Things I like - Lines and Bold Graphic Style

More pictures from Melbourne and the NGV today. Did your primary school art teacher ever say to you, "Things don't have black lines around them in real life"? Well even if that is true many artists use back lines and a bold graphic style in their artwork. Many of the artworks I liked had a graphic, bold feel to them. Lots of my favourites were lino or wood cut prints like those above and below. Of course the Escher exhibition was full of them. I use this graphic style and black lines a lot in my own mono-prints and block prints.

This bold graphic design was not limited to prints. Many of the paintings showed a similar style.

Line seems to be the most important element in many of these pictures. Ideal for representation in stitch or mono-print. Watch this space.

Another Mixed Media Cairn

I have finally finished another mixed media cairn piece mounted on MDF. This one has needle felt, sewn acrylic pour, collage, and resin.

Here it is hanging next to the first mixed media cairn.

Whole Cloth Pebbles Abstract

I'm trying a whole cloth quilt technique to interpret one of my abstract designs. 

First I used a Frixion Pen to draw the design onto some cotton. The pen rubs out with the heat of friction or with an iron.

Next I quilted the whole design using thick wadding to make the pebbles raised.

The grey stripes were painted with acrylics with a little textile medium added.

For the coloured sections I used watercolour pencils activated with textile medium.

The whole thing is stretched over a frame.

More Play With Fabric Pebbles

Today I decided to quilt some of my fabric pebbles to make them more 3D. I also wanted to experiment more with colour so I also quilted some blank pebbles using plain cotton. Once the quilting lines are in it's easier to paint the sections as the stitching keeps the colours separated. The pebble above was painted with acrylics and Posca pens. I added a little textile medium to make the paint flow and to make it washable.

I added some extra colour to some of my acrylic pebbles using watercolour pencils and Inktense pencils. I used textile medium to activate the colour rather than water to make it washable. The fabric medium is also more viscous than water so the colours don't run together too much.

I tried a Gelli® print over a quilted pebble. The colour mostly picked up on the raised areas which was what I wanted. It's difficult to see until I cut the pebble out though. I also tried masking off my Gelli® plate with strings whilst taking the print.

I've been thinking about how to attach the pebbles to the background. I could easily sew or glue them on but I don't always like them to be raised above the background area rather than being part of it. With some scraps I tried "fabric marquetry" a technique which I've seen in wood. I cut the pebbles and their holes from pieces of similar thickness. When the pebbles are inserted into the hole they are the same level as the background. I ironed some interfacing on the back to keep them in place whilst I stitched around them.

Another way to keep the pebbles and background the same height would be to quilt the pebbles and landscape at the same time from a single piece and then paint them in. I'll try that next,

Pour 'n' Stitch

You may recall a while ago I tried out acrylic pouring. Whilst you can get some nice pretty pictures there's not much skill involved and the paintings look like every other acrylic pour I've seen. I wanted to try something different. As usual my mind turned to the question "Can you sew on it?".

Well it turns out that yes you can sew onto an acrylic pour by hand and machine. I had some leftover paint hanging about so I used it to make an acrylic pour directly onto a silicone craft sheet. Several days later it was dry and could be just peeled right off.

I cut some rocky hillside shapes from the pour, sandwiched them between some soluble stabiliser and started to stitch.

This one I pulled the stitches to gather the pour into a 3D rock.

On some of the pours I left some glue residue when I washed away the stabiliser. I then moulded them into shape and left it all to dry again.

I think they will become part of my collage and stitch landscapes.