Posts Tagged “fabric painting”

Starting out…
Mid-way through
Final painting, I still need to heat set and stitch.
I didn’t start out with a great photo of Mazzaro by Klee, and have had to improvise while painting this one to compensate for the poor copy that I have. But, all in all, I’m happy with how it turned out. I still need to iron, fuse the interfacing and stitch, but then it will be finished. It’s always a creative challenge for me to start on a new famous fabric painting. A little bit of discovery is involved each time I do one of these. It’s a chance to get into the mind of another artist, a different time period. So far, I’ve covered the Renaissance, 19th C and now a 20th C artist. It’s also a very meditative process for me that’s hard to describe.

When I think about it, I am really interpreting another artist’s vision. The image is recognizable, but I bring my own baggage with me when I make something. When I say baggage, I mean that I have my own way of working, my favorite color palette, biases etc. So, it never truly is an exact replica but my own take on a master’s work.

Tags: fabric painting, klee

I applied a 1″ pencil grid to the photo
I chose a blue batik background fabric and cut it 1″ larger all around to 6″ x 8″ to allow for an allowance
Using a white fabric pencil, I transferred the 5″ x 7″ grid to my fabric
According to the original grid, I have drawn and transferred the basic shapes of the painting onto the fabric.
Final step before painting is to staple the fabric to foam core or some other rigid surface.
I thought I would give a step by step look at how I approach one of my famous painting reinterpretations since I recently signed up for a swap. It’s fairly straight-forward, but you do have to make some creative accomodations to make it work. I have already started painting this one, but will have to share it with you tomorrow. I am using acrylic paints on commercial fabric. Once I have finished painting the piece, I will heat set the paint with an iron and then add interfacing so that it is stiff enough to handle the machine stitching that I will subject this to tomorrow. Tags: fabric painting, klee

A grouping of some fabric impressions I made with Shiva Paintsticks
Impression on white fabric on top and painted fabric on bottom
Impression on brown fabric
The linocut that I used to make the impressions on the fabric samples
I was playing around in my studio yesterday with my new Shiva Paintsticks. I tried a number of techniques, but one that I think is really successful is to rub a paintstick over fabric that has been placed on some type of texture. I have some texture plates, but couldn’t find them anywhere because my studio is currently in a state of uncontrolled chaos and must be straightened up before I do anything else…toute suite!

Do you know how it feels when you know you have something and can’t find it anywhere. Then you end up making more of a mess in your desperation to find said item? That’s what it was like for me today, except that I did come across some lino-cuts that I had made in college from a print-making class. Perfect for placing under the fabric for an interesting design.

I should see if I can find any of the prints that I made using this particular lino-cut and share them with you. I also found two unused 18″ x 24″ pieces of Golden Cut Linoleum. I should cut these into smaller pieces and make some custom rubbing plates for myself. Of course, I would need to find my palm grip carving tools. They’re around here somewhere.

Now, I must wait for these fabric samples to dry. In the meantime, I started stitching this.

Observations: When I was painting the backgrounds onto the fabric I did try the Shiva Colorless Blender, which works pretty good. I think that I would go through one of these pretty quick, however, so I think I’ll stick with some type of oil based medium. I have also identified the colors that I will run out of fastest and the colors that I would like to have such as true pink, purple, lime green and maybe a few others to round out my palette.

Tags: fabric painting, lino-cuts, shiva paintsticks