Quilt Experiment: Gesso & Paint

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After Gesso is added.

After Paint is added.

This fabric mixed media experiment was inspired by work I have seen on the blog Purple Missus and the work that Linda and Diana Kemshall  in their book The Painted Quilt.

I have tried a few 'quilt it then paint it' experiments but this is my first one using gesso after quilting. You can see I also added some beads and a little hand stitching before adding gesso and painting. This was really fun and is still a work in progress.

It has several layers of watered down acrylic (first layer after the gesso) as well as some different colors of Lumiere Russet, Copper and Gold. I did decide it was too metallic and added some Violet Jacquard Textile Color with a sponge brush, gently pulled across the top.

My favorite part of this are the my little circles that meander across this piece. I think they now look like stones in a river.

I am curious what you see and what you like about this experiment? Ever done anything similar?  More to come as I will be adding some satin stitching to the sides and maybe add some more beads and hand stitching.  More to come

Leave a comment and as always, you can click on photos for a closer look.

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Creative Every Day - A Quick Painting

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I have thought about joining Creative Every Day for almost two years. It is a challenge set up by Leah Piken Kolidas to encourage others to create. You don't have to create every single day - you do what works for you, so there is no need to spend time whipping yourself if you happen to go a day without sharing some creative aspect of your life.
 
Leah defines creative in the broadest sense of the word and you can read about the challenge on her Creative Every Day challenge page. 

While I was working at the studio today, I decided I wanted to do some painting. I don't often paint on canvas but I took a recycled canvas that happened to have torn pieces of paper collaged onto it. I decided to let it emerge as I painted and this is my result of my efforts. I love the texture and colors of the collaged paper. It was fun to create a piece that I like from a piece that another artist tossed away for reasons of their own.

Exercises like this are a great way for me to get out of my head and just go with it. I have been taking pictures of trees lately on my almost daily walks in the park and I am quite happy with the way this tree turned out. I did the writing with a white gel pen. The photo at the top is more true to the colors but the bottom one is a bit clearer.

Experimenting w/ Golden Digital Grounds

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Golden Digital Grounds – Experiments

I will confess that I bought a sample pack of Golden’s Digital Grounds http://www.goldenpaints.com/mixmoremedia/digiground.php over a year ago and just never got around to experimenting with them. I bought the sample pack at Arizona Art Supply http://www.arizonaartsupply.com/ which contained 3 bottles of grounds and 2 jars of topcoats.

On a recent Friday night, in an exhausted state of being, I was entertaining myself by watching You Tube videos about printing on uncommon surfaces. Many of the videos I watched that night were by northern Arizona artist Kathyanne White http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oSPP0zUcv0&feature=related , whom I met this year at Art Unraveled. She uses a product called Inkaid http://www.inkaid1.com/ which I have never seen but seems to act like the Digital Grounds products in that it creates a surface on top of a surface so that it will hold the inks of an inket printer. She prints on lacepaper, fabric, etc.

Well, when she got to the part in one of her videos where she prints onto recycled aluminum cans, I was so inspired by then I pulled out my digital grounds and started playing. Here are my results:  Clck 'read more' for pics.....

Mixed Media Success

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Painted Paper Towel

Painted Paper Towel

I love teaching and had a blast facilitating learning for the students in my technique class on Saturday! We were exploring Mixed Media Techniques for Fabric and we had a blast. I had four and a half students. I say half because one student had to leave early. 



I have taken and taught classes where the students are required to keep to essentially the same pace in order to complete a specific product by the end. This was not that kind of class. My interest was in sharing techniques that the students could explore and make their own so they could use them in their own work. I believe we accomplished just that.



We were able to explore several techniques and it was really fun to observe each of them taking those techniques in their own personal direction. Same materials + varying thoughts and approaches = very interesting and inspiring results. See for yourself.

 

Painted Paper Towel





Painted Paper Bag



I planted seeds and let them go. And go they did.

Pumice Gel on Fabric

Pumice Gel & Glass Bead Gel on Paper - the photo
does not do it justice. Glass Bead Gel is gorgeous
as it catches the light.

Clear Tar Gel, Lumiere, inks on fabric

On this fabric, Molding Paste,
Pumice Gel, Clear Tar Gel,
Metal sheet stamped & colored
with alcohol inks

The most fascinating, frightening, and fun part of this as the teacher was pushing aside the desire to move people along and allowing them the time to explore and discover.

Metals, Mica, Candy Wrappers created by Joan



Metal sheet, paper, mica piece,
mica washers, created by Quinn









Read about Quinn's class experience on her blog post of 9-26-10.

Painted Misty Fuse, metal pieces,
feathers, leaf on fabric

Painted Misty Fuse, feathers gold leaf,
on paper

There were many more samples they created for themselves and a binder to hold everything in for future inspiration. I cannot wait to do this again.

Finally, the Metals part of the Mixed Media on Fabric

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Geez, life does have a way of getting away from me. I had the most fun with these. Who says you have to stick with the 'usual stuff'. I say think outside of the box, or boxes and just go for it. I make jewelry too so I thought it would be fun to add jewelry findings along with other metals. Remember you can click on any of the photos for a larger/closer view. And I'll warn you now, this is a rather long post, but with lots of pics. Have fun and I appreciate any comments.

Jewelry Mesh, Copper Jump Rings, Embossing Metal

I like this wire-lace stuff. You can find it in some bead stores. It comes in various colors and is actually a tube of woven fine wire so you can pull it into different shapes. And as you can see, you can stitch thru this on the machine as well.  

I was feeling very adventurous and decided to see if I could zig-zag stitch these copper jump rings onto my little quiltlet. I used whatever thread was in my machine so you could actually see it. But you could make it blend more with different thread choices.

Embossing Metal that I stitched to my quilt sample. It was so easy.

 This sample has wood paper (see closeup below), metal sheets that have been cut and stamped and attached in various ways to this little quilt sample, and some chain.

And finally, the last group is jewelry findings.

This little collection of jewelry findings, chain and metal shapes are meant to inspire. Any one of these things could be added to a quilt to enhance the design of the piece. Closeups below.

Click on photo for cloer look.

Whew, hopefully you made it all the way through. I would love to hear what you think so drop a comment if you have a moment. Thanks!