acrylic painting – Felting and Fiber Studio

Felt Layout From A Painting

June 22, 2018 zedster66 Comments 6 comments

I really liked using a painting for inspiration on the last felt piece I made, so I thought I’d do it again and take more photos of the process. I had a look through some photos and found one I liked, then started the search for the actual painting. I was a bit confused because the photo and actual painting didn’t quite match, but I realised the photo was from while I was working on it, so it wasn’t quite finished! I took a new photo of the finished one:

I used a similar technique to the ones I showed last week, thinly overlaying acrylic paint. This looks different because it’s on a different type and weight of paper. I started with a couple of layers of Jonquil Merino, it looks more like a ‘Buttercup’ in the photos, but it’s really a prime yellow:

Originally I planned to do all aditional layers with fibres, but decided to do some more ‘background’ with Merino. I don’t have exact matches for the colours, but they’re closer than they look on these photos.

I realised that I always lay my felt out in a ‘landscape’ orientation, for some reason – it just feels natural – but it meant I was working from the painting the wrong way up. It didn’t occur to me straight away to just rotate the layout. I got there eventually though! So, once I turned it around, I added some black prefelt ‘blobs’ :

Then added some more Merino. I did add it thinly, but 3 photos of a few wisps and a few wisps more didn’t seem to show much, so this is all the Merino I added:

This is the first lot of Nylon Staple fibre I added, the blues and blue/greens:

It looks like a lot, but really isn’t, I think it’s just because it is bright. This next photo is the yellow and green/yellow Nylon added, which again looks like a lot:

When I compared the layout to the original photo, it’s obvious it’s more of a ‘copy’ than just inspired by the painting, but not quite right, either, so I might make a few adjustments before I felt it.

I’ll show the finished piece next time. I forgot how much longer it takes doing a layout when taking photos of the process so ran out of time to felt it.

Painting Landscapes

March 18, 2016 ruthlane Comments 18 comments

Zed mentioned the Start 2 website quite a while ago but I hadn’t had much time to explore it before. I took a look and found a tutorial on painting simple landscapes. The tutorial was well done and the process was easy. So I decided to try it.

I used acrylic paints and pages from my sketchbooks. This is from a 4″ x 6″ sketchbook. You divide your page into thirds and paint the sky first, then you sprinkle salt over the lower third of the wet paint and put cling wrap over the middle third. Then let it dry. Take a look at the tutorial for further information if you want to try this technique. The landscape above has not had any details added.

Here’s the same one where I have added a couple of details and cut the edge off. I am going to make greeting cards out of these small ones.

Here’s another one without adding anything.

And the finished result. I used color pencil to make the water look like it was flowing through the rocks and added the “waves” with white gel pen.

Here are two more finished ones.

This is one of the larger ones that I painted. It’s 9″ x 9″ and it was previously painted blue and green. I added the paint on the bottom and in the mountain area. This is what it looked like before adding a few details to the mountain range.

And here it is finished.

Here are a couple more of the larger ones that I did. I’m not sure on either of these whether I am finished with the foreground. I also can’t decide if I should stick them back in the sketchbook or mount them somehow.

The small ones I made into cards. I just used fusible web and ironed them to the card. It holds really well and has less of a tendency to curl the paper underneath like wet glue does.

I really enjoyed painting these as it’s easy and you don’t have to worry about how it comes out because the salt and the cling film give you the details and the look of foreground and mountains or rocks. Anyone can paint these landscapes easily even if you don’t have any painting experience. Try it, it’s fun!

I would like to remind everyone that Gail Harker is planning on coming to Montana to teach a Level 1 Experimental Machine Stitch class in May. The deadline for sign up is coming up March 25th. It’s going to be a great class so I hope you’ll spread the word. Right now we don’t have enough students so it looks like the class might have to be cancelled. I would hate to do that though so would you help spread the word? Thanks!

Abstract Art

June 16, 2015 zedster66 Comments 27 comments

Before I discovered wet felting, I used to do a lot of painting. This is one of my favourite acrylics from 2007:

I decided to try and do a wet felted version of it. I did a couple of layers of Merino tops in a simplified palette of colours, then used some bamboo skewers to split the painting and felt piece into quarters as a guide for adding more detail for the 3rd layer.

I had pretty much all my colours of Merino out for this.

This is the finished layout:

All the wool put away and ‘tidy’ 🙂

I took it outside to felt it:

I had an audience:

I put it on the washing line to dry. I usually stand the painting up on its end (right end), and while I was felting, some of the wool must have gotten nudged and I started to neaten it up, but thought it would look quite cool and like it was dripping if I left the wavy edges. They neatened themselves up a bit while I was fulling though, but still looks pretty good.