Landscape #3: Emotive Landscape

I do intend to revisit my Cubist landscape from Lesson 2 of the Pamela Allen series workshop, but went ahead and plunged into Lesson 3 yesterday.  The purpose of this online workshop is to interpret a chosen subject using four different interpretations.  This week's study is Expressionism.  How do you convey a mood or emotion in a piece of art?

Well, this artist did it rather effectively!
 

The Scream, Edward Munch

There are many ways to achieve a certain mood, one of which is color.  Light and bright often equals happy, as in this lovely seaside painting by Monet;

The Garden at Sainte-Adresse, Claude Monet


 
 Dark colors can be foreboding, threatening, or just plain depressing.

  

The Potato Eaters, Vincent Van Gogh


How about this one?  Not exactly warm and fuzzy.   Not only is the subject old, blind, underfed and dressed in rags...the blue tone adds to the depressive mood of this painting.

The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso

For my expressive landscape art quilt, I decided the subject would be an old abandoned barn.  There are many of these in the Ashe County mountains where we have our cabin, as well as throughout North Carolina as family farms are abandoned and development encroaches.  This photo is of the barn across the road from our cabin.  It belonged to my brother-in-law's late grandfather.

Here is the composition I created as a "melancholy" landscape.

The barn has weathered gray boards that are leaning at odd angles.  Kudzu vines are starting to take over.  The old fence is falling apart.  There is an empty garden with nothing but a dead plant.  The dark hill behind the ban looks threatening, as does the stark leafless tree.

This is a fascinating workshop that is stretching my artistic abilities!









The Need for Color

Just got back from the library and grocery store, stocking up for a weekend that is predicted to include some wintry weather. Everyone here in the Raleigh area gets excited at any forecast of snow, since we experience it so seldom. The last two big snowstorms in North Carolina produced only rain for us.

So, yesterday it was in the sixties- balmy, sunny. This morning, colder, but beautiful and sunny.

Here is my sun-drenched kitchen table with its colorful, dyed, quilted tablecloth,

By the time I got back from the store, the clouds were starting to roll in. No problem. I am ready! I treated myself to a colorful copy of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine. Charlie got me a subscription for Christmas, but my first issue starts in March.

Even better, today I began my third online class with quilt artist Pamela Allen! I am very psyched about this one, titled About Style. There will be art history mixed with creation of art quilts. We had to choose four favorite pieces of art to begin with. I chose five:

Monet, Claude, Garden at Sainte-Adresse

This was my favorite painting at the Monet in Normandy exhibit at the NC Museum of Art several years ago. My husband bought a print for me as a Christmas gift.

Matisse, Henri. Harmony in Red/La desserte

Raoul Dufy, Regatta at Cowes

Gustave Baumann, Grand Canyon

Vincent van Gogh. Wheatfield, 1888

We are supposed to note what it is we like about each painting, and anything they have in common.

Any guesses what my picks have in common?

Let the winter weather come...I will be saturated in bright colors this weekend!

Color Workshop

Yesterday was the first Monday of the month, which means it was the monthly meeting of AA. Anything Art, not Alcoholics Anonymous! We decided to focus on "color" this month- a great topic for a cold winter day.

We all produced our books and tools on color theory. This is a huge advantage of a group of dedicated art quilters- sharing our resources, looking at some of them before purchasing, learning what works for others.

My favorite color book is Color Magic for Quilters, by Ann Seely and Joyce Stewart.

It has all the information about color schemes, with illustrations of quilt blocks using the various combinations.

I also love the whimsical illustrations in this book, which remind me of a child's picture book (remember I am an old elementary school teacher!)

Going through my stuff, I found that I own two color wheels in addition to the ones in books. One is a print of a Judy Martin fabric color wheel from 1985, published by Quilters' Newsletter Magazine. It is on a piece of glossy card stock, so perhaps it was a gift for renewing my subscription. This one is not as useful to me because of all the muted colors from the grayed calicoes. We sure have better fabric selections nowadays!

