I don’t usually have a hard time finding the right fabric for the right spot, but on occasion there is something that just baffles me and requires a lot of auditioning before I am happy.  This is one of those times.  I decided to share the options with you, and talk about what I like and don’t like about each one.  I find when I teach that showing students what is wrong and explaining WHY it is wrong is more instructive than showing them something that works and expecting them to see why.  So here goes, like standing in front you all in a bathing suit!

Option #1

This works, the value is different enough from both the dog and the man’s pants to stand apart, and I like the lines in it.  But I am afraid this is just too literal, and I really want to break out of the mode of directly translating a photo without a little pizzazz.

Option #2

Love this fabric, don’t love it here.  Too dark, too busy and too distracting.  Back in the stash it goes.

Option #3

I would definitely use this so that the pattern ran horizontally, put it in like this to evaluate color and value.  Not loving this choice, too dark to distinguish the pant legs clearly, too much pattern fights with the great print in the dog’s legs.

Option #4

Sometimes when a fabric is too dark, the perfect solution is the back.  Not in this case.  Just like the original I spent so long pulling out, this is just too close to the dog and it all blends together.

Option #5

Again, love this fabric, but not here.  Too dark, pattern is too swirly.

OK, so let’s move away from being so literal and only considering gray fabrics.  Let’s move onto other colors.  So far I have decided that the pattern can’t be too strong and that horizontal lines work well.  Moving on–

Option #6

Seems like it would be right, horizontal pattern, right value.  Looks like dirt.  Next…..

Option #7

ARGH!  Looks like they are standing on a giant pillow.  Nope.

Option #7

Hmmmm, like the value, love the writing on the fabric, relates to the writing on the dog, gives a wonderful sense of dimension.  But I still am not sold on the brown color.

Let’s think about colors.  Reds and oranges will blend in with the traffic cones, which I quite like so they are out.  Yellow?  Too much.  Purple?  Eh.  Green–too much like grass.  Maybe I need to look at blue fabrics, being careful not to make them look like they are standing in water.

Option #8

Like the horizontal, like the color.  Interesting….

Option #9

Nope.  Too close in value to the dog.

Option #10

Didn’t even consider the front of this fabric as it was the same value as the pant legs.  This is the back.  Interesting, changes the whole look of the piece.

I haven’t made a final decision yet, I suspect it is for one of two reasons–either I haven’t found the one that resonates with me yet or I have been at it too long and need to walk away for a bit so I can see it again with new eyes.  The take-away from this is to remember that not every piece, no matter how experienced the artist, goes together without changes and exploring the options.  (Usually not this many!).  But you have to keep trying until it clicks for you.

If you want to make an omelet, you have to crack a lot of eggs!

It wasn’t until I saw it on the computer screen when I posted the other day about print scale, that I noticed the problem with this piece:

Do you see it?  The “sidewalk” fabric (as much as I like the fabric itself) is the wrong value.  You know me, value, value, value.  It is fine with the man’s pantlegs, but is too close in value to the dog’s legs, which means the dog sort of blends into the background.  Not good.

So I took the piece apart (in hindsight I think it would have been easier to scrap it and start over) and started previewing alternatives to that middle gray tone of the sidewalk.  Ideally, I need a fabric that is darker than the legs of the dog, but lighter than the pants and the dog’s back.

See the difference?  I am not sure this is the one yet, I still want to play with it and see if I have something that works a little better.  But now you can see the dog clearly defined against the background, but still allowing the dark areas to stand out as well.

How often the problem turns out to be VALUE, not color.  If in doubt (and even sometimes when not in doubt) it helps to look at the image on a computer screen.  For some reason, whatever isn’t working becomes immediately obvious.  And don’t get so married to any one fabric that you can’t open yourself to make a change.  So often, change is good!

You may remember a few posts back the issue I had with fussy cutting a striated “tie dye” look alike fabric to use as the highlight and shadow area of a pair of jeans.  It didn’t work because the straight line of the light area couldn’t be fitted to the area where the highlight fell.  So it had to be abandoned.

I did like the color and look of that fabric as jeans, so for the new piece I am working on I tried it again.  Because the highlight did not curve as it did in the other piece, this time it works.

Sometimes a great idea isn’t a great idea in a particular application.  And sometimes it is just right somewhere else.

There is an old country song that includes the lyrics “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away.”  That is true for art endeavors, as well.

When last we “talked” I was reworking the pants of a standing figure in a group of three figures I was working on.  Changing the pant fabric meant changing the shirt fabric.  Like a rock rolling down a hill.  This piece had gone through many changes, which should have been a sign in the first place.  That was the fold ‘em.

