Online Art Portfolio at LizCopeland.com

 After a year off to focus on healing (more about that in a future post), I am feeling good enough to be social.  And that includes blogging.  And showing people my art. 

Gaia’s Dance, 2009
Quilted textile collage

I’ve combined the two by putting my art into pages here on my blog.  I have 4 pages:  Abstract, Dancers, Nature, and Historical.  Abstract is mostly spirals but will include colorful poured paintings in the future.  Dancers and Nature are what they say and Historical is everything that is owned by someone else at this point plus the things that I do not intend to sell.  Ever.   Everything in Abstract, Dancers & Nature is available to buy if you are so inclined.  Until I get an online store up and running, this means drop me an email or comment on the blog post and we’ll work something out.

Mandala Medley

 I’m continuing my paint pouring experimentation in the studio and spent this last week trying out some different stencils of various mandala style art.  I actually like all 3 pieces which tells me I’m starting to understand what’s going on and how to work with the materials.

First up is the moody green piece that got some very favorable comments when I posted the background.  I found just the right swirling leafy stencil and I really like how it came out.  I’ll be doing more with this image and trying different backgrounds as I try out different ways to manipulate the paint.

Second in my opinion is this mandala which I have used before.  I like how the green of the mandala brings out the colors along the edge of the peach and blue.  I think a dark blue might also have worked well as a mandala color and I like the color palette in the background so I will likely be doing something similar in the future.  The blue ring is a bit more dominant than I would like so I will be changing that.

And last is a more subtle color combination with little tiny hearts.  I’ll be changing the hearts to just the v at the point so it’s more abstract.  Overall, they all came out okay and have given me lots of paths to take in future playing around.

Playing with Pouring

 My experiments continue with paint pouring and different techniques for manipulating the paint and then adding to it with silkscreens or stencils.  Big thanks to Olga Soby for her wonderful videos that have been a major inspiration.

First up are some pours I did with warm colors and then did stencils on top.  Here’s the one I’m mentally calling Rocket Mandala but that’s my wierd sense of humor.  It’s just a sample piece so I don’t actually have to come up with a real title.

Since I’m planning on doing birds or dancers, next I did an owl on a stump.  I think he really needs a moon in the upper right corner but I’m not sure yet.  That should be decided and done this next week.

These were both done with the ring pour technique for the backgrounds.  While I like the layering of the colors, I don’t think the technique is quite what I want so I started experimenting with blowing the paint around after pouring it.  I have multiple ways to do this and started with a blowdryer and the squeeze bulb I use with alcohol ink.  

This first one was supposed to be a mostly green backgroound with a lighter yellow spot in the middle for a hummingbird stencil.  Unfortunately, the blowdryer I used had a really wide nozzle attachment and blew paint everywhere.  I like the misty layering of the green but want more control.

So next I used the blowdryer on low.  This meant I had to practically touch the surface to get any paint movement so that’s not going to work either.   I tried blowing the paint in a swirl around the center color and that had some interesting effects that I think would look good with dancers.  In Space.

And last I used  my squeeze bulb.  This worked well and gave me good control but made my hand ache afterwards.  Since this was only an 8x8 piece, I need a different thing for larger pieces.

So I am now assembling things to try this week.  Another blow dryer and metal straws for blowing directly on the paint myself.  Here’s hoping I get something that works well.

Studio Sabbatical or reading instead of doing

 Thanks to my back having it's every 13 year super spasm, I am not doing much in the studio.  For the last 2 months.  *sigh*  Once I got over the worst of the pain, however, I was thankful the library sent me a book on alcohol inks.  It's a fairly popular book so I had a several month wait for it and had forgotten about it.  Having it pop to the top of my hold list gave me a lovely distraction.

Pigments of the Imagination is a guide to learning the medium with a series of explorations.  I sometimes think of this type of book as an art cookbook as I'm one of those people who actually reads cookbooks all the way through to find ideas & recipes.  I bought an inexpensive set of inks to try it out and will get the more expensive brand name inks if I decide to pursue it.