Actually, in this photo the colors are much brighter and clearer than in actuality.

I also have a handy, six-inch purchased color wheel with a spinning triangle pointer, and a range of seven tints for each of the twelve colors on the wheel. I think I got this at Michael's Craft Store, and it is made by K1C2, LLC.

I also made a fabric color wheel using a template in the Color Magic book. It was fun searching my stash for representative colors. The colors are not true in this photo, as the Violet came out looking blue instead of deep purple. These fabrics are just mounted on card stock with glue stick.

We had a bit of show-and-tell. Ruth-Ellen showed a quilt she made from a Thimbleberries pattern, which normally are made in country tones of browns, greens, deep reds, and golds. She gave it her own spin with jewel tones and a sky blue background.

Here is another quilt of Ruth-Ellen's which is a perfect example of cool tones with a bit of warm accent color. I love this one!

Tama provided us with an interesting color activity. We each got a baggy with crayons or markers and a pad of paper. She called out seven words, and we had about ten seconds each to draw or color our reaction to the words. It was quite interesting that many of us responded in very similar fashion. Can you see the boxes and squares for the word "control," and the jagged lines for "anger?"

After lunch, we snipped fabrics and mounted them with glue-stick to a block pattern that Margaret provided. We started with a Monochromatic color scheme. Doesn't the same pattern look vastly different in each interpretation?

Then we did Analogous schemes. These are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Our "design wall" was Margaret's refrigerator!

Some of us also got around to a third combination, the Complementary Scheme, which uses colors opposite from each other on the color wheel. This one is mine.

It was a fun day to spend with fabric and friends, and a good reminder of some basics about color theory.

And for all those who read my last post, my Dear Sweet Husband turned out to be a pretty good sewing machine technician, although he has no experience in servicing sewing machines. He just seems to understand how things go together and how they work. He was able to remove the entire hook assembly, which on the Gammill is under the machine and requires you to crouch on the floor and peer through metal bars to access. Here is what it looks like with everything removed.

So, with the whole bobbin assembly in his hands, we still could not get the ribbon out, so he had to take the entire hook assembly apart. It contains the world's teeniest, tiniest screws. Here is the culprit: a tiny speck of pink silk ribbon that jammed up the works.

And while Charlie was available with his strong fingers and Allen wrenches, he replaced the checkspring on my rotary tension that broke off last month. And I had an extra pair of felt pads available to put on each side of the tension disk. They are supposed to be white...do you think mine were ready to replace?

A huge thank you to my husband for being my personal mechanic.

Seeking Color in a World of Gray

Still blogging about our trip to New York last weekend. Can there be anything more gray than our view out the window when we first arrived at the hotel?

Rain, concrete, steel, you get the picture. In fact, New York's midtown is so gray, so linear and angular, that I practically kiss the ground when we arrive back in beautiful, green, woodsy North Carolina. But I was constantly drawn to spots of color that caught my eye, whether for an advertisement or just a spot of beauty. I guess if I lived in Manhattan I would be in Central Park every waking daylight hour. I thrive not only on nature's beauty, but like all quilty people, on the vivid colors and combinations of hues surrounding us each day. With a little seeking, I was able to capture some spots of color lurking here and there in NYC. (And fortunately, the skies cleared to a beautiful blue by Friday morning, and remained so for the rest of the weekend.)

On Broadway:

At FAO Schwartz toy store (this one's for Bryson and Avery):

At a wonderful Italian restaurant on 9th Avenue where Pam and I ate lunch on Friday (and they had waiters that called us "Bella":

At shops in Soho:

It is such a delight to chance upon these florist or fruit stands with their wares tantalizing the eye. I always wish I could load up on the fresh produce or plants, but that is not too practical when staying in a hotel and traveling by plane.

And finally, from those folks that have brought us "The Wonderful World of Color" since my childhood:


Hope you enjoyed my colorful view of New York!