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.

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!

I know I have discussed value in this blog before, but I wanted to address it again as part of the recent posts on color.  Value is my big thing, if the values are right, any colors will work.  If the values are wrong, the art quilt just won’t work.

The easiest way to think about value is to look at black and white photos.  This is value at it’s core–no color just value.  And it doesn’t matter that no one has a gray face, if the gradation between light (white) and dark (black) and everything in between is correct, the brain sees the image properly.

When I used to teach photography, I would tell students to turn the color dial to black and white on their TV set.  I am not sure you can do that anymore, but most photo programs on the computer will allow you to change from color to grayscale mode.  This is a good way to see how colored images translate into simple value studies.

If you have my book you have seen this image (and I have probably posted it before as well).  It is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.  In choosing the fabrics for the skin tones, they must graduate from light to dark.  In this first example, they do, but it was subtle–the result:

Look at the fabric selections in the lower corner.  Even to the naked eye, they appear to move from light to dark.  But they do not move dramatically enough, and the result is that the darkest area of her face (the shadow around her ear) is so light that it doesn’t appear to be a shadow at all.  Everything seems to blend together and looks like one flat surface.

In this example, the values do change more, but the addition of that pink in the middle range is off.  It draws too much attention to that area of the face, making her look like girl with a pearl earring and a skin rash.  We are still suffering a bit from the flat surface syndrome, but it is getting better.

Now look at the final example:

The values move from light to dark with enough contrast to make her face look contoured.  It is also important, when working from a photo (and one of the reasons I prefer to work this way) to use the photo as a guide to value placement.  I start this process by choosing more skin tones then I know I need.  If there are five in the pattern, for instance, I might lay out eight from light to dark.  Then I can compare the lightest values in my assortment with the lightest value in the pattern.  If they look like the same value (put the fabric right next to that area of the pattern and look at them together with your red viewer) that is my #1 fabric.  I do this with each subsequent fabric, making sure the value matches the value in the pattern, until I have chosen all five fabrics.  Then I know they not only move from light to dark, they move in the same values as my original.

Often, I do not want to create an art quilt in the same colors as the original, and in that case I deliberately remove all color first, making a pattern in black and white.  Here is the original pattern for girl with a pearl earring without any color:

This would allow me to follow JUST THE VALUES without the distraction of any color to throw me off.  Using a red viewer (like a “ruby beholder”) I can compare the fabric values to their corresponding areas in the pattern in order to choose the correct fabrics.

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.

The new piece got tweaked and now seems to be working for me.  Here it is so far:

Yes, she still needs a neck (it got lost somewhere in the mess on my work table) and some more little changes are in store.  But where I am happy is with the new green fabric choices and that is due to their color and value.

The last two choices (they didn’t look as bad in person as they did in that photo) were muddy and made her look like she was sitting in a swamp, rather than a meadow on a sunny spring day.  Of course, the swamp could have set a whole different scene and mood, but I won’t go there.  The other problem was that the value of the green and the value of the orange of her dress were too close to each other.  No contrast no interest.

So I could have changed the dress color but decided the muddy green was the problem anyway.  These crisper, lighter and yellower greens work well with the orange.  They look like spring.  She looks like spring.  Even the column behind her looks better now that the green issue is worked out.

Onward….

There is no right or wrong when choosing what sort of fabric to work with in an art quilt, the choices and materials are the very essence of your “voice” in your work.  But when talking strictly about fabric, there seem to be three primary choices, and they are:

solid fabric:

There are many art quilters who work entirely with solid fabrics–no print, no pattern, no “highs and lows” within the color, like batiks.  Many of those who do work only in solid colors find it necessary to dye their own fabric, in order to have a wide range of colors, and more specifically, values in their available choices.

Although the background and hair of this early piece of mine are printed patterns, the face is done in solid fabric.  (There are many better examples, but I have a policy not to show other people’s work on my site, as I feel it invades their privacy and control of their own images).  A full shot of this piece:

shows that I did, in fact, use hand-dye look alike (commercial) and print fabrics in this piece.  This is probably about as close to solid only as I have even gotten in my serious work.

