CO Mixed Media Club, March meeting - polymer clay tiles and collage

This month, our project (lead by Susan) was making and incorporating polymer clay tiles into collage.

I have a love/hate relationship with polymer clay. I like the results but just find it too time consuming to bother with (the conditioning, rolling, forming, baking, and sometimes sanding is just too much).

But here I am happily smushing my rubber stamps into clay.

This is the one I was smushing. I cut it into a couple different rectangular tiles.

Here is the gang working hard. Laurie, Sidran, and Susan.

And Trish and Enid.

Here you can see the start of Enid's piece with painted sea and sky. I wish I took a picture with the cool boat she was planning to collage onto it.

The green tiles are Enid's, for her ocean themed collage.  The hands and black tile are mine.

 Here are some of my black tiles with gold Rub-n-Buff, and one with turquoise patina.

Here is Sidran's collage in progress, with polymer clay face.

Here is a collage of Trish's.

 Trish's second collage with polymer clay tile (center bottom).

Susan's tree, with polymer clay faces and star.

A collage in progress by Laurie.

Laurie's collage, I think the 3D pieces are wood. I know Laurie did some polymer clay pieces, but don't have pictures of them.

I didn't get around to the collage part, I just played with clay all day! I made some cute little houses, but didn't take pictures of them.  A fun clay play day!

Updating the color on a whole cloth quilt

I had made this whole cloth quilt two or three years ago.  They are supposed to be "layered" houses but the color is too uniform.  I did not include any perspective (the houses in the back should be smaller) because I want it to look like a pattern as well.

I used Elmer's washable gel glue to create resist lines, and colored the houses different colors with thickened dyes.  The problem is, I did this on a previously snow dyed piece of fabric, so the color looked very uniform and the division lines didn't stand out.   I painted the roof lines, and window and door frames with Tsukineko white ink.  The whole thing still looks flat and blah. I thought adding different patterns and textures to the houses with the white ink would help, but it didn't really do much.

I pulled out my Setacolor transparent paints and have started adding more color to the houses.  I still have some more color to add.  I am thinking I'd paint all the doors and windows the same color, and use markers and pens to add more details to the trim and roof lines. It's definitely an improvement.

Patchwork fabric backgrounds

The other day I posted my Coral art quilt but did not have pictures of the background patchwork before I attached the "coral".

I had made quite a few background pieces, while I had all these turquoise blue fabrics out, so I thought I'd show these before I added more to them.  All of these will either be cut to 16" x 20" and mounted to canvas, or will be wrapped around (a smaller) canvas. The fabrics were attached to a heavyweight muslin with a straight stitch around the edges.

I really like the coral print on this one and plan to do some hand stitching around it. 

This one is going to have a felted wool tree trunk and branches appliqued onto it.

I plan to add goldfish on this one, so it looks like a pond. The color looked a little blah since it was so solid, and the fish will be roughly the same value. I decided to add some paint to make it darker around the edges.

I used Setacolor transparent paints in sky blue and ultramarine, leaving the center area the original color. The two tan pieces are upholstery fabric and must have some kind of Scotchgard on them, as they resisted the paint.  I don't think it looks bad, but if it bothers me later, I will add some thicker opaque paint on top.

I really like the painted piece and am thinking of painting the background for the tree piece as well.

Coral art quilt

I've been working on a series, which is mainly water themed, using fabric, felt, and hand and machine sewing, etc.  I don't really consider these quilts in the true sense of the word since I don't plan to have a batting and backing fabric. I also plan to permanently mount them to canvas.

I thought I'd taken photos of the patchwork backgrounds but I couldn't find any, so I guess I forgot and will include some in a future post. I attached rectangles of fabric to a base fabric (it's either light canvas or heavy muslin). All of the fabric edges are exposed, and I just used a straight stitch to attach them, following the fabric edges.  I made about four of these patchwork backgrounds. One has coral made of red felted wool and is finished, photo posted below.  One will have a tree in winter with detailed branches, another will have koi fish, and the third has a coral stamped image on it.

