A few posts ago I discussed creating water from only a few fabrics.  Yes, it is easy to create the feeling of moving water using only three fabrics–a light, medium and dark value.  But when you want to turn up the volume, multiple fabrics make the water more interesting.

I will not show you the whole piece (so many shows now do not want work that has been seen, even on the artist’s blog) but I will show you the water part.  Here, I used multiple fabrics, many unexpected choices for water, and personally I like the results.

The idea here is to create water that looks like it is flowing rapidly.  This was done using a variety of fabrics, but the starting point (as always) was one light, one medium and one dark.  The difference here is the addition of several “zingers” in the mix.  A zinger is a fabric that does not have one specific value because it is made up of several values–like the the blue and white checked fabric.  Just look at the closeup of the fabrics in here:

A lot of these fabrics don’t exactly scream water, but the cacophony of patterns creates movement that I think looks really nice.  I have used this idea in depicting other things besides water:

Like the hair in “The Endless Dance of the Ponytail”

to tree bark…(notice the addition of an african fabric in the mix)

The take-away?  Open up your stash and use all those little scraps you have left to create something wonderful–whether it is texture or just movement, have fun and embrace the process.  The results are great.