Printed commercial fabric:

If you have ever seen my work, you know this is my very strong bias.  I love the layers of complexity that printed fabric can bring to a piece.  Plus, part of the joy for me in working with fabric is being able to go into a fabric store and pick out (as I did last week) fifteen different “skin tones” to play with.  I cannot imagine coming home with some PFD (prepared for dye) fabric and a few bottles of dye would feel quite as exciting.

The other aspect of working with fabric, at least for me, that gets me inspired and motivated is finding that right piece of fabric for the right place.  Not just the right color or value, using an unexpected pattern in a fabric is what I really love to do.  I look for fabrics that can be used as lots of “textures” like feathers, leaves, hair, etc. but I also use fabrics in a way that seems unusual, but works.

Look at this piece–at all the unexpected patterns used in the skin and hair, as well as the chair:

Look at all the patterns of fabrics in the hair….

I want you to take particular note of the print in the arm that was a botanical sketch…

and in the chair and the shadows of her shirt, look at the variety of patterns used–from feathery to floral to batik.  For me, this is what makes an art quilt more interesting, more exciting, and distinguishes it from works done with paints, or in paper.

Here is another of many examples in my own work of using unexpected patterns and prints:

hand-dyes:

Most art quilters who work primarily in solid fabrics eventually find the need to dye their own.  The subtle variety of values in a given color is so limited in the commercial market that the frustration level must be enormous.  There are websites that sell solids in value ranges, and that would be a very viable option for those who want to work solid but do not want to dye.  I would imagine, however, that the price of these adds up pretty fast.  Dying your own, in larger quantities and with more specific control would be the way to go.

The other category of hand dye fabric is often called art fabric.  These hand dyes are gorgeous all by themselves.  These are just a few from my personal collection:

I am quick to point out that I purchased these gorgeous fabrics from someone else who did the hand dying.  The pros and cons of these fabrics is simple–they are so extraordinary by themselves, that they are lost when cut up.  Therefore, I have used them as backgrounds, like in this piece:

The hand dye background add a lot to the otherwise dull colors used in the rest of the piece.  It was manipulated, however, so that darker areas fell where shadows would be and lighter areas fell where the light source would be.  Cutting into one of these fabrics is not easy.  It is also not always easy to make them “fit” the area I would want–the orange one in the center of the picture above is still uncut as it just doesn’t seem to fit wherever I have wanted to use it.  Obviously, dying the fabric myself would allow me to control the placement of color in the fabric so that this would not be a problem.

I have off and on considered both hand-dying and painting or printing of fabric but have always in the end rejected the notion.  First of all, what I love doing is finding the image, finding the right fabric for each segment of the image, and putting the piece together.  I do not think I would want to spend so much time making the fabric.

The other reason I have rejected the hand dye route is the chemicals.  I gave up commercial photography back in the pre-digital days simply because the darkroom chemicals (after only a few years) were making me sick.  I still have allergies and breathing issues that I am convinced stem from the exposure of photo developing chemicals back in my younger days.  I just didn’t want to deal with the fumes, the exposure, or even the mess that dying or painting would entail.

In the end the decision you make about what type of fabric to use, and whether or not to “make it” is a function of what you want from the process.  It is all part of that word–voice–that I discuss so often.  I did a fair amount of both research and contemplation before I decided to stick with commercial fabric and to use pattern with abandon.  The decision was part of an ongoing discussion I have with myself about my voice.  As my voice always changes, my hesitation to dye fabric may change in the future, as well.  But for now, I need to be true to myself.

Be true to yourself and think about what you enjoy and what you ultimately want your work to look like.  That will make clear what sort of fabrics you want to use.

When choosing fabrics to use for skin tones, the most important factor is value, not color.  Even when the color is not true to life, the facial structure will look right if the values are correct, just as they are in black and white photography.

In this post, I want to talk a little more about value, and how to choose the right fabrics for skin tones.  For the purposes of this discussion, I will limit myself to beige/neutrals that are most true to life.  But the principles are the same regardless of the color range you choose.