Here are the three figures all reworked.  But I don’t like them and I don’t like the piece.  So before I spent even more time building a background and quilting, I am walking away from this piece, abandoning it.  I seldom abandon a piece, but sometimes it just doesn’t do it for me.  And if it doesn’t do it for me, I know I will never show it anywhere, enter it anywhere or do anything with it.

I think in the end the problems were not so much with the fabric, or the subtle changes of body language, but that the three figures are just not compelling enough.  Their body language doesn’t tell enough of a story.  Although I like to say my work is about an ordinary moment in time, this is just too ordinary.  There is nothing interesting here, so it goes.

Instead, I have started another piece, also three women, but in this case, I think the body language of the three is a little more interesting.  Here is the first figure:

Maybe I won’t think so as I go along, but she just looks more inviting, she has more of a personality, so I am continuing.  It is not easy to walk away from something I have put so much time and effort into, not easy to walk away from all that fabric, either.  But when it isn’t right, it isn’t right and I don’t want to put it out into the world.

Remember you need to edit your own work.  Everything that goes into exhibition submissions, publications, etc. has to feel like your best work.  Ok, they don’t always all feel like your best, but they shouldn’t feel like they aren’t up to par, either.  It is your name and your voice you want to protect, so sometimes, as hard as it is, you have to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, and know when to walk away.

The other day, Deborah commented “I’m finding this continuing process quite fascinating. Leni, can I ask why you switched the foreground and background legs in the standing figure? In the photo, the leg in the front is the bent leg. It seems you’ve given her less of a double chin in the revision which I think helps define the head’s posture. Much better!”

Hmmm, hadn’t even focused on that but she was right.  By fussy cutting the legs of the standing figure from a single piece of fabric, the two legs look awkward:

The darker area makes the back leg look as if it is behind the other one (which it is) but because that dark comes up into her torso, the straight line of the different color make it appear to be the forward leg.

Here is the problem with the fabric–because the fabric (which I often use to depict denim) is a striated tiedye, I can’t cut it so that the grain of the pattern turns with the bended leg.  So that means this fabric is no longer a contender.

I could have fussy cut in reverse–with the darker fabric as the bent leg and the lighter as the straight leg, making the issue of the “grain” less noticeable.  But that would still mean the darker (in this case bent) leg would appear to be behind the straight leg, not the case.

I could have also simply cut the pants from a single piece of fabric, ignoring the shadow and highlight, but I felt it was helpful in depicting the perspective.  So the fabric had to change.

Having decided to go with two pieces–a lighter and a darker fabric–I used a little trick I often employ, using the same fabric–front and back.  This doesn’t always work, as some fabrics look solid on the back, but in this case, the underside of the fabric looks like a lighter version of the front.  Perfect.

Now you can see that one leg is behind the other, and there is no longer any issue of the torso (actually the area my grandmother used to call “the part of the chicken that gets over the fence last”).  But now I am not sure I like the shirt fabric with this one.  Like a rock rolling down a hill…..

After completing the three figures for the new piece, I looked at them with a critical eye (actually, I looked at the photo, which tells me more quickly what is wrong) and decided that although I was happy with the “level” of detail in the figures, I was not happy with them–yet.

I realized that when I eliminate so much of the fine line details–the facial features, the lines of shadow and highlight, reducing an area from twenty pieces of fabric to one or two–that the nuance of the body language is even more critical.  That is the detail that becomes more important.  That is where I had a problem to fix.

Just to remind you where I was, here are the three figures from the other day:

Let’s start with the standing figure.  She is where I thought I had a small “tweak” to make.  On first blush, what bothered me here is the head and hair.  It is subtle, but the angle of the head is wrong, making her look more confident that vulnerable, and it was the vulnerable I liked in the original photo.  But when I really looked, she seemed “flat” mostly due to the fabric choices, and her shoes (in my attempt to use an interesting patterned fabric) look more like the kind of bedroom slippers a clown would wear.

Although I started with the head and hair, she ended up with almost a complete make-over (only the pants remained, which I liked).  Here are the two photos side by side:

The biggest change (and it is subtle) is the angle of the face and using a fabric for the hair with more highs and lows in it.  The head moved slightly forward changes the whole body language, making her look more sloped with the weight of her own shoulders.  It was a very small change, but I think it is significant.  Taking the pattern away from her shoes and onto her shirt makes the body more important than the feet, and reduces the high contrast between pants and shirt.  I think this is better.

But I didn’t stop there.  Next I turned my attention to the two seated figures, which I had thought weren’t bad.  But on second look, what bothered me was the blond hair–as much as I liked it, it seemed too close in value to the skin tone.  So I made her a redhead.  Then I changed the fabric I used for her skin–finding a botanical sketched fabric in my bin that I could fussy cut to add more definition to the contours of her face and arm.  (I am particularly happy with the arm and hand).  But then I think I got carried away:

I like the fabric used for the pants in the foreground figure, it has more movement in the right direction than the first choice.  But I don’t think I like the plain blue shirt.  Although it does allow more illusion of shadow due to the dark tones in it, I liked the pattern of the first choice (I am not showing you the three others in between!)  I think her hair is more interesting now, too, but I want to rethink the shirt.

