For the 4th Quarter Challenge I did a dimensional panda picture in monochrome.
I hung it on the wall in my bedroom which is also a shade of gray.
Lyn suggested on the forum that I frame it. I really liked the picture she posted. It really popped. The mat was very narrow. I had a frame that fit it perfectly, but needed the right sized mat which unfortunately wasn’t a standard size. I’d have to have a custom mat made.
Instead of paying for a custom frame and mat, I decided to try a standard size 16 x 20″ frame and a mat that was larger than the picture Lyn had posted. Fortunately, the picture was just a little larger than the opening in the mat.
Here is the result.
There may be too much white. What do you think? Should I invest in the smaller mat and frame? Or does the standard size work ok?
No one will be surprised at my choice of subjects, a panda.
I had some maori batts in a gray color so it seemed an easy choice as a base.
I’ve been trying to add more dimension into my work as I mentioned in last week’s blog post. So, this was one of my goals with this project.
I layed out the batt then made the head of the panda in prefelt, then added the shapes for the ears, and eyes. Since the nose would be the center of the picture, I used a needle felted nose shape in a heavier fiber then covered it with another nose shaped prefelt and needle felted it onto the batt. I don’t know why it looks pink.
I continued to build up the shape, added gems for eyes and covered them with another layer of prefelt and more fiber. I wanted to give the fur a fuzzy effect so I carefully cut and put fibers along the edges and a little shading around the eye. For the body, I blended some gray into the black for contrast. Since the arm blended in with the body I just used a shaded area to give it a little dimension. And of course, the panda is eating her bamboo. Her nose is actually bamboo fiber. Here is a side view.
After securing everything with more needle felting, I wet felted it. The maori didn’t shrink much which was fine because I intended to wrap it around a canvas frame.
A close up.
Well I changed my mind and hung it without wrapping it on a frame.
I may put it on a darker background to make it stand out from the gray wall. What do you think?
Have you done the challenge yet?
I want to let you all know I will be taking a leave of absence. I’m having surgery November 3 and don’t know how long it will be before I can resume felting. In the mean time, several forum friends have offered to help fill in my blog spots. If you have something you’d like to blog about to help out, please contact Ruth, Zed or Ann. I hope to see you all back here soon! Thanks for your support!
It’s a bit early I know, but it was either that or a bit late! All our challenges this year have been on the theme of colour. Ruth’s challenge for the first quarter focused on Colour Theory, and we learnt about the colour wheel, hue, value and intensity.
Ann’s 2nd quarter Challenge was to upload a photo to different Palette generator websites to create a colour scheme to work from.
Marilyn’s 3rd quarter Challenge expanded on this and the challenge was to use dyeing or blending to create the colours the palette generators suggested.
So, what’s my challenge going to be for the 4th quarter? Well, after all the very colourful previous challenges and entries, I thought how about ‘no colour’ i.e. grayscale. Then I remembered Teri had messaged us with a suggestion about a study in shades and tones, and she sent us this link: http://www.mccallsquilting.com/blogs/blog/2015/07/16/that-cat-a-visit-with-pam-lincoln/
So that’s when I thought ‘Monochrome’ would be better than ‘grayscale’, it’s similar, and limiting enough to really be a challenge and get the brain cells working, but also has lots of scope for potential.
It’s upto you how you interpret it, and how far you take it. For example, you could use some of the things we learned in the first quarter and choose a colour of wool to make tints and shades by blending it with various amounts of white and black wool.
Or you could use photo editing software to colourise a photo:
Then upload it to a palette generator site:
And use the palette to create a monochrome piece of felt or fibre artwork, or maybe even have a go at blending or dyeing the shades from the palette too. Those are just a few ideas, but simply the challenge for this quarter is ‘Monochrome’. Have fun!
