Colorado Art Studio

I’ve been busy the past few days…my daughter turned 9 years old today! But we had her birthday party on Saturday. A sleepover with 6 other girls…aacck, remind me not to do that again. I never realized how much noise 7 girls can make! They were screaming, singing, dancing, running up and down the stairs, slamming doors etc. And, they can EAT too! They went to bed around midnight and woke back up before dawn. I just can’t do that anymore. While it seemed crazy during the event, I can actually step back today and remember it more fondly, ie. I have caught up on sleep and feel human again.

It’s funny, on my birthday, my mom always says “X amount of years ago, I was giving birth to you!” I can now appreciate that sentiment. I was thinking about the day I had her all day long! She is probably the biggest gift of my life!

Today, her aunt is coming over and all of us are going out to eat for her family birthday celebration. Where does my little one want to go, you ask? No Chuckie Cheese for my little gourmand, she wants sushi! So, we’re heading over to Sushi Den, one of Denver’s finest.

Needless to say, I didn’t get anything done art wise the past few days. Today, I managed to make another fabric postcard, this one of my own design. The background fabric originally began as plain old white fabric, which I then stained, painted, stamped etc. My mom gave me a Sherrill Kahn book recently, and I decided to play around with some of her fabric painting techniques. I should try to photograph this one again tomorrow. It has a lot of texture and color variation that isn’t really evident in the photograph.

I also managed to paint the background fabric for the Gustav Klimt postcard. I hope to finish that tomorrow.

I managed to finish this one this afternoon and even uploaded it to my Etsy shop already. See below if you would like to see the progress photos.

Amber put out another challenge for me…Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. For some reason, I have Mission Impossible in my head. You know… “Your mission (Cynthia), should you accept it…” Hell ya, I’m up for a challenge and already have the image ready to go for tomorrow!

I decided to make another painted/quilted fabric postcard of a Van Gogh because his work is very expressive and painterly and I’ve always enjoyed this particular piece. So, I thought it might be fun to show some sequence photographs of a work in progress. Cafe Terrace at Night was painted in Arles, France in 1888 when he first moved to the region. I also found out that this was the first of his night scenes. I suppose if I had thought this out before I would have started with this one, but I didn’t.

So, here’s my technique: I used Photoshop to resize the image to roughly postcard size, in this case 4.75″ x 6″. I printed a copy of the painting out and using a ruler and pencil, have drawn a grid onto the copy to help me transfer the image to my fabric. I used roughly 1″ increments. I hope to be able to show more progress photos later today or tomorrow depending on how much I get accomplished.

I’ve been playing around with my template and banner a little bit. I would be interested in feedback because I’m not sure how the colors come across on anyone else’s monitor. Is it hard to read? To shocking colorwise? I’m just curious, so let me know.

One last thing before I get to work…I don’t normally pimp products or things unless I really really like what I’m using. So, here it goes: I love Skype! I had seen it mentioned before on websites, but never really looked into it and didn’t really know what it was. But, a friend of mine moved to London about a year ago and international phone rates prohibit talking frequently. He turned me onto Skype…you can talk for free provided you and your callee both have Skype. It’s basically VOIP and all you need is a pair of headphones with a mic to plug into to your computer. It also has a chat function if you prefer doing that, and you can change your settings to show when you’re online, busy etc.

I have another reason for loving this! A few months ago, my husband and I cancelled our land-line and I had no real way of calling my step mom who lives in Germany without buying a phone card and going to a pay phone. With Skype, you can call land lines for a small fee. I can talk with her for .021 cents a minute over the internet! Right now, until the end of the year, Skype users can call landlines in the US and Canada for free.

One word of caution though, I was playing around with my account yesterday and I decided to let anyone see that I was online and boom, I had 2 creepy guys trying to chat me up. I quickly changed my online status and now only allow contacts to call or chat with me. Skype maybe old news for a lot of you, so sorry if it’s a repeat.

All three of the fabric postcards have been fun to make, but this one proved to be more of a design challenge. For the other 2 postcards, I turned the figures into fabric appliques and then used my sewing machine to stitch the details. However, for Van Gogh’s Starry Night, I took a good look at the painting and thought I needed a different approach. So, instead of making an applique, I painted a loose copy of the original on my fabric and then machine quilted the details.

I really like working on these small pieces because I get a chance to experiment with different techniques. I could really see using the technique that I used for this postcard for my own original designs. Although I have to say that I’ve enjoyed looking at some of history’s art icons and reinterpreting the paintings into fabric.

Want to see where it all happens? Here’s a photo of my work area (see below) which is currently in the basement of our house. I need more room, but am happy that I have a place to call my own! This was taken a few days ago, and it is significantly messier now. When I start having to search too hard for things, I tidy up. I’m almost there as of today!