Watercolors in Nuno Felt
I have been continuing with my experiments with trying to create a “watercolor” effect in nuno felt. I decided to take a few of the pieces that were the least successful with the dye/paint application and add more. The first addition of “more” is with sheer fabrics.
This is the piece I decided to start with. It had lost a lot of its color and still looked like a landscape but I felt it could do with “more”.
I started with adding in some torn tulle trees on the right hand side.
Then I took some sheer green fabric and added it on the left to give a feel of hills in the background. Some of these steps might be hard to see as the fabric is very sheer but it’s the layering that achieves the final effect.
I then cut off the left edge of the green sheer and added it back into the “hill” area. This gives a bit of value change as you add further layers of sheer.
After looking at the tulle trees as compared to the green sheer on the left, I decided to change the trees. Since the background was mainly yellow, I thought the addition of purple/maroon trees would give a neutralized tree color but still feel there was additional color added. That seemed better so I added in the shadows too. I added a bit of the purple/maroon on the left for a bit of foreground in front of the green hills.
Next up was to try and change the “straight line” over the trees on the right. It felt too abrupt a change in color. So I added a couple of layers of light blue sheer over the trees and then a full piece of blue sheer over the entire piece.
The next step was looking over the piece to see anything else that stood out. I noticed that the green sheer I had on the left needed a little work. It felt too straight along the bottom and there was a weird kind of ‘flag’ in the middle of the hills. So I changed those and then began stitching. It’s hard to see but there is light yellow stitching in the foreground. That wasn’t meant to add a hard line, just to hold the blue fabric down and keep the smaller sheer pieces underneath in place. I did add a broken darker brown horizon line which you can see I have started on the left.
I continued adding stitch to the horizon line as well as the sky. Again, in the sky, I didn’t want a hard line so I used a very light gray thread, not pure white that might “stick” out too much.
The final step was to make very small stitches all around the edges of the piece to hold everything in place. I am happy with the result, a bit more color but still an abstract, dreamy effect.