Owl Tweaking

I have been taking the lazy days of summer way too seriously and have gotten very little done lately. Just been playing around with a few owl variations, trying to find out which background fabrics work best.

Dayna is giving away a cool paper remnant journal on our art group's blog this month. I watched her make these on our retreat and have been coveting one. Go here and leave a comment to enter the drawing.

Online class list

I am a big fan of online classes. I enjoy being able to work at my own pace and have all my supplies at hand. I've tried to list some of the ones I find interesting in my sidebar, but can't keep up with all the new ones.

Now there is a site that keeps track of them. And they are giving away free online classes each day right now.

Check it out here.

Danglies 2010

I've been slow getting back into the swing of things after my last vacation, but finally got moving again.

Every year in my art group's Dec. show, we set up a bare-branched tree that gets covered in a variety of artist ornaments. It's one of my favorite things in our show, and I love to participate. In the past years I've made houses, birds, and hearts. This year after collecting many pictures of owls out of catalogs and seeing these and these which I love, I decided to play with my own.

Lots of tufts of texture and graffiti fabrics as I pulled from my favorite elements:

Took quite a few false starts, but I'm finally happy with these funky little guys:

I'm also considering doing a second ornament this year using painted faces, but they still have a long way to go until I'm happy with them:

Face #14

What if I use single threads, cross-hatch style like colored pencil?

This wasn't quite what I had in mind. It got too fussy as I started building up layers, so I decided to try to keep it simple. Need to play around with this technique more.

I have guests staying with me for a week, then a trip to Seattle, so this will be the end of the faces, at least for a while. I really enjoy working in a series like this. It seems for every one I do, I get two new ideas for more. Thanks for following along!

Face #13

What if I piece a background out of printed silks, then machine embroider from the back side?

I didn't like the stark white area so put a printed sheer on top. Didn't love the line from the machine stitching, so I hand embroidered to get more variety in it:

Too much going on, so I toned some of the background down with white patches:

Face #12

What if I start with a painted line drawing and fill in color book style?

This one was challenging. I tried to fill in all the way with color, but it became too much. I finally decided to keep part of it sketchy and was much happier with it.

Someone asked me what I'm going to do with all these faces. I have no plans at all. I'm just enjoying experimenting and will probably come back to work with favorites later. But maybe not.

Face #11

What if I build up features sculpturally using white on white?

I wanted to keep this light and transparent to integrate it with the background, but it does tend to disappear. I'd like to try it again on a dark background.