Posts Tagged ‘painting’
Collage on Canvas
I made this canvas for work. The background painting was a previous painting that either Luke or I had done many moons ago (read: before we were married). The “create” part of it though is new. It came to me in a sort of ‘flash’ of inspiration, and after some procrastinating I managed to create it. I suppose it’s how I imagined it…
Anyway, as you can see there are lots of bits and pieces used in this collage- fabric, paper scraps, film, googly eyes.There’s a dried rose, some sticks and leaves, a hook and a headphone jack divider thingy…
I also recycled Poiter somewhere. Can you see where? What’s your favourite part of the collage?
Finally…
On Sunday morning I struggled to wake up for church. I was just So tired. The day before, Saturday I didn’t need to be anywhere, and WANTED to sleep in, but was up by 7:30. *sigh*
Anyway, I managed to find a few spare minutes in the morning, and took the opportunity to FINALLY finish my tree painting. You’ll remember that I finsihed the embroidery that goes with it quite a while ago, and that they were started at the same time…!
So, here it is- the finsihed product!
The reason it took me so long was because a) I wanted to use real bark for the swing, and b) I wanted to use real string to tie it on.
The bark I managed to get a while ago, but the string just seemed to envade me… I couldn’t find the right stuff anywhere! I decided to bite the bullet and just paint on the rope, because that’s better then having it unfinished, nagging at me. If I find the sting that’s in my mind, then I can glue it over the top. 
Bark for the swing
This painting is SIGNIFICANTLY different to any other painting I’ve ever done, because I PLANNED IT! haha. Usually I am done with a painting after a few hours, this one took weeks! I am proud of my efforts though, and can see the benefits to thoughtful planning, experimenting, and purposeful painting. On of the things I’m proud of is the ‘bark’ of the tree. Good ol’ gap filler gave me the texture I wanted here, and then light brush strokes using about 5 layers gave it the final look I was after.
Tree trunk from the front.
Bark looking up (to show you the texture)
The other thing I’m proud of is how I experimented with the leaves (see tests below). I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, though if I did it again I would make them smaller. My favourite leaves are the ones with multiple colours. It was an accident how they happened- but I love it!
After much experimenting- the right type of leaves!
Leaf Experimenting... texture vs plain, and different style leaves
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Tags: painting
Trees Art
The other day I started to new art projects, one is an embroidery, the other is a mixed media painting. They’re both esentially the same design- a large tree taking up most of the frame, and a swing hanging from a low branch.
This is probably the first time since Year 12 Art class that I used a visual journal to plan out what it would look like. At first I wasn’t too keen on it, but I remembered how important they were in high school, and persevered. I’m really happy with how things have progressed, and I’ve been able to problem solve it all out. I love problem solving.
Tree Embroidery.
I’ve always had this design in the back of my head. I’ve done other paintings like it before, but making this into embroidery meant it could have a bit of a different ‘feel’ about it. It could be much more detailed.I also started out with a size in mind, because I have a frame I want to put it into.
The hardest part was getting the leaves right. And I used up lots of pages just deciding on a leave pattern that worked. I wanted to give the effect of leaves, without embroidering them individually in a ‘traditional’ leaf shape.
Here I did one sketch with the semi-’traditional’ leaf look.
I wanted the leaves more ‘joined’ and flowing…
I felt like this was a bit too ‘messy’ so tried to go for more curls. I also tried to incorporate the curls into the trunk. I was using the same sort of style that the letters in my Christmas wall hanging were written in.
My design ended up like this (below). I scrapped the sunrise idea above, cause I thought it might be too complicated, and take away from the tree. It would be quite nice on its own though.;. The left side of this sketch is for the painting in the same pattern. Obviously that has a few different things to worry about, like more options for the background, and because it’s mixed media, what exactly I’ll use to print/paint/glue etc.
I ended up keeping each ‘leaf’ individual, but make them into spirals so that they got the curly look, but were a bit neater. Soon you’ll be able to seen that that idea has evolved a bit as I’ve been embroidering (when I show you my progress so far)!
I regret not taking more process shots of actually drawing it onto my fabric and what not. But I’ll learn for next time! Soon I’ll be able to show you how it looks on fabric, and the embroidery progress so far!
Tags: embroidery, painting, planning, tree art, trees, visual_journal