For the finished coral piece, I did add batting and a backing fabric so the free-motion stitching would stand out.  I just did a wandering free-motion horizontal line with a very shiny blue/purple iridescent thread.  I then added the seaweed/plants using two colors of blue sheer polyester that I had.  I then hand stitched the coral on using a long blanket stitch.  I am glad I hand stitched the red coral since it really makes it more dimensional.  It took a long time though, and was hard on my hands with all the fabric layers I had to go through.   I then wrapped the "quilt" around a  14" x 14" canvas and stapled it to the back.  I really like the way it turned out.

Painterly painting class

I decided to take a two day Painterly painting class at the Art Students League of Denver.  Students could use oil or acrylic, but I was the only one using acrylics.

It's been a long time since I've done any representational/figurative painting, but when I did it in the past I had a very tight style and wanted to loosen up.

I didn't create any finished pieces but started a few.  I did get some practice and the teacher Ken Valastro helped a lot with direction on improving my composition.  His demo was amazing, he created this lovely rainy NYC street scene with lots of people, just with broad strokes and color changes.  The people had no real features, but you could sense where they were looking and if they were interacting with the person next to them.

Here is the first piece I started.  There are a lot of things I would do differently if I were to do it again, but it's not a bad first effort.

I did a second one, and the only reason it looked semi-decent is Ken did some painting on it.  I am not posting it here since all the good parts were his.

Here is my last one. I think it's a good start and will continue working on it.  My people are turning out pretty well.  I still feel like I paint very tight and need to loosen up. I am thinking about doing practice paintings with loose brush stokes as a warm up exercise when I go to my studio. That way, I will be painting more often and experimenting with painting loose.

I don't think these are a bad start considering it's probably been over 8 years since I've done a representational painting.

layered fabric and paper collage

I decided to try my hand at some layered fabric and paper collages.  I've been re-reading Cas Holmes book. She typically uses wall paper paste to glue down the layers, but said watered down PVA would work so that is what I used. I think she is more experimental with her layers. I really planned out my layers and what-goes-where. 

I am not happy with the wrinkliness (is that a word? there are too many wrinkles) of some of the materials. This is probably due to the wateriness of the glue. I felt I may have been better off with using matte medium (my current favorite adhesive with paper), but still like the way they look. Some of these I could have just sewn, but not all of them.

Coral is cut from red painted kraft paper that I had in my stash. There is Setacolor sunprinted fabric, dyed linen, gelli print on map, blue tissue paper and some shiny mylar bits (the yellow parts).

Red fabric with some gold paint smears, foam stamped coral on gold fabric, Gelli print, and dyed silk. Wrinkle wrinkle. I can probably pull up the fabrics at the top and just stitch them down.

Coral foam stamped sheer overlaid on blue dyed shibori, red silk (?). wood block stamp print, and lace.

Setacolor sunprinted fabric, painted cotton trim, Setacolor painted mesh on top of metallic painted deli paper, coral foam stamp on blue sheer.

I plan to do some machine and hand stitching on them as well. They will be cut down a little and mounted to 10" x 10" canvas.

4/7/2014: To see some of these pieces finished and mounted, please see this post.

Stamping on fabric

For a show coming up in the summer, I decided to make some layered fabric collages (similar to what Cas Holmes does), and wanted a coral/underwater theme for some of them.

I cut a coral stamp from sticky back foam and attached it to a metal plate to make stamping easier.

I also wanted to use this wood block I had bought at the Pasedena flea market last month.

Here are my fabrics. Stamping is kind of like fabric dyeing for me.  I start with a couple of pieces of fabric, then just start looking for more and more fabric to use. Clockwise from left is a sheer polyester, the blue and gold sheer with gold trim is from a cute Indian inspired dress my niece outgrew, gold fabric, shibori dyed cotton, Setacolor painted fabric (bottom center) and patterned commercial fabric (center).

I may go and touch up some of the coral with a brush.

Here are the wood cut prints, clockwise from top left, bluish sheer with sequins, commercial print, Indian light blue sheer, hand-dyed fabric, Setacolor painted poly organza (center bottom), blue faux-silk (bottom left), sheer poly, and Setacolor painted cotton/poly blend (center).

Setacolor painted poly-cotton

Light blue sheer with sequins. I stamped on the backside, the front side of the sequins were super glitzy. I don't even know why I own this fabric.

I used Neopaque paints for these.  True Red, and white/turquoise mix (with a touch of Golden Fluid Acrylic in Pthalo Green) I think I need to go make some red prints with the wood block!