Monday, April 20, 2009

Backyard Bushtits series finished! Finally!

So here are the completed 4 pieces that were all done starting with the backyard bushtit photo I blogged about earlier, when I finished the first piece. It's taken me over a week to get the photos taken so I could blog about them, and I'm not completely happy with the first photo, but it's "Ship It!" time so here they are.

The first 2 pieces are both about 8 x 8 finished size. And all four are put on stretcher bars so they are ready to hang. I haven't done any pieces this way before and that was a learning experience. (This shot came out a bit darker than I'd like so I'll probably redo it, but not today. I'm itching to go work on my new pieces.)


Backyard Bushtits #3 is approximately 10" x 20" and was my first attempt to explore the theme of birds living in the nooks and crannies that we leave them.


This turned out to be the one I liked the best after it was finished. I didn't completely like the batik fabric that I intercut through the picture as I thought it made it too jangly and disrupted. So I added the silkscreening after I'd already pieced it. (And after #4 was halfway done...) And that didn't quite do it, so I added some more stenciling and watercolor highlights on top of it all.
I think this is the one that gets across my idea, and has the most coherent design.

After being unhappy with #3, I thought about just doing intercut fabric in one direction. Thus, I came up with #4. It's okay, but not as appealing to me as #3. It's also not as big as #3 being only
9" x 17". I did like the effect of silkscreening on the fabric I used to slice up the bird photo and I'll probably be doing this some more in future work.



Frankly, this was an exercise in doing a series, to stretch my own process, and experiment with working multiple interpretations of an idea at a time. I learned a lot about how I work, and got some ideas tried out that had been bubbling in my head for a while. It was worth the effort and I hope, in addition, some of you like some of the pieces that resulted.

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