texture and paint

A quick and easy way to create texture is to use a piece of mulberry bark. It comes in either the natural color or bleached. Don't pay attention to the background. I just picked a piece of fabric, knowing that it would be covered anyway. As I am working with circles, it will not be a surprise that this is another circle quilt :-)

I quilted the background first and did the facing before I stitched the circles on it. Next step was to add a layer of gesso and paint. Without the gesso the fabric would soak up a lot of paint. I used my favorite Golden fluid acrylics. In this picture you see that the quilting shows very well now. The texture of the mulberry bark was there, but only when you looked at it from the side..

To solve the lack of contrast, I added another layer of paint. This time only on the mulberry bark circles. I admit the color is not perfect, it is a bit too blue to my liking, but for the moment it will stay like this. Maybe I will add some more at a later moment.

 Here is a detail picture:

I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out the link to see what other artist have done.

Experimenting with paint

On Corinne's blog I read about a workshop she had taken and that gave me inspiration to do some experimenting with paint. As they are experiments the fabric is A4 size (8,5"x11"). For the first one I started with a mainly yellow procion dyed piece of fabric. This I sprayed with water, crunched it and placed a hot iron on it creating all kind of wrinkles in it. With a foam sponge I dapped turqoise Golden acrylic paint over it and let it dry.

The next day I heatset the fabric by ironing it from the back. The fabric needed more color so I repeated the process of spraying it and wrinkling it again. This time I used quinacridone burnt orange Golden acrylic paint on it.

Next day I ironed it and this is how it looks finished (the picture turns up a bit too light, the yellow in the two pictures above is the real color):

This was not the only piece of fabric I played with. I also worked with this brown sunprint. Here you see it folded and dapped with the first layer of color quinacridone burt orange and nickel azo gold. I buy these paints from the US as I have no idea where - or if - I can buy them here. The colors are gorgeous!

Next day when I had ironed the fabric it was more interesting than the piece I started with, but it needed a lighter color. Again I folded the fabric - this time in the other direction, sprayed it with water and ironed it. The color I used this time was metallic silver from Lumiere.

I am not certain whether it needs something more, but this is how it looks now:

Paint

Normally I like playing with paint because it means that I am working with textiles. Not this time. At the moment I am busy repainting my walls and ceilings. I really needed a different color scheme. So the coming time I will not be able to show you much creative stuff, as this painting is going slow. Anyway I can show you these pictures of before:

and during:
About 1/5 is done. When I feel I have done enough for the day, it is very easy for me, to just leave everything as it is and for instance read a book. I don't care whether the room is a mess at that time or not, I need a break:-)