I like to muck about with watercolours. Sometimes sewing is impractical - when you're travelling say - but the urge is still there to mix some colours together and (hopefully) do something pretty. BUT I'm really crap at painting. I never quite conquered the watercolours thing (and buying the equipment at K-Mart probably didn't help). So, for Christmas, my lovely husband got me some nice paints, decent brushes, proper paper and an instruction book. The year being the disaster that it's been, I hadn't done anything with them until now; but now I've cracked open the instruction book and I'm very uncharacteristically doing what it says.
So we have the Dreaded Exercises in Burnt Umber. Look familiar to anyone? Gradations, washes, value, shade. Already I've learnt something about how you get watercolour to behave.
One of my aims is to be able to work with fabric paint, which behaves in a similar way to watercolours (i.e. bleeding and making a splotchy mess, in my experience). I want to be able to play around with surface design - rather than landscapes, which is where my instruction book is heading. I think there are enough bad watercolour landscapes in the world (and not nearly enough badly decorated pieces of fabric, mwhahahaha).
Wow, I think you have done really well Lynley. My painting is AWFUL!! One of my friends at Caloundra Quilters did watercolour backgrounds for some stitcheries she was doing and they looked fantastic. I think you might have the knack too. Have fun.
ReplyDelete"What's in the trunk comes out in the branches" chortle, chortle - awesome first attempts little sister, I can't wait to see how you use it in fabric art.
ReplyDelete