Yellow

Autumn is Finally Here!


I love Autumn, I truly do. The lack of humidity, the cool crisp air, fresh apples, and pumpkins everywhere, and most importantly my allergies are starting to calm down.

The part I love the most,  however, is the colors of the leaves. Reds, golds, oranges, and brilliant yellows, and everywhere!

So it's no surprise that I created art cloth show casing these colors in my Colors of the Earth and Pretty Pigments online classes.

If you'd like to capture the beauty of nature's natural palette using natural earth pigments then join me in my newest class Colors of the Earth.  Class starts on October 17th!


Part One - Black Birds in Trees Harvest


With a round object of your choice (I used a 6" plate) and a soft pencil (HB) draw a circle on your 9x12 sheet of watercolor paper.

 
 
 
Using a texture or geometric stamp, and waterproof ink, add some texture around the circular area.
 
 
Now fill the circle with some yellow paint, I used Folk Arts Medium Yellow.


Using a thin layer of grey paint the background.


The thin layer of paint will allow the background texture to show through; allow paint to dry completely.


Now apply alcohol inks and in random manner.  I spritzed the moon area with butterscotch, lettuce, and red pepper.


Not to worry the inks will dry way lighter than what you see in the image here! 


About half dry now, it will become lighter still!


Once the alcohol inks are dried take a baby wipe and in a swirling motion remove most of the ink from the moon shape on the paper.


This gives you a realistic moon shape and fall harvest coloring.  Not all of the ink will wipe away and this is fine you don't want it all to wipe away.


If you need to amp up the color for the background now is the time to do so.  Here I recharged the alcohol ink using some additional inks and a water bottle.  Spritzing with water will cause speckling, etc., to occur giving you more texture.


Place stencil of choice onto background, and using dry stencil brush techniques push the paint through the stencil onto the paper.  Here I'm using my stencil Black Birds in Tree which is available through StencilGirl Products!


Too much paint will cause the paint to go under the stencil and well creates a HUGE mess, but this piece can and will be redeemed!  Folk Art Paint - Licorice


And because sometimes I am a bit of a perfectionist, yes me, I went and created a second piece the steps of which are above, just to see if I could get the stencil portion correct!


And I managed to keep the paint in the lines this time!  Ok, the paint should be dry now I'm off to add more layers to the first version of this piece to see where it takes me, oh and to cook dinner!

Stay tuned for Part Two!

WIP - Crow on Yellow 052313


I worked a bit more on the crows feet last night and started this side of the branch it is perched upon. 

Today it's all about finishing the app, which is taking longer than I anticipated simply because as I go through my old natural dye nots I find myself adding more plants and more categories about the colors, fastness, etc.  Phew... that was a long sentence! 


It's starting to look like a bird!


WIP - Big Blue Stem

Here it is hanging vertically, I started this piece many moons ago, as in like sometime around 1999 many moons ago! 


This piece has always bothered me, there's a thread over on the Quilt Art list about cutting up a piece.  Well I've been tempted to cut the dark side of this quilt off for some 12 years now!  Now that I have Adobe CS 6 I've started experimenting with this piece
Here it is without the marks, I'm thinking some additional stitching and or embellishment is needed to make this piece really sing.

Studio Redux - Update 062911

Studio Curtians:  I was going to make some simple curtains/drapes from white fabric but after looking at this quarters issue of Where Women Create I decided to go out on a limb and add some color to my otherwise bottle green studio!

I'll have to paint more fabric this weekend, the trauma there is just unbelievable, NOT :-) as these two inspirations pieces won't be enough for one window even.