Friends from afar, my COVID group of artists has continued to meet via ZOOM and stimulate each other to stay creative. Our monthly challenge project has proven to be a perfect foil for any stale thinking; we are all from different disciplines so our individual input pushes each other to “think outside the box”.
Here’s the idea: we each have taken responsibility for a particular part to the challenge—color, shape, material, emotion, finish—and have made a “hatful” of answers for 12 months. We Zoom each month to share our finished pieces, then randomly draw the slips from the hats for the next month.
When we met in February we chose the following:
Pantone’s fashion color of the year 2021 “Lava Falls”
300 lb. water color paper for our material
Cylinder for the shape
Jagged texture
Playful emotion
I tested a mix of water-color pencils to get that shade of Lava Falls.
Here is what I came up with:
I decided to make a candle lantern with cut out paper to cover a glass cylinder that would hold the candle.
I scribbled the paper with color then wet my brush to turn the pigment into paint.When the painting was finished I set the paint with a coating of fixative; Krylon’s Workable Fixatif. Then I cut out parts of the finished piece with an Exacto knife to let the light shine through.I decided to embellish the piece further with my signature fused fabric botanicals. This allowed me to pick up more of that challenge color plus bring my own particular medium to the project. I used heavy web fusing to fix two pieces of fabric together then cut them out into playful blossoms shapes. I used Fabri-Tac permanent adhesive to affix them to the final piece.And here she is…. I pre-molded the flat piece by spraying the inside with water then curling it around the glass vase and held it there with rubber bands until it was dry. Then I taped the inside seam together with book repair tape. The seam was a not great so I filled it in with matte gel medium and touched it up with acrylic paint that I also painted the inside of the top with as well.
Here is what my group came up with for their pieces:
Wonderful creative and looks like some fun added in!
Beautiful work again to you and all the artists.
Nice work Jane