Felting and Fiber Studio

Many years ago, you may remember, I was an art student. First studying commercial art, and then getting a degree in fine art and art history. Having the training first in Commercial Art changed the way I approached fine art.

The combined training also gives me odd bits of knowledge and techniques that a regular fine art student might not have run into. Yes, I can draw using a ruling pen, but I’m not sure that is a transferable skill to felting and fiber arts. Some of the painting techniques I was taught, in both disciplines, likely are of use to picture felters.

Today I am working on a Christmas card exchange for someone who seems to have the same aesthetic senses as I do, (leaning towards the Goth, with a liking for skulls, and a fondness for Crows and Ravens). So a macabre Christmas it is! But let’s hint at X-mass and make it more winter seasonal or solstice sort of image, so it doesn’t have to be removed after Santa has left the building.

As usual, I started with research!  I get to look at crows and trees, since my original intention was to do a more cartoonish large raven bending over small Christmas tree (think, Charlie brown Christmas tree).  But as I worked with the image, I felt the focus was on the unfortunate fate of the about-to-snap tree, rather than the fabulous raven, who threatened its demise. Humm, ok, keep looking. Maybe I should review what is the difference between crows and ravens so I know which one I am making?

I found a couple bird websites with visual depictions of the differences and added them into to my reference file. If you too want to tell the differences, here are the two web sites I found helpful.

1.1) https://www.junehunter.com/blogs/nature/crow-vs-raven 

1.2) https://avianreport.com/identification-raven-crow/

Ok, plan 2, raven as focus, on pine branch, in winter. I found a Raven image I liked but not on the rite branch, ok lets look a bit at pine branches in winter, no that’s not what I was wanting ether, ok how about overcast snowy sky pine branch and add pine needles with snow. yes that more what I would like to make.

The image of the Rave I like, is vary grey scale already, I can add the pine branches but paint this as a grisaille. That would be an under painting in grayscale only. It is part of a technique of painting, which produces depth, in both field and colour. It uses a limited palette of Black, through shades and tints of Grey to white.

Grisaille a 3 part prosses.

• starting with an under drawing, I used the extra fine tip sharpie marker to draw in the Raven and branch onto the felt ground.
• adding the image in tones from black through grey to white. Some painters will block in the tones while others will take the image through to completion but only in grey scale. You can stop and declare you are done or you can go on to the next step.
• adding the final colour layer. This can be done in washes or glazes, so the tones of the under painting are seen through the overpainting. This gives greater depth of colour. This can also be done with wool. (wisps of colour like in the Watercolour technique with wool.)

If you are not feeling that Gothic gray, underpainting can also be done in other monochrome pallets such as verdaccio (done with shades of green), brunaille (shades of brown), or ébauche (dulled, muted forms of the final colors).

I am not sure if I will push into hints of colour or be happy with the grey scale image I am creating. I will decide as I progress.

It took a bit of looking, but I found the green travel kit of felting stuff where I remembered putting my double ended sharpie (fine and extra fine). Using the reference photo, I drew out the Raven and branch onto my piece of wool felt. I am quite liking the extra fine tip on any felt that has a particularly smooth surface. If the surface is soft, try stippling your line (a line of little dots), rather than dragging the pen across soft felt.  When I was pleased with the underdrawing, and was sure I could work with what I had, I put away the pen so I could find it later (I think I need to put a leash on pens, they keep wandering off).

Under drawing complete, it was time to add the wool. As with pastels, I tend to work from background to foreground. It is easier to add the sky then the trees, than it is to put in the trees and try and add the sky behind them. So, I turned to adding the greys to the sky.

I had a few different greys and a deep charcoal mainly for the raven. I wanted to keep him as the focus. To blend with them I had a unlabeled ball of white top which is likely BFL since it has a good sheen and is smooth but strong. I hand tore it into pieces similar in length to the grey and used the larger pet brushes to make little pile of different tints and shades of gray.

I put all the grey option into a zip lock baggie as well as the charcoal and the white. Then took my project, a wool mat, the reference material and wondered off to bed. I had not been feeling very well and felting in bed seemed like a good idea. Ok I did not fall asleep and wake up stuck by a needle but after more consideration, this was not really one of my best ideas. Even more so, because I had left the camera by the computer. Well that dose explains the lack of photos of the starting of the Raven.

As sometimes happens, when you finally get an idea and run with it, I got focused on what I was doing, and didn’t stop to take pictures. Ann often complains about this happening to her.  I had crawled off to bed, bringing a foam pad, the blended pallet of greys I had just made, my reference material and my felting needle. Really, it’s not the best place to be felting, you don’t want to lose you needle in bed or fall asleep while felting. (Both could go quite horribly wrong), but I had had a rough day and was really tired, but also finally had the plan for the card.

2.1) assessing what I had felted before falling asleep

Next morning I returned to the computer, put on an audio book (Pattricia Briggs’ A&O 01 – Cry Wolf) and assessed the image I was working on.

2.2) adding white silk as highlights

I hunted around and found some very bright White silk, to use for highlights of snow and to mix into the sky.

2.3) adding a pine branch with needles, maybe not?

I considered a branch with pine needles but was not sure that was what should be there.

I had originally planned to crop the image around 3×5 or 4×6, but I was getting intereeged to find out what was in the forest behind the raven. But I didn’t want to visually over power the raven. So the image grew as I puttered, listened to the end of the first book in the series and started the second (A&O 02 – Hunting Ground)

2.4) change of plans

Oh I see it is not a branch at all, it’s a cascade of water falling into a lake. Well that makes more sense.

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3.1-3.5) investigating the background, then adding the highlights to the raven.

I think that is exactly what I was looking for, I think adding colour will again take away from the raven. I hope she will like it too.

The postal employees took a strike vote, was it last week? I don’t know what the result was so I had better get this in the mail soon. Monday Nov. 11^th  was reembrace day, so no mail, but I had the little raven ready to go into work on Tuesday Nov.12^th  with Glenn. He works in one of the main stations and  the raven would go from his station to station 1 Tuesday morning, to be sorted later on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. it should have been on its way to Leonor by Wednesday afternoon. It was a good thing, since Glenn was on strike on Friday Morning.

Wednesday Nov 20^th,  I got a note from Leonor that the raven had arrived. Ravens are very good at doing Air mail apparently!