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Third Quarter Challenge – Rothko in the Round

Third Quarter Challenge – Rothko in the Round

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I’m just squeaking in under the deadline for the third quarter challenge. I had a hard time deciding what to create. Finally, I fell back on experimenting with layered color mixing. I have always thought that Mark Rothko’s paintings would work well as an inspiration for this technique. So I searched for a painting of his that was created in the 1950’s. I found number 10 painted in 1950 at MoMA’s website.

With my inspiration in mind, I was planning on making a flat piece of felt but then Ann posted about creating some lantern covers.   I decided I would give that a try and see how light would affect the color mixing as well.

I didn’t have any tall glass vases like Ann used but I did have an olive jar that was the same shape mostly. I could use that. I created a resist to include approximately 30% shrinkage and got out my stash of short fiber merino. I didn’t really have enough of the blue for the first layer but decided to go ahead and wing it.

The short fiber merino that I do have is in batts, so I wrapped the blue around in the vertical direction for the first layer.

Then I added more colors in layers wrapping the resist horizontally. These were all solid colors to start with and I wanted to see if the movement/migration of the fiber would create a more mottled look like you see in Rothko’s paintings.

I did add a bit of dark grey at the top for a deeper value. The photo on the left shows the piece after layout and wet down. The photo on the right shows the piece after felting before I removed the resist. You can definitely start to see the color migration. I cut out both ends of the resist and as you can see at the bottom of the right photo, the blue wasn’t covering the ends completely. But I decided to leave the ragged edges as the Rothko piece felt like the paint had ragged edges. Then I fulled the piece and pulled it over the glass jar to hold it’s shape while it dried.

Here’s the result. It looks very much like a landscape to me and the color mixing worked just as I wanted. You can see the top of the glass jar in the photo on the right. I would prefer a smooth vase and I will have to go and look for some at the local dollar stores. I did try a light inside but I made the felt too thick for that to have much effect at all. But I do like the possibilities of this technique, creating thinner layers next time. I hope to create some landscape lanterns with real glass vases. Thanks for the idea Ann and thanks for the challenge Lyn and Annie. It made me try something out of my usual box.

Second Quarter Challenge with Differential Shrinkage

Second Quarter Challenge with Differential Shrinkage

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I needed to figure out something for the second quarter challenge and I wanted to continue my experiments with differential shrinkage. So I decided to combine the two projects. I had also read somewhere online to check out Soosie Jobson’s Youtube channel as she had some good videos about differential shrinkage. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought about working inside out with this technique but it really helped.

I started with the resists made from floor underlay foam on the left. I wanted a spring/summer sunny look for the second quarter challenge so I chose yellow to red and a bright yellow green. I used hand dyed mixed 56’s wool. The photo on the right shows the diamond shaped resist covered with 8 layers of green wool.

After laying out the 8 layers of wool, I wet it down and then flipped it over so I could cut the diamond shape out of the green wool. I created four of the green shapes and place them at even intervals over the large round resist. The photo on the right shows the bottom with the solid circle in the center.

These two photos show the top with the ring in the center. You can see how the points of the diamonds overlapped the ring slightly so I trimmed those ends off so there wasn’t extra bulkiness around the ring.

Next I laid out the top wool, 2 layers, all laid in a concentric manner around the circle. I wanted a gradation of color from yellow to red, so the yellow to orange is on the top side. The photo on the right is wet down and you can see the thickness of the pie shapes and ring showing through.

Then I flipped it over and smoothed the edges over the circle. I did end up removing a bit of the extra orange wool in places.

I then laid out 2 layers of red orange to red wool in the same manner as I did the top side. It’s hard to tell in the photo but there is a gradation of color. Now on to wetting down and felting.

Here are the two sides after felting. I felt by rubbing and don’t do any rolling. I like to be able to feel how the wool is reacting under my hands and also to make sure that the edges around the resist are not forming a ridge.

I then cut out a small disk of yellow felt from the center top. I healed the cut edges by rubbing with soapy fingers and then removed the resist. I then turned the entire piece inside out so that the green was on the outside. This took a bit of patience and maneuvering. Then came the fulling and shaping.

And here’s the result. I did shave the entire vase to get rid of the fuzzies.

I decided to call it a Poppy Vase so I thought poppy seed heads fit perfectly. So hopefully, this will count as a personal item that I can use in the summer time!

 

 

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