From rags to stitches - my adventure with intutitve stitching

For years now, I've been using muslin remnants from the local fabric store to clean my brushes and wipe up leftover paint from the butcher tray I use as my palette. When I have enough of these rags to make up a nice load for the washing machine, I wash them in clear water, iron them and put them away for some future use.


At the beginning of the year, when I was looking for something I could do without having to drag out a lot of art supplies, I decided to pull out one of those painted pieces of muslin to see what I could do with it.

I drew on it just a bit, to create a few very rough shapes. Then I began to stitch. I stitched intuitively, without much thought for what image would appear. And I thought I was going to keep the stitching simple, but it didn't turn out that way. I ended up stitching the muslin to a piece of recycled denim and continued stitching on the denim.


Thousands of stitches later, I'm really happy with how this first muslin rag turned out. I don't know yet if I'll finish this in some way or add to it to make a larger piece. For now, just stitching quietly away without a plan was enough.

My mind is racing with the possibilities. . .

Two more leaf/tree landscapes

Wisconsin Landscape

acrylic encaustic mixed media collage with leaves

on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas

There was enough bright natural light today, so I was able to finish the last two landscapes I'll be doing for a while.  I gave them an acrylic (faux) encaustic finish, so they would  have a muted, organic look and better match the painting in the previous post.

 (detail)

Wisconsin Landscape

acrylic encaustic mixed media collage with leaves and grasses

on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas

In this painting, I added some of that texture I love, as well as a few pieces of  dried decorative grasses from our garden.

 (detail)

(detail)

Here's a photo I was able to take of the tree leaf/tree landscapes outside a few days ago.  The painting on the left already has the acrylic (faux) encaustic finish at this point, but the other two did not yet have it.  The faux encaustic definitely tones down the acrylic colors a bit, as you can probably see in the photos above.

 

 

Using leaves as trees

Wisconsin Landscape

acrylic encaustic mixed media collage with leaves

on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas

I thought it would be fun to experiment with some of the gorgeous fall leaved I had dried.  So I decided to see how they would look as trees in this piece. The gold represents golden corn fields, and the purple line on the horizon represents the ever-changing colors of Lake Michigan.  The piece has an acrylic encaustic finish, both to protect the leaves, and to give it a more organic look and feel.

(detail) 

click to enlarge to see details

(detail)

Some simple landscapes

Horicon Marsh

The Wisconsin countryside has inspired me to try my hand at some landscape studies.  All four are acrylic on 12 x 12 wrapped canvas.

Horicon Marsh

Wisconsin landscape

Wisconsin landscape

Portrait of Mr. C

Mr. C
acrylic mixed media 
on 16 x 20 wrapped canvas

Here, finally,  is portrait #4 in my family portrait series.

(detail)

Like the other family portraits, it has lots of texture and many layers of acrylic washes, many of which were wiped back to create layers of color.  This burnishing not only created rich, warm colors, but it also creates an almost encaustic wax-like sheen.

(detail)

Each portrait tells a little story, too, and on this one I included collage elements relating to his job as an engineer.

So here are all four portraits, together at last.  All are on 16" x 20" gallery wrapped canvas.

Portrait of Mr C

Self-portrait

Portrait of Katrina

Portrait of Chris