The hardest thing about working with true to life “skin tones” is that beige fabrics are not all the same color.  Beige always has an underlying color, like yellow or blue, and these varying beiges do not always work well together, even if the values are correct.  Sometimes it is hard to determine what the underlying color is until you look at two beige fabrics side by side.  That is when you will see that one appears more green, for example, and one looks redder.  It is important to separate your beige fabrics according to their underlying color.

(I am often asked if I purchase my fabrics online, and this is the reason I do not.  The way a fabric looks on the computer screen is always just a little different than the way it looks in person.  Buying the fabric in a store–if you are lucky enough to be close to a quilt shop–means you can evaluate and lay out the fabrics before you buy them and know exactly how they will work together.  Having said that, however, I do purchase lots of beige tones so that when I start a new art quilt, I have lots of options in my stash.  I rarely purchase a fabric specifically for an art quilt.)

These fabrics are neutral, but are much more taupe than beige.  Taupe, by definition is equal parts gray and brown.  They would work for skin tones, but the resulting face will look sickly–which you can use to your advantage if that is what you want to communicate in your art quilt.  But if it isn’t, these are not the colors to use.

Value refers to the relative light and dark of the fabrics you use together.  This does not mean a fabric that is lightest in one assortment will be lightest in every assortment, value means where each fabric sits in relation to the others in the group.  Sometimes it is easy to see by the naked eye, often it requires the use of a red viewer, like a ruby beholder.

The ruby beholder is a piece of red plastic (you can also use a piece of red acetate from an art supply store) which is held about six inches from your eyes, and through which you view your fabrics.  Like a black and white photo, the color is eliminated and all you see are the values as they relate to each other.

Take this group of fabrics–to the naked eye they all look different, but squint when looking at the screen and you will see what the ruby beholder would also show you–they are all the same value.

When viewed through the red viewer, this is more obvious.  That would mean no matter how carefully you identify the light and dark areas on your face, no matter how skillfully you cut the pieces, as soon as you step back a few feet all the fabrics will blend together and look like one fabric.  What a waste of time and effort.

(Keep in mind that the red viewer is easier to look through than it is to photograph through.)   Here is a range of fabrics from light to dark:

and this is what they will look like through the red viewer:

Whenever I start looking at fabrics, I begin with just two and decide (either with out without the viewer), which is lighter and which is darker.  Then I take a third, look at it in relation to these two and decide if it is lighter, darker or the same as what I have laid out.  If it is the same as one of the fabrics, I make a decision about which I like best and eliminate the other.  If it is lighter or darker, I place it where it fits in the range.  I continue this way until I have MORE than I think I will need.  It is much easier to eliminate a fabric or two once you begin determining placement in your art quilt.  Having to find another fabric that fits right in between two values is really tough.

The fabric placed horizontally over the others is the one I am looking at.  Is it the same as anything here, and if not, where does it fit in?

Looking through the red viewer (and trust me that it is more obvious when you actually do this) it looks like the same value as the fifth fabric from the left.  So I would decide if I liked it better than what was already there.  When I look at it again with the naked eye, I decide that maybe I like the one that is already in the assortment better, so this one goes back in the stash.

This may seem like a laborious task, but if the fabric values aren’t right, the piece won’t be either.  Even going slowly and carefully, there are still fabrics that don’t look right when the piece starts to evolve and may be changed down the line.  But a good solid start gets you closer than you would if you jump in.

Right after writing yesterday’s post, I decided to go back to the studio and flip that background fabric back to the front.  Back to trusting original instincts, maybe?  I added several strips of various widths of that softer, lighter golden yellow fabric, and began the process of adding strips to the surface.  Rather than use the technique I had used for water (which worked well for water but didn’t seem to be doing it for me this time) I went back to a technique I used several times before, including in the two small pieces of Asian faces and for the big sightlines project (I am not allowed to show you pictures of sightlines until it officially opens in Houston this year, but I can share a detail of the background).

joy and wisdom 2009

detail of background from sightlines

I liked both of these backgrounds (very similar) because they have a “painterly” effect, and although I was thinking about moving beyond them and doing something different, I decided the technique was right for this piece.