Here they are together at this stage:

Improved, but not there yet.  What still bothers me most are those two large areas of plain dark blue–in the shirt of the seated figure and the pants of the standing one.  That is what I will look at today.

It is all a process.

Even though I am not sharing finished works on this blog until I know where they will be going, I am more than happy to share pieces of them along the way.  I am finding working smaller to be quite fun and liberating.  It took me some time, but I am learning to let go of little details and work in broader strokes, preserving the body language that I most value in my work but without every little nuance that goes with it.

Here is a photo I am working from right now:

Of course, as I always do, I eliminate all the non-essential information contained in the photo that will not end up in my finished piece.  The baby stroller, the traffic cone, the shed, the stores–none of that adds anything to what I really want to examine in my art quilts–body language.  Focusing on the figures alone:

Here are the two women on the bench.  It was very hard for me to lose all the detail in the face, the shadows and wrinkles in the jeans and the shirt, but their body language is still clear without that detail.  Fussy cutting the face and arm of the blond woman from a beige fabric with leaves on it, I have been able to add just a hint of shadow and definition without a lot of detail (which would have been tough, she is less than 10″ tall).  The next figure:

Here I have eliminated the other hand holding the soda can–it looked awkward and did not add anything to the “story” that the photo and her body language tells–at least not the story I want to tell.  By fussy cutting the pants taking advantage of the darks and lights in the fabric, I was able to convey the nuance of the shadows and wrinkles without adding lots of little details.  And her slopping shoulder stance is the “take away” not the wrinkles in her shirt.

Compare these to a detail from Tourist Season (you can see the entire piece on my webiste in the gallery section):

Look how many little pieces of fabric are used in the pants alone, and in the details of face of the woman in blue.  Granted, Tourist Season is a very large piece, so there was lots of opportunity to examine and depict even little details.  And don’t get me wrong, I still love this piece (too bad Quilt National didn’t) but it isn’t where I want to be right now.  I am enjoying the simplicity that allows the eye to focus on their body language without any distractions of little tiny details.

On a side note, an innocent comment this morning has me a little miffed.  A workman in the house told me he really likes the interesting “stuff” I make (one of the other guys must have pointed out my art quilts and told him they are mine).  I thanked him and he said (here it is) “it is nice that you have a hobby to keep you busy”.  Now I know he didn’t mean anything by it, I understand that he was trying to be nice.  As he disappeared down the stairs I heard myself saying after him “it isn’t a hobby, it is a career, I have written three books……” which I am sure he didn’t hear (nor would he have cared).  I guess it bothered me that a man makes an assumption if a woman is doing some “craft” projects she must be a bored housewife.

I can hear my husband saying “you are way too sensitive” without even telling him the story.  And maybe I am.  It just would have been nicer if he hadn’t added that “hobby” part.  Silly, isn’t it?

I know I told you in a recent post that I am reluctant to share finished pieces with you, because of the “previously unpublished anywhere” rules for many exhibitions, but I am happy to share rejected ones.  Personally, I think it is sometimes more instructive to see what doesn’t work and why than to just see a finished piece.  It is always interesting to me when artists share where they were and where they decided to go.  Such is this post.

As you may remember, currently I am working on a new body of work, smaller pieces, and trying to abstract them a bit more than I have been.  Letting go of details isn’t easy, but I am enjoying the challenge and most of the results.  The notable exception is a piece tentatively entitled “Crossroads at the Crosswalk” (but even that isn’t set in stone yet.  All my pieces have working titles, but I would say about 80% of them are changed when the piece is complete).  Although I thought this was complete, I changed my mind.

Here is the piece as it was finished ( or so I thought) last week:

I thought that surrounding it with writing that expressed my thoughts would be interesting.  But I was wrong.  While I was working on the figures, I quite liked them.  But the finished piece didn’t sit well with me.  I hated the writing and I hated the background.

So lying awake in bed around 3 AM this morning I started thinking about tearing it apart.  This was one of those situations when I kept telling myself to just keep moving forward.  I am sure you have had those before.  Even worse is when you have doubts and ask others what they think and they always tell you “it’s fine.”  Fine doesn’t cut it with me.  And this wasn’t fine.  So I decided as painful as it would be, I had to follow my instincts or this would be a piece that never saw the light of day (I have a few of those, though not many).  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, unquilting is harder and more time consuming than quilting.  But I liked the figures and wanted to save them from their dismal environment.

The loss of the writing was easy.  The piece had been sewn onto the canvas with the writing, so I tore it off.  Hand-sewn, mind you, so sewing it took a long time, tearing–just a few seconds.