One of the things I do when browsing books like this is write the things I particularly want to try on a post it that goes on the inside cover.  (My cookbooks have the recipes & page number written on the book pages rather than a post it because I like annotating them.)

I filled 2 post its before deciding I should try things out first.

Part of the appeal here is that the inks are very concentrated, like the Derwent Inktense pencils/bars, and work on both paper and fabric.  So the experimenting will begin soon, once I'm over the flu/sinus infection that is adding to my wonderful medical life right now.  Hoping you are in much better health & also enjoying making art.

Remembering birding in So Cal

 My back is keeping me out of the studio for now and I've been catching up on some of those computer things that wait until I have time for them.  This has meant organizing my ebook backup directory by author and sorting through some bird photos.  Which led to my discovery of a report of a birding trip in 2005 when I went to San Diego and then the Salton Sea for birding.  I went with a birding friend, Tina, who took this picture of a cactus wren.

I used this photo, printed on silk with some color changes, to try out some various ideas about using bird photos to make art.  These 2 pieces are in the finished but not happy with them drawer for 2 reasons.  First, I wasn't happy with the pieces themselves and second, the stitching required to do this was just too difficult.  

So, as part of going through and cleaning stuff up, I'm looking at these older unsatisfactory pieces and wondering if they would work better as collage rather than piecing.  I keep coming back to this idea for 2 reasons.  One, I'd like to use my bird photographs in my work.  Second, I really liked this bushtit piece which was done using piecing and some silkscreening.  Also Inktense pencils.  

Looking at the piece I like in comparison to the 2 I don't like, I can see a couple of major differences.  The contrast between the photo colors and the other fabric is one.  The second is the thinner pieces of fabric work better in the bushtit piece.  So while I work on getting my back happy again, I'll be contemplating these pieces.

visual decision making using a phone camera

I've been making slow progress on the snail series due to life throwing some troublesome things my way but I finally finished up the first two snails this week.

I started with a memory of a picture I took of a small yellow snail on the greenbelt gravel.  The color contrast was amazing and the tiny snail was crawling over relatively huge rocks but still making noticeable progress over the length of my daily walk.  But I also wanted to bring in some color using my marbled fabrics so I finished painting the first snail, picked out a good color of fabric and laid it all out with some stone-like fabric as the path.  And wow, the stones just didn't go with all the swirls so I ended up just using the marbled fabric.

So snail #1 is done.  Unfortunately, it's an odd size since I trimmed the background piece assuming there would be rocks on the bottom so it's 6 3/8" tall and 10.25 wide.  This will require some effort to frame it, if I decide to do that before posting it on etsy.

Thinking about the framing problem reminded me to make these design decisions before cutting.  (Plan twice, cut once.)  So for snail #2, I cut the background in a square after trying out the second, slightly darker snail against the background.  But which way to put the square? 

This is where the phone camera came in very useful.  I grabbed my phone and snapped shots of the snail against the 4 possible rotations of the background and then was able to look at them side by side.  This is much better than trying to visually remember the different orientations.  I tossed 2 out immediately and was left with these 2 possible layouts.

Final choice

The runner up orientation is below but sideways.  I apparently rotated the phone while taking the shot. 

As my year of experimentation continues, it's interesting to see how many ways I can simplify things with the right tool.  Now all I need to do is add the resin topcoat to #2 and post them to etsy. 

Looking ahead: A year of Experimentation

I usually take the time between Christmas and New Years to think about my goals.  Usually, this involves writing up what I accomplished and then thinking ahead.  This year, I've ended up doing them in the reverse order mostly because I went into my studio in my head during my massage on Monday.   And I've decided 2020 is going to be a year of experimentation.

My big accomplishment in 2019 was making significant progress in healing both the eye problem and the Chronic Fatigue.  But, both problems are still there and will take time to fully heal.  So, I'm going to play in my studio and see how the healing goes before setting any art goals.