The placement of the different strips is part intuition, part controlled random placement.  I like the way this is going, but here there is too much contrast and the background looks like a piece of matzo.

(for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, this is what matzo looks like.)  The issue here, as it so often is, is value value value.  But unlike most situations, when the ideal is to have light medium and dark values, the goal here is to keep the values close to each other so that the entire surface blends together and doesn’t look splotchy (or matzo-like).

Taking the photo into photoshop, I was able to replace all the dark strips with a lighter blue to get an idea of where to go from here.  I liked the effect, so back to the studio to remove all the dark pieces and replace them with lighter values that had more color to them.

This is more what I had in mind.  Maybe a few tweaks here and there, but the surface will be heavily quilted with a colored thread, which will also serve to unify the colors and values and make the strips less distinct.

I feel as if this is going in the right direction.  You may notice something strange on the right of the photo:

This is my plumb line.  Often it is difficult while working on a design wall to make sure everything hangs straight.  I do often use a level to make sure the top and sides of a piece are hung straight on the wall, but this crude tool is very helpful when placing pieces onto the work.  It is simply an interesting rusted piece of metal I found on the street one day (I love old rusty “junk”) with a string tied to it.  The string has a loop at the top, which is put over one of the pins holding things up.  The metal piece insures that the string falls straight, and I can look at adjacent pieces to be sure they are hung properly.

While previewing this post online, I think the background is good, but still needs to be more blended.  So that is the next goal.

Currently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC is exhibiting some of the photographic works of a relatively unknown photographer, Leon Levinstein.  Levinstein, born in 1910 in West Virginia, came to NYC and photographed people on the streets of NY, mostly through the 1950′s and 60′s.  His work represents everything I am drawn to in my own art.

A master of composition, his work beautifully represents the impact of the proper use of value.  In all art, value is key, but in black and white photography, it is the main event.  But it is his depiction of people, done in a way that pulls the viewer in closer to really examine the action, tells wonderful stories with a single image.

This photo of handball players on the lower east side captures so much movement.  The composition draws the eye past the foreground into the background and the smaller figure.  Photographers know that when photographing dancers, it is imperative to capture the height of the movement, the highest point of a dance move before the dancer begins to descend.  We can experience that height of movement in this photo, as well.  In fact, the figure in the foreground is at such a high peak of movement that his head moves out of the frame.

In “street scene, woman in dark short sleeved dress” we see again his uncanny ability to create so much depth and dimension in his images.  The shapes of the two bodies, the contrasts of values in the woman in the foreground, and the negative space between the figures all make this a dynamic piece.  But it is the thin white line that moves up at an angle and then diagonally across the frame to meet the white curb that adds so much beautiful movement and energy to this photo.

When it comes to story telling, this image of a man looking at a woman on the street does it masterfully.  This single image tells a story that is so identifiable, has so much nuance that it compels the viewer to be drawn in.  We can feel the twisting of his body, and the woman’s stance is a story in itself.

I absolutely adore this image of a woman on a park bench.  The weight of her body, the forward movement, and the way the textured path leads the eye to her are spectacular.  The contrast of the dark behind her, the crumbled white paper to her side, and that break in the line of the benches are so beautiful it is hard to believe the composition of the photo could have been random–and serves to remind us that “art” can come from the most ordinary places.

This photo of an elderly man in a stained white tee shirt is so filled with emotion.  The angle of the body, the contrast of black and white, the triangle created in the space of the ground, and the unexpected viewpoint, all make this a very powerful image.  Like the photo of the woman on the park bench, Levinstein has positioned himself so that there is a strong dark at one side of the central figure and a strong contrasting light area on the other.  Despite the fact that this man is sitting still, the diagonal line of his body and the light area of the floor create energy and immediacy.

Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980 will be at the Met in NYC until October 17.  If you can’t see it in person, see more of his powerful images at the Met’s website:

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={C9CE6916-DFEF-4B86-BDB0-EE290C523227}

(if the link does not work, copy and past it)