Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Red Sky in Morning

This piece is made from 6 bird shapes from Jinny Beyers book on Tesselations. I lightly beaded some of the feather shapes on the wings. In looking for a background nothing but an opposite on the color wheel seemed to work for me - I suppose that is because This is the way i usually work. My biggest problem is never feeliing that the piece is complete but not knowing where to from here. Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thank you ahead.
Pat Havey

8 comments:

Cherie in Del Mar said...

What a challenge fitting all those pieces together! The beading and quilting pull the bird together and put him in motion...fun piece
Cherie

Art by Rhoda Forbes said...

I do see the motion, you've achieved it well. I wonder if a yellow/yellow green background would have worked for this challenge?
Just a thought.

Joni said...

Pat, This is a very interesting piece. I'm having a hard time picking out the tesselations (6 birds) but like the effect you acheived. Your bead work makes this piece special.

Carole said...

Hi Pat.... I need to apologize, but I really don't see the birds. I am sure they are there because I have seen Jinny Beyers 'birds'... I am wondering what would happen if you outlined each bird in floss or some kind of outline stitching? But I sure do like your quilting and beading.
Carole

anna k. said...

Pat, i must admit i am having difficulty seeing the 6 birds. On looking at the enlarged view it looks as if there is a circular cluster of beads ?representing an eye on the upper left bird. Sorry if this sounds confused.
The fabric you have chosen for the shapes is fantastic, but perhaps a different background would have fitted the analogous portion of the challenge.
Interesting work,
Anna K.

Cynthia Ann Morgan said...

Hi Pat, I think I see the individual bird shapes in the piecing inside the overall big bird...they just don't show up because the pieces uses different color/fabric. Regardless, I think the overall bird shape is there with an upward movement. The red background with the green pieces creates a somewhat jarring effect because they are both pure hues. If the red were blackened like burgundy it wouldn't have that quite effect. The other thing I see is that the background is loosely quilted. You might try fixing both these things with one thing: quilt the heck out of the background (to push it back and the bird will pop out more) in a dark color like black or brown (to mute the intensity of the pure red). Also, some white/light bead for the eye would show up nicely.
Another thing to look at is cropping...there may be some excess background at the bottom. See how it looks after the dark quilting, it may be OK.
Good luck!
Cynthia

Betty Warner said...

I think I can see the birds, wonder if a really bright bead in each eye would help. The piece does have movement. If you decide to incorporate some of the suggestions for intense quilting of another color in the background and still are not happy, you might consider not just chopping off some of the bottom, but also, changing the shape of the bottom to echo the bottom of the birds.

fastfriday said...

thank you everyone for your suggestions and comments. I am trying some of them now. Life seems to get in the way sometimes but now I think I have time to play with it.
Pat Havey