Monet Challenge
I didn’t get a chance to do any felting for a while until this week because we had a ridiculous heatwave here. I did manage to make a few batts for the Monet challenge though. After choosing some of my favourite paintings, or ones which I thought I might be able to use as inspiration, I made a simple montage:
I then messed about with it in Photoshop:
Using this for inspiration I made a couple of green batts; a purpley one; a purple and yellow blended one which looks kind of mustardy/mossy, and a mixed blue one. Looking at Monet’s style he mostly had a straight/dashy style, but some paintings or certain areas of paintings had a softer swirly style. For the first piece I made using the batts I laid out areas of different colours then added softer wispier swirls of wool and fibres:
I made this piece using the batts too. Neither of these first pieces copy Monet, they are just inspired by the colours.
I wasn’t very confident I could do an actual ‘copy’ of a Monet painting, but I thought I’d have a go of at least doing an impression of a Monet piece 🙂 I chose Morning On The Seine In The Rain.
I was actually quite surprised when this started to dry and it actually looked like something! I don’t know if it’s because I’ve stared at the original so much that I can see the similarity and that it’s meant to be it, but I’m pleased with how it turned out.
When I was fluffing up the fibres for the swirly piece, I thought I might have a go at needlefelting a piece too. Since I had all the colours out, and had really started to like it, I thought I’d do another based on Morning On The Seine In The Rain. I used a piece of thick commercial Merino prefelt as a base, and blended some texturey wools like Icelandic, carded lambswool and Devon longwool with Merino to get the colours and texture I wanted. I like the way this turned out too 🙂
If you want to join in the challenge, you can comment on any of our Challenge posts and link to your piece or post it on the forum in the thread we have there: http://feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/thread/1587/third-quarter-challenge
25 thoughts on “Monet Challenge”
They are both great zed. I like the wispier willows in the wet felted piece, but I also like the textural effect of the needle felted one. 🙂
Thanks, Judith 🙂
Hello Zed, it looks like you was having a fun day felting. Hot, it has Not been hot here the whole Summer, in fact very coolish to cold. I love your wet felted and needled felted impressive of Monet paintings. An excellent job of creating both. Hugs Judy
Thanks, Judy 🙂
it’s much cooler here now, better for felting!
Clever idea to begin with a montage of Monet paintings to get the predominant colors! If I had to choose one, it would be “Morning on the Seine…” Beautiful effect, Zed.
Thanks, Cathy 🙂
Wow, how impressive. Good job.
Thanks, Judy 🙂
Both are great Zed, but I love the more detailed wet felted piece. You’ve certainly been busy. The first piece you did using the color palette is terrific, too. Great idea to do the colors first.
Thanks, Marilyn 🙂
I honestly wasn’t sure the ‘detail’ would show up.
I love your “copy” of the original, I hope I don’e get struck down for saying this but I prefer your felt piece to the original. The leaves in the foreground are sharper and that give a good sense of perspective.
Thanks, Teri 🙂
I’m sure you’re safe!
It’s so pretty… I have wet felting envy now 🙂
Thanks, Leonor 🙂
I’m sure you have all the supplies for it.
Just not the skills! I’m so terrible at wet felting it’s not funny :/
Rubbish! You make amazing needlefelted sculptures, wet felting is just layering wool, making it wet and soapy and rubbing for about 10 minutes!
I’ll make something soon and I’ll show you. Seriously, my wet felted items all end up being needle felted to make them pretty (er… less ugly). But thanks for the compliment 🙂
These are all wonderful and definitely all of them remind me of Monet’s work. You did a great job on the last two getting the feel of “Morning on the Seine…” I haven’t even started thinking about this challenge yet. Maybe I’ll work on it a bit tomorrow.
Thanks, Ruth 🙂
It took me a while to get started, and I never planned to make so many pieces!
These are both beautiful pieces Zed. I also like your idea of doing a montage to get the colour scheme….I might use this process myself at some point.
Thanks, a lot 🙂
The montage and playing around with it was a lot of fun.
Interesting that you were discussing using Monet as inspiration and many kudos to your fine work. Last year our art association had a show in which all of the entries would be based on fabulous fakes! I, as a felter and not a painter per se, chose the color scheme in Monet’s Watercolor series and felted a scarf in those colors. Am thinking I can attach photos here? Otherwise I don’t know how to attach to your comment section or to the blog. Cathy Sizer…I did make a scarf using your technique where you baste some of the silk ahead of time so it doesn’t felt and then let it loose when done…Worked great!! Cathy Sizer Savannah, GA
We’d love to see your scarf, Cathy. You can post it on the thread on the forum, or if you have a link to flickr/a blog etc post a link. We periodically add pieces to the Challenge Galleries here http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/community/2014-challenges/gallery/
if you want us to do that, one of us could email you and you can send the photo for adding 🙂
Wow Zed – you have been busy! I love the first two pieces that you did with ‘Monet colours’ but the ‘Morning on the Seine in the rain’ is downright stunning. Amazing.
Thanks, Lyn 🙂
I did enjoy this challenge.