I just love the way the image has been transformed into something totally new.

I've hardly touched the surface of the possibilities and the best thing is to play with whatever software you have and see what is possible. It's amazing how a quite ordinary photo can be transformed by changing the light focus, or by turning it into something quite different! I've focused on single effects but of course, you can change a single image in multiple ways. And you can isolate small elements of an image and change them, use them as repeat images... whatever grabs your attention!