Paper and Threads

Yesterday my husband and I went to an open rehearsal of the Philharmonic Orchestra in NYC - with Itzhak Perlman playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.  While my husband waited on line inside Avery Fisher Hall, I sketched the new Lincoln Center Plaza Fountain with State Theater behind it.

I'm trying to fill up one of my first recycled books and it has paper that I hate.  And my scanner also hates it and the buckling of the paper shows as dark shadows. 

It is great fun to see the Orchestra and Conductor dressed in jeans and T-shirts - and to hear parts of each piece several times while they work on it.  I'm getting better at sketching people who return to the same or similar positions frequently so I decided to sketch the Music Director, Alan Gilbert, while he was conducting the first piece.  Then I sketched the Concertmaster.

After sketching at the morning concert, I felt like sketching more and went to Figure Drawing at the Society of Illustrators last night.  Before the models appeared and while the jazz group was setting up, I did a quick small painting of the bass player.  Sketches from figure drawing will be scanned and uploaded later....

My blog has been down several times in the last week, and my poor son, who maintains the server it was on, had to come home from several long days at work and try to fix it.  Last night he moved it to a new server, so I think it will be OK.  Isn't he amazing?  Although he is a self-taught computer guru, he is a busy physician and was packing for morning flight with his wife and my fabulous grand daughter Annabelle.  A public thank you and a big hug for JJ. 

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This is the 4th little quilt in my series in which I am exploring multiple ways to transfer my figure drawings to fabric. 

It started as a full piece of white fabric.  The figures were traced on the fabric with an Ebony pencil, and painted with regular brushes and thickened procion MX dyes.  Then the background was painted, stenciled with sequin waste and net, and stamped - with the same dyes.  After 24 hours to dry, the excess dye was washed out.  The figures were then free-motion stitched through all 3 layers and the binding applied

Next I might try Shiva Painstiks - I bought them 4 years ago and have never tried them.  This is all play and I'm having so much fun! 

Posted by Shirley at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Two members of our Journal Study Group are in Europe at the moment, so Pat and I consoled ourselves with lunch, an art auction preview, the Pastel Society of America Show, and a late afternoon stop for coffee and sweets.

Swann Galleries is auctioning several hundred prints of old New York today. so we went to enjoy them during the previews.  I was so inspired by these drawings of master artists that I wanted to go out then and sketch my way through this wonderful City.

We walked from Swann to Gramercy Park and went to see the current exhibit from the Pastel Society of America.  Neither of us use pastels and were amazed at the photographic detail possible.  When we left the National Arts Club, we stopped across the street and did quick sketches of the entrance for me to work out my need to "sketch NYC."

While drinking our coffee, both of us wanted to do another in our Carla Sonheim 100 Faces project.  So we sketched each other, across the table, with our non-dominant hands.  Quite a challenge.  Here are 4 more of my Face series, these are all full face instead of profile like the last ones I uploaded.  Pat is the one with sunglasses on her head and reading glasses on her nose!  It makes her look really young which she says is OK, because in her mind she is 22 years old.

Posted by Shirley at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

After months of delay, I made another quilt journal page today, my 3rd for the week.  I really wanted to play with some of my figure drawing images on fabric, but just couldn't get started.  I'm sure that I was afraid that I couldn't successfully make what was in my mind.  So I had to force myself to select an image, resize it, print it, and pretend that I was just going to practice some stitching.  Of course I got excited when I started and now I think I'll be able to continue work on this series.

I am exploring ways to transfer figure drawings of a pregnant model to fabric and only using my own dyed fabrics for the quilt.  The image on the right was a watercolor and ink drawing I did in my sketchbook of a sculpture by the Israeli artist Ruth Bloch.  I transferred the JPEG to EQ Printable fabric with an Epson photo printer.  The seated figure was a fused applique using WonderUnder.  The image was stitched using free motion quilting.

                                             Size 8.5 X 11 inches

Posted by Shirley at 8:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I originally saw quilt journal pages at the Houston Quilt festival in 2002 and made many in 2003.  Conventionally, these are small art quilts that are 8.5 X 11" in size, although there aren't any fixed rules.  This year I decided to make more, using my figure drawings as inspiration and exploring a variety of ways to transfer the images to the fabric.  I finally had time to play this week and made two.

Quilt Journal Page #1: (Note: forgot to take my handsewing needles out - upper right corner)

I transferred the image to the background fabric and stitched around it with free motion quilting.  The background was colored with Neocolor II wax crayons and the entire piece was bound with hand-dyed fabric.

Quilt Journal Page #2:

The two images were stenciled with Jacquard fabric paint on a hand-dyed background fabric, and then quilted with free motion and straight stitching.  The binding is hand dyed fabric from my stash.

I still haven't tired of the images of the pregnant model from my figure drawing class, even though I used them to make many stamps and several small artist books.  I will probably use more of them to extend this series as I explore more fabric surface design techniques. 

Posted by Shirley at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)