Removing the figures from the background was more difficult.  Why did I feel so strongly?  I had kept the background gray and neutral in order to draw attention to the figures, but the problem was that it was too bland, too dark and frankly the value (there I go again, value, value, value) was too close to the skin tones which made the figures blend into the blandness around them.  Not good.

So here they are released from their gray and boring prison:

Better already, right?  The other thing that bothers me is the big headed girl.  The proportions are correct but her head seems like a gigantic pumpkin.  I do like her body and body language, but here is the group without pumpkin head.

Not liking just the four figures–bad composition number.  Also, the other girl brought the line of their heads down and back up again, which I quite liked.  And I really do like the shy girl with her head down, so I don’t want to lose her.  I do find that taking digital photos and looking at them side by side on the computer is a great way to make potential changes and decisions.

Maybe I need to break up these figures into more than one piece–mom and the two girls together:

and the two other figures together with someone or something else added for a more interesting composition:

Maybe it is haughty hat lady that has to go.

That way I can retain the nice curve that goes down from the mom and up again to the lady in black.  I do know for sure that their background needs to be lighter and less obtrusive.  The rest I need to ponder–which is why there is a 3 AM every morning!

The moral of the story is to trust your instincts.  If it doesn’t seem right to you, don’t ask others for their opinion, yours is the only one that matters.

In recent months I have decided to work smaller.  I have made this decision for three reasons:

1. I get tired of working on a large piece (well, for me large–many people laugh when I call my work large) because I am always anxious to move onto something new.
2. I want to start working more abstractly but still retaining the essential elements that define the body language and can communicate the mood of a figure without a lot of fine detail.  I have been trying to move in this direction for some time now.
3. The primary reason to work smaller is quilt stitching.  I don’t mind doing it, that isn’t the problem.  The problem is that if a face is, for example, around 12″ square it will require stitching on it to prevent sagging and puckering.  But I don’t always want to add that dimension to parts of the face that require quilting stabilization.  The same goes for a leg or an arm, or whatever.  So working smaller means each of the components does not necessarily need to be stitched.

The reasons for working smaller are valid, but there are new challenges to be met when working small enough to avoid quilt stitching within body parts.  The main problem with working small is working with tiny pieces.

Take this figure I am working on as part of a larger piece.  She stands only about 10″ tall, which means the pieces in her face in particular are pretty small.

Here is a close up of her face:

Let me give you a point of reference.  See the pin head at the top of her head?  And that interesting texture behind her–those are the pin holes in my design wall.  Compare these to the size of her eyes, her nose and her mouth and you will get a sense of how tiny those pieces are.

In order to cut these, I put a small piece of fabric on the end of a pin, and use a small scissor to cut the size and shape.  New and interesting challenge compared to the last piece I did where the eye alone was about half the size of this woman’s body.

One advantage to working smaller is that it forces me to simplify.  For a long time I have been trying to eliminate a lot of fine detail so that I can create my figures in broader strokes.  Can’t do a lot of fine detail in a face that only measures about an inch.  Within that inch I cannot use thirty or more pieces of fabric to convey the face, now I have to do it with only a few.  So those few pieces have to be very well chosen, and the shapes must be cut more precisely to do the job of so many in the past.

This face from my Photo-inspired Art Quilts book measures 12″ square.  Look how many more pieces of fabric there are in this face than the one above.  In this face, each of the fabric pieces does not have to be as precise and perfect in order to tell the story of the face.

Here you can see the difference in detail in both the eyes and mouths of the two pieces:

Perhaps you have a new idea you would like to explore.  With it will come new challenges that are different from the ones you may have faced previously.  For me, this is part of the fun, always having to find new ways to accomplish new visions.  Keeps me on my toes!

The woman in my current piece has had more costume changes than a Cher concert.  No less than three since my last post, but looking objectively and carefully, I was able to make some important decisions:

1.  The orange was right but it was too strong.  Trying paler orange fabrics blended into the grass too much.  So I decided to make only the top of her dress orange, therefore limiting the amount of the color and it’s overpowering strength.
2.  The hat had to be blue.  Blue is the opposite color of orange, and therefore blue gives the orange a little punch. (a punch in the good way, no violence here).  The overall composition also lacked some deeper, darker areas (there are a few dark areas of grass, but that wasn’t enough) so the hat became dark blue.  Only a coincidence that it was dark blue or dark purple in the original photo.
3.  In deciding that the bottom of her dress was to be another color (it was actually a shirt and skirt of the same fabric) I chose a fabric that blended an orange ground with some magenta and deep blue/purple colors.  This not only gave the blue hat a little support, but also introduced another darker value which made her more prominent in the composition and made the overall composition more interesting.

So here she is:

I am getting tired of looking at her–ready to finish and move on!