What kind of experiments am I going to do?  I'm going to focus on color.  And different ways to simplify my process.

So first is more marbling.  I love the swirls of color with marbling and I've started working with shaving cream as the layer to hold the color.  This is simpler and  faster than traditional marbling but doesn't easily do the tight geometric patterns that traditional marbling is known for.  I want to explore what patterns I can make best with this approach.

I like the swirly patterning and the intense colors so I'll start with that and explore variations.

Second, I'll be learning GIMP and trying to do digital collage.  This approach is better with the time limits I have due to the CFS.  My ancient CS3 version of Photoshop is not supported on Windows 10 so I took the forced move to W10 as an opportunity to both get a touchscreen laptop for digital art purposes and to move to GIMP.  I'll be using The Gimp Bible to learn the UI and the differences from Photoshop then work on expanding my skills in using these tools for artmaking.

Third, the lovely Inktense pencils/bars from Derwent.  I've used them before to embellish pieces but now I'm going straight for the coloring on fabric.  I can do this sitting down so I get more time to work for the same energy expended.  I'll be looking to combine it with my silkscreens as I tend toward images with lots of lines rather than blocks of color.  I think that should work well with the pencils.

Jeff got me the big box of art bars for Christmas and I'm looking forward to trying them out.

And my fourth area of experimentation will be things I can do while watching tv.  Jeff likes to relax after dinner by watching a movie or a tv show and I'm not as much of a video fan as he is but this is a great time for some small handwork.  Right now, I'm trying out hand stitching and I'm also investigating knitting with wire. 

I'll blog about all of these regularly over the next year and hope my healing progresses while I play and have art fun.  Wishing you a healthy, happy, creative year too!

Modern Quilt exhibit at Whatcom museum

Jeff and I finally made it to the Modern Quilt exhibit, just a couple of days before it closed.  So, since I didn't blog about it in time for others to go, I took lots of pictures so I could do an in-depth review.  I found it a fascinating exhibit and an interesting example of the art quilt world having its first major schism of a new school.  Makes me feel like we're real artists, doing split offs over small differences and everything.

The above sign was an interesting attempt, at least to me, to define the differences.  Of course, not all the quilts in the exhibit were bed quilts and thus not "functional" as the quilt world defines it thus lending support to my idea that this is an art schism in action.  Lest anyone think I disapprove of or dislike Modern Quilting, let me just say this was an exciting exhibit and if I were still making quilts, I'd be looking to the local guild for some community as I have yet to find a local art quilt group.  I use a lot of negative space, and my work is often described as graphic in sensibility.  And I think any of these quilts would fit in fine at an art quilt show.   But on to the actual quilts.

The exhibit started in the hallway leading to the exhibit hall so I got an early exposure to the quilts without benefit of signs explaining the guiding concepts.  This was good as Jeff and I got to discuss the differences from the quilts we usually see at art quilt shows and draw our own conclusions.  Jeff's father was an art professor so he has spent his life hearing artists talk about design and I've been going to quilt shows with him since the mid 90's so he is a very good discussion partner at this point.

The first quilt we saw was the most traditional quilt in the show, imho.  And that's Jeff standing in front of it.  Traditional blocks altho not a traditional setting and not bed size either.   As we progressed down the hall to the exhibition rooms, we saw many more interesting and clearly non traditional quilts.

My favorite of the ones in the hall still uses blocks but not in a traditional symmetrical way.  Lots of negative space and a lovely use of color are the things that caught my eye.  Again, not a bed quilt.

Jellyfish by Debbie Jones

Jeff preferred the more graphical and monochromatic piece that came next. A very nice wall piece and I also enjoyed the use of color in it.

Arctic Ice by Susan Oberwortmann

After a few more quilts in the hallway, we got to the exhibition rooms.  There were so many wonderful quilts that I'm going to limit myself to those that particularly appealed to me and demonstrated the differences of the Modern Quilt  approach.  These will tend to look a lot like art quilts with a geometric theme which makes me think of artists like Lisa Call, for example.

