Mulling Things Over

While I'm mulling over a number of things in my brain, (and unfortunately I do most of it in the middle of the night. Sigh!) I need to keep my hands busy. (No. No baking today.)

There are two challenge pieces coming up in the spring, One for our guild and one for the CQA. Both of these dictate a theme and the fabric. As unsettling as they are, (and users of an inordinate amount of my time) they do push me out of my ruts and comfort zones. I've spent well over 2 weeks, off and on, perusing the internet for theme jump off points and photos to inspire. I'm almost there,with both.
I'll share those when I start cutting!

As a diversion, today, I turned to a small print by an Canadian artist from Burk's Fall, Bobbie Haviland. I purchased this card when I was north with my quilting gals this summer. This was a study for one of her grand pieces.

 

I wanted to try this as I need to better learn to deal with reflection. It was also in keeping with the topic I use as my 'go to'.. Trees. What's not to love?

By reproducing someone else's work I'm forced to figure out how the effect was achieved. In this case the mirror image. Not quite as easy as cutting two of everything.

 

I started with a pencil sketch trying for an impression of tree tops that I could cut out. My material of choice? One of my own (It is getting easier to cut them!)

 

 

One thing I have discovered is, because this is paint and not dye, the material becomes heavier, thicker and harder to cut those tiny details. But isn't the colour wonderful? Matching sky and water took a few tries.

 

 

It was about here I realized that a reflection is more than a second copy. There is some foreshortening that must happen to the reflection. In theory the whole piece should have been recut to shorten the trees as well. I settled for reducing their height through the solid portion of orange.

 

With each additional component this was easier to achieve by cutting the material off centre before placing them. The final addition was a piece of nylon in a gold/brown shade to dull the reflection. I put a slight fold at the top to better imply disturbance near the shore.

 

 

The rest will be achieved with stitching. Today? Not likely. I like to live with the cartoon for a while and see what the materials say to me.