Crafthouse on Granville Island now offers some of my pictures for sale. What a gem of a place, not to be missed if you’re an island-going craft lover! Click on the picture and scroll down for a map and other info. On the same street as the big yellow Kids Market.
On the subject of artwork, I’m not idle. I’m working on something.
I may be some time : )
A quick note to say thank you for coming and voting at our Art Focus Spring Show! I share the Most Popular Artist Award with Anna Wagner, who also won for Best Picture. Very much appreciated!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Just a subtle ad for our upcoming Art Focus Spring Show! Check out the ever-greater variety of artwork by our growing membership. I’ll be around somewhere stitching and enjoying a break from packing for my move to downtown Vancouver!
Whytecliff Marine Park is near Horseshoe Bay, BC, the same location that inspired my Pebble Beach picture.
I painted the background sky, mountains, and island, and hand-stitched the water. The rocks are mostly machine-stitched with tiny bits of hand sewing where I made minor changes.
The birds in the shallows are some kind of duck, but not regular ducks. I tried stitching them more “accurately” at first but they looked just awful, more like sea monsters than birds. Halfway through unpicking them they started looking bird-like after all, so I decided to leave them semi-impressionistic.
The camera doesn’t pick up that the most distant water is done in shiny thread that glints in the light. I used similar thread around the ducks to represent the splashes from their diving.
* Thought of the Day alert *
I’ve noticed there are a couple of significant moments that happen during the making of each of my pictures. One is when, sometimes scarily close to the end, you look at the back of the work – that terrible place where your threads cross over each other anyhow and all your loose ends hang out – and it looks better than the front. (I try not to look now).
But the other moment is when you have the strange feeling you’re holding a piece of actual landscape in your hand, rather than a piece of stitching, and the stitches you’re making are immediately transubstantiated into trees, or rocks, or whatever. A bit disorienting because in reality you’re working on a small scale. The sensation passes quickly because I’m too aware of my own mistakes, and/or busy making them; but rewarding all the same. It’s the same feeling I’m striving to create, however briefly, in those who view my artwork.
I love my new Das Keyboard!
What has a keyboard got to do with fibre art? Well, whether you make fibre art or love it, you appreciate the feel of things. And once you feel this keyboard, you may just fall in love. And no, I’m not on commission.
I want to type long words! It feels so good.
Click on the picture or the link above to read more. I recommend the “silent” version especially if you need to hear audio while you type. Happy tapping.
Although it’s not really called Crumb Cottage – as far as I know anyway – it’s about the size of a crumb in my painting. I believe this cottage is on Pender Island, in between mainland Canada and Vancouver Island. You can see it on a ferry trip from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay.
I painted the mountains and sky, and the mist between. Then I did some very casual free motion machine embroidery to try to give the look of distant fir trees. For some of the deciduous trees around the cottage I glued on a tiny amount of lint. I’ve discovered that serger thread quickly chops up as finely as you could want.
The cottage itself was tricky. In future I might use a tiny piece of felt rather than thread. I did this in thread by hand and it was difficult to keep the stitching more or less the same thickness, and keep doors and windows reasonably straight, and incorporate some colour variations throughout. Plus, you feel kind of mean, sticking your big old needle into someone’s living room!
The water was my favourite to do. I took lengths of high-gloss machine embroidery thread and split them into strands. That way you get two thin threads that are nice and wiggly, like hair when you loosen it out of a braid. They look like water without any effort from me. I did longer stitches in the foreground (forewater?) and very short ones in the distance. Oh and I sewed some tiny stitches in silver and green metallic thread here and there, and some invisible thread, for sheen and sparkle. All done, hurray!
Click on the logo to read more about this group I just joined, who offer members’ work for sale out of the Crafthouse on Granville Island, Vancouver. I look forward to meeting this group of talented folks and showing my work in new places!
This looks similar to my earlier picture Blossoming (and is based on another “slice” of the same tree) but is created differently, by gluing down thread lint rather than with machine stitching. There’s a little bit of hand stitching of branches and twigs.
Yes, it did take ages, and no, I don’t mind : )
To make the lint I chop up thread in the colours that I want. There are people who make art from dryer lint by the way.
Maybe the camera doesn’t catch it, but the lint is heaped up a few mm thick in places, so that it sticks out at you. Because the spirit of spring just cannot be restrained : ) The darker, shadowed parts I squashed down deliberately to make them recede physically away from you. A certain amount of sculpting has gone on in this piece, on a small scale (I use my fingers or a toothpick).
.
I leave you with a wee close-up.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I’m now a member of this lovely art group! Click on the logo above to see our members’ artwork. Thank you for the welcome meeting!
Thought I’d show you some lint I’m preparing for a new cherry blossom picture. I did the last one in stitching but I’ve been wanting to try it in lint. I think it will have a softer look, which seems right for the subject. There will be some stitching of the branches though.
I’ve already painted a sky-blue background and glued down a few blossoms “in draft” as pictured, to see if my colours look okay. Then I chopped up some strands of thread very finely (taking care not to sneeze : )). Next comes the gluing…currently I’m sticking lumps of lint down onto blobs of acid-free tacky glue, unless I run out of patience and get some spray version of the glue.
Now let’s see which comes first, the actual season of spring, or the finished piece!
.