Modern Stepping Stones
by Heather Black, Spokane

The one below caught my eye because of the colors and the interesting use of circles.  I'm fond of circles myself and tend toward this blue in my personal work.  I also have a tendency toward diagonal movement in my work so this piece struck my eye.

Jeff picked out the next piece which we first saw from the back.  Here's the label which is on the lower left corner and we both got a good laugh from the line about entropy.  This view also gives a good closeup on the dense quilting which was quite striking.

Here's the overall quilting as seen on the back. 

And finally, the front. 

Bloberella
by Hillary Goodwin & Christa Withers

Here are the rest of the quilts I found notable.  This one had very interesting quilting with changes in the thickness of the threads used to accentuate the curves.

Smoke
by Kat Jones, Australia

Jungle Abstractions:  The Lion
by Violet Craft, Beaverton

And the last part of the exhibit was variations on a traditional block.  The explanation of the exhibit with credits is above, and the shot below is the art itself.  This particularly caught my eye as the annual benefit auction for SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Assoc.) is 12x12 art quilts and this collection of variations reminded me of the auction webpages.

An excellent and interesting exhibit and I am very glad we got to see it.

Grounded in Springtime initial composition finally done

I've been reworking how I work in my studio to accommodate my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the damage to my left eye's retina over the last few months and I finally got my new dancer piece to the stage where I can share a picture.  Yippee!

This is a big milestone which also marks several accomplishments in creating a new workflow and learning new tools.  And I'm sure I'll talk more about that later but for now, I'm just going to enjoy the visuals.  Here's the foreground composition.

This is a new thing for me, doing a piece on a plain white background.  Because when I was an art quilter, I'd piece the background first and then create the foreground on top of it.  Now, I'm doing it on white paper with the intent to try out various backgrounds in Photoshop before I glue everything down and finish the final piece.    This will not be the final dancer as I'm not liking the blue spirals on the yellow body.  I think they should be green for that whole green spring effect I'm aiming for.  This also means the spiral galaxy on the right needs to be lighter so there's more tonal contrast with the dancer.  And I'm going to do some variations along these lines along with using marbled fabric for that circle on the right. 

Here's some of the background fabrics I'm thinking of using.  It will be interesting to see how they work with the final foreground I develop over the next week.

Spiral galaxies

My theme for the dancer series work is "Dancing Through Space & Time" so I'm using astronomical images in a variety of ways.  I'm looking forward to playing with this one as a background, maybe with some color shifting.  

starry night sendoff

This one has lots of color and will give me a less structured background while still having the feel I'd like to achieve.  Also color shifting in the future for this one too altho it's likely to go a different direction.

More pictures will be shared as I finally get some new stuff produced. 

Developing new dancer piece

We had a lovely vacation in Canada the week before Thanksgiving and then went to our daughter's house for a small Thanksgiving dinner and amidst all of that, I have neglected the blogging.  Part of that is feeling like I didn't really have anything concrete to write about.  Vacation was a very relaxing time with lots of short walks along the bay and talk about books we're reading but I left my camera battery plugged in at home so my usual vacation blog about birds would have had no photos.  Altho I did take some interesting textural ones with my phone but talk about those will probably happen when I actually do something with them.

And Thanksgiving week was all about recovering from vacation and downtime with the family.  No big events there either.

So I almost did a book report this week.  Fortunately for all of you, I did start work on a new dancer piece using my new poseable figurine to give me some shots to work from.  I actually posed her on vacation and was very happy with how easy it was to photograph her with my phone.  That was the whole point of getting the gray rather than the flesh tone figure since it would give me an almost black & white silhouette to start with.

Once I got home and had uploaded my camera photos via Dropbox, I popped the picture into Photoshop for cropping and color shifting a bit.  Then printed it out and did a tracing with my trusty brush tip marker giving me this nice silhouette.

