Nuno Felted Landscape – Flathead Lake
After doing lots of machine stitching on the last landscape that I showed you, I decided to try a more minimalist approach.
This is the starting point after nuno felting.
I then machine stitched the distant mountains as well as the lines on the water. I considered stitching heavily again to get the variety of colors in the mountains but thought, why not use paint? I hadn’t tried much painting on nuno felt but I decided to just go for it. I used Dye-Na-Flow paint that I already had. I watered it down a bit as it turns kind of plastic looking when dry used straight out of the bottle.
Here is it after painting. I had to be careful applying the paint as it had a tendency to spread so I carefully brushed it on and didn’t get very close to the edges of the stitching. Now it looks more like mountains and a lake. What to put in the foreground? I searched online for photos of Flathead Lake at sunset and found some that I liked and the photos helped with the foreground choice. Add trees, now why didn’t I think of that?
So I stitched in the outlines of the trees.
Then added the paint. I am still deciding if it is finished. I might add some hand stitching to the trees to give a bit more texture and variation in color. What do you think? Does it need more?
16 thoughts on “Nuno Felted Landscape – Flathead Lake”
Oh wow. This is a bit too simplistic for my tastes, but it’s already gorgeous as it is! Tough decision for sure
Thanks, I will leave it for a while and then decide.
I really like this. It took me a minute or so to realise that you had turned the work upside down to do the initial machining; it works – the sun is now in the right place!
My thing is “painting” with felt and I do go for more realism and detail, especially in the foreground. I mainly use a single felting needle once the main background is in and wet felted. For foreground detail I do add hand stitching, particularly fly stitches or single short straight stitches for foliage. I also use more than one colour of very fine thread to try to avoid the children’s trick of using a single colour where there should be many. Why not try adding a few “in scale” stitches to your tree branches. If you do not pull them too tight to begin with, you can take them out if you don’t like the result.
Stay safe!
Thanks, I may try some stitching. Definitely no needle felting at this point.
The colours in the felt are subtle and so pretty and looking good with the paint!
Yes, a little detail stitching on the foreground trees would be good.
Thanks, I will probably give the hand stitching a try for a bit of contrast and detail.
Very nice Ruth. I like it but it doesn’t look finished. Maybe a little something in the open space to the left. even just another branch sticking up or in. Just seems unbalanced with almost everything on the right.
Thanks Ann, I can understand why you feel it isn’t balanced but I doubt I will add anything on the left. Perhaps you have described me, unbalanced 😆
Very nice Landscape. Thank you for sharing your steps in your work. The trees really added to it.
Thanks Michelle, I love to see how others create their work, so I like to share my process too.
From a distance your lovely piece is almost photographic.
You have so many varied ideas in the comments, I’m going to add one more….I’d place a little more (just subtle) emphasis on the sun so that you eye is pulled past the foreground, across the lake & right into the picture.
Painting….mmm….something else for my pending file.
Thanks Antje! Hmmm… I will need to think about how to place a little more emphasis on the sun. It would definitely need to be subtle.
Lovely landscape, Ruth. I like the composition. I would do a little darker hand stitching on the trees in the foreground to differentiate them from the background, to add foreground texture & to cover over the fact that you can see the background stitching through the trees in places which is a bit distracting. Not too much though, I’m definitely of the ‘less is more’ school.
Thanks Lindsay! I am definitely leaning toward adding a little hand stitching to the foreground trees. This piece is definitely about less is more. 🙂
Something about the original felted piece made me think of Monet’s water lilies. 🙂 Maybe a few paler highlights on the water?
Thanks Kim! It could have been water lilies. I just don’t have too many of those here in Montana. I did try some paler highlights with stitching. I will have to consider whether another medium might work better for paler highlights.