Work in progress

Lately I have been preoccupied with the developments in our world. In an effort to express this concern in a visual way, I have been working on this piece which has as a working title "where are we going?"

Stay tuned. 

fish

After painting, the fish are much more vibrant, but I wasn't satisfied with just creating a painted underwater scene, since, after all, my preference is inserting a sewed element!

I decided to add vertical wavy free motion lines in a light grey tone to suggest the movement of the water.  There is just a layer of felt behind the fish so this is technically, not a quilt.  shhh...don't tell the quilt police!

Normally I would create horizontal wavy lines but these fish are down deep....

 

To create the shadow effect, I used a watersoluble wax pastel crayon called "Neocolor II".  I love this crayon!

 

Not being able to leave the stitching to just the wavy water lines, I also accentuated the details of the water creatures with free motion stitching in variable coloured threads.

another detail shot, this fish is caught in a fisherman's net.

This is an over-all view of the whole piece.  It is quite long, but I have installed it on the wall in a wavy pattern, it undulates like waves on and off the wall.  There are pieces of fishing net and plastic overlayed as the message is our sea creatures are suffering due to too much human interference.  It is called S.ave O.ur S.eas

 

 

 

The initial images of S.ave O.ur S.eas

I created this image by making a drawing, scanning it onto the computer and then having it printed onto cotton through a digital printer. I was extremely disappointed with the colours that came out of the digital printer. 

Using photo images as references, I decided to paint over the digital print. 

Stay tuned for the result!