But wait, there's more.  This gives me the first silkscreen I need so I can lay down the background color for the dancer.  Next, I need the dancer silhouette with the body art so I pulled out some of my spiral screens & stencils and played around and got this. 

Unlike my earlier dancers, I stopped the tattoos below the arms.  When I tried them on paper in b&w I really didn't like the loss of detail for the face and arms so I went with this look.  Now, I've printed this out in multiple sizes and am ready to make my silkscreens to try out my new composition.  I should have some colored versions on paper by next week.  I am really happy at how quickly this process went as this makes it much easier to do composition changes and variations. And that means I get to focus my time & energy on the color play which is my fun place. 

Fiber Artist #5: Hollis Chatelain

In keeping with my focus on persistence and finishing, here's my fifth and final female fiber artist.  Hollis Chatelain came to my attention (in the 90's?) when one of her fabulous pieces sold for mid 5 figures, setting new goals for many fellow art quilters about possible income.  I've continued to be aware of and admire her work since as an influential artist in my field.

Blue Men by Hollis Chatelain

As you can see above, her work is realistic and detailed, striking in composition and content.  For a fiber artist, the way she works is inspiring.  She starts with a large piece of white fabric, sketches the design and then dye paints.  If she was working on a stretched canvas, this would be the total effort to create a painting.  But then, she stitches to add detail and texture to the surface.  Amazing work and I highly recommend checking out her webpage, https://www.hollisart.com/

I'm looking at her work with a new perspective as I try to simplify my processes so that I can still be productive with my lower energy level.  One thing I'm looking at is working whole cloth rather than doing fabric collage.  One of my challenges for this next several months is how do I do this and looking at her process is very helpful in giving me ideas.

No sewing machine, now what?

This week in the studio was a challenge.  I started the week with anticipation.  I had finished fusing the current project, had selected the threads to use and was ready to begin the stitching.  And then I tried to thread my sewing machine.

The whole vision problem has been improving with every treatment and I'm now having no problems with most visual tasks.  I still adjust the text size in a book now and then, but no longer have migraines and don't need the eye patch.  The sole exception, until this last week, was using the binoculars while birding and that's been improving too so I thought I was really over the problems.  Until I tried threading my machine.

first use of satin stich in my collage

I learned to sew on a machine when I was 8, 55 years ago.  I used my mom's Kenmore and my great-grandma's treadle machine both.  And I've been making my own clothes since I was 11.  I have 3 machines right now.  Over the last 20 years, as my eyes and my back had their own issues, I've added supplemental LED lighting, various magnifying lenses, and threading tools as needed to keep on doing the things I love to do with a sewing machine.  It took me an hour to get it threaded and I was so frustrated that I wanted to pick up the machine and bash a hole in the wall with it.  So I walked away and cooled off and came back the next day to actually sew.  And I got about 3 inches of test sewing done and broke the needle, probably because I couldn't see the sample sewing well enough and pulled too much.  So, I'm taking a break from the machine. 


If all goes well with the eye treatments over the next few months, then I'll be back to sewing happily.  For now, I'm going to assume that I have to be like Matisse and find another way to make my art.  The rest of this month, I will be experimenting with different ways to give that textured colorful line that I used the satin stitch of variegated thread to create with my machine.  Instead of the stitched line, I'm looking at using yarn, perle cotton, and other thick fibers.  I may do some hand stitching to get the variety of colors & textures I like. 

variegated stitch example

I'll be reporting on my trials here so you can follow along.  And I'll be using what I select to finish up the Salish Sea Mandala #1 that is my current project.  Right now it feels like 2 steps back and a half step forward but I have a plan and I'm confident I'll find a solution.    And I have a deadline of November 31 for SSM#1 to be finished so "make it work" is my mantra now.  Wish me luck!

