Challenge
Hostess: Karen Markley
Theme: Non-representational
Due: April 5, 2014
Technique:
Piecing - Take the challenge and see if you can piece completely your
little quilt. Quilters like Ruth McCormick and Judy Dales have proven that even
the most complex design can be pieced. I
know it is easy just to fuse things, but it will give you a nice feeling of
accomplishment if you can see each piece together. However, this is a design challenge and some
of us just don't have the time.
Have you ever made a quilt, and when
it was finished, you wished you had put some of the colors in different places,
that they were brighter or more subdued?
If you had been able to audition your fabrics, or make a mockup first,
you might have been able to avoid these disappointments.
The gray scale is the foundation of
all color choices. Photographers use it as well as artists. And not just with black and white photography.
If you understand value, you can translate any level of the grey scale to colored
fabric. We’ve all studied black and
white photographs and wonder at the pictures that capture our attention: it’s the contrast between black and white that
gives the picture sparkle. The same is
true for the old movies and early television – if they wanted to portray a
dull, depressing mood, they chose very narrow parameters. “Value or tonal contrast creates visual
interest or excitement. … A low key painting is one in which the tonal range is
narrower.”
If you choose a range of fabrics for
a quilt and arrange them on the copy machine, you get a range of grays that
tell you if there is going to be enough contrast.
References and Samples:
Grace Errea teaches a great class on
value. if you go to her website, and click on
workshops, she has a nifty chart with the grey scale on the left and all of the
colors that correspond with every level - purples, greens, etc. She also sells a little value tool that is
invaluable in choosing your fabrics. If
you look at her quilts, you will see that value is a key element in their
success.
Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter, was
the creator of non-representational art. Except for his cubist period, he always used
color in his paintings, but started with a white canvas and added bold
lines. A few of his paintings show at
least 3 gradations from black to white.
Mondrian's book on Neo-Plasticism became one of the key documents of abstract art. In it, he detailed his vision of artistic expression in which "plastic" simply referred to the action of forms and colors on the surface of the canvas as a new method for representing modern reality.
Gray Scale and Value Finder - BLICK
art materials –
Even though
a lot of the artists of that period used black and white, coupled with primary
colors, we can attempt to recreate the abstract while still using a variety of
values instead of just bold colors.
And one more
thing: have fun with this!
I had originally thought I would piece this project, but it turned out to be way more complicated than I could handle...so I fused it. I used lots of different fabrics...velvet, metallics, satins. I couched black cording between all the pieces. I really love working in grayscale
This was a really fun piece to do. I simply freehand cut all the fabrics, pinned them onto the background layered onto batting and started stitching. The snow is a sparkle organdy in two colors layered over a blue hand dyed fabric. All the fabrics are hand dyed except for the organdy. The larger tree trunks are strips of fabric, but all the rest of the trees, branches and the grasses are all thread painted. The crocus and leaves were each cut from a single piece of fabric, then enhanced with stitching and Inktense pencils. 
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