Sluggy progress on Salish Sea Mandala #1

This last week, I got a new sink in my studio.  Huzzah!  Now I can paint, dye and silkscreen without running into the house and around the corner to the kitchen sink every time I need fresh water.  That meant moving around all the shelves on that wall, and adding a couple over the sink, so my progress on Salish Sea Mandala #1 was less than I had hoped for.  However, I still made the milestone of completing the top which is now ready for stitching.

I like the wavy edges on the different sections and I know what kind of stitching I want to do around the salmon stream and the fish themselves.  I think I'll wait until I have that stitching in place to try and decide if I want to make the piece smaller or add another circle around the center.  I also think I need to paint the white patches in the fabric around the globe as right now those patches compete with the globe for attention.  Fortunately I have a smallish scrap of that fabric left so I can do some painting trials before working on the actual piece.

It's good to see that even with frequent rest breaks, I can make noticeable progress when I focus on just one thing. 

Salish Sea Mandala series or transitioning from Energizer Bunny to Slug

Fall is here in the PNW as signified by rain, clouds and the start of crowds of kids on corners in the morning.  This is one of those times of year when I stop and take a look at how I'm doing overall.  As part of that look this year, I realized I need to accept that this sudden and severe change in energy may be permanent.  I've gone from being an Energizer Bunny to being a Slug.  Despite the sadness that realization brings, I'm also realizing that slugs get where they're going by persisting.  And having one goal.  So, I'm doing one thing at a time now and the big goal for this next year is creating a body of work with the working title "Salish Sea Mandalas".

I started this first piece by pulling the 3 salmon out of the "in progress" drawer.  Then I picked fabrics, and started cutting and fusing.  This process was going well until I started to add the background fabric and discovered I had seriously miscalculated how much I needed. 

So here's the center motif without the background.  As for my slugginess, I am discovering that I can work about 2-3 hours a day for 3-4 days a week.  This time gets split between making things in the studio and doing the computer work that goes along with the making.   As I recalibrate my  expectations, I will be blogging weekly about where I am so I can measure my progress.  I'm not yet to the point of putting a slug as my profile pic, but I'm getting more comfortable with my pace and I'm working to embrace my inner slug.

Golden workshop on pouring & marbling acrylic paint

Barbara de Pirro is the Golden rep/artist in Western Washington and she does regular workshops & lectures at art stores in the area.  I've attended a couple of her lectures/demos in Bellevue at Daniel Smith so when this class came up in her newsletter, I jumped on it despite the drive from Bellingham to Seattle for a 5 hour workshop.  And it was well worth it.

We started with a demo/talk about the different mediums to use in pouring acrylics and why it was a bad idea to do some of the things seen in various YouTube videos on the subject.  (Short answer:  some of things added can break down the acrylics over relatively short periods of time.)  We each got a folder of info about the materials and she demonstrated several techniques and styles of pours.  Then we got turned loose with our own bag of mediums and *huge* bags of fluid & high flow paints to experiment. (We got to take the sample sizes of the mediums home but could borrow the paints.)  I love marbling so I tried that first.  Here's my most successful attempt at using marbling techniques with acrylics on canvas board..

Calling this one twinkling stars

This was actually my second attempt, the first one turned to mud as I tried to swirl the paint around. But the one above is going to be the starting point for my next batch of experiments with this technique.  I'll be using the results in two ways.  First, I can silkscreen dancers on top of them and voila, I'm doing paintings.  Second, I can get a good photo of the marbled acrylic and print it on fabric and then make a quilt version with fabric dancers collaged on top.  This will give me a direct comparison of my two choices right now for creating small dancer pieces.  As part of my current process of figuring out what parts of creating give me joy, this direct comparison of paint vs fabric should be quite informative.

I started with my basic blue & yellow palette which is what I favor for the dancers.  Darker blue, teal, golden yellow and bright yellow were my starting point.  And if you don't put down a layer of acrylic first, when you drop the colors on a canvas board and swirl them, well, here's some mud.

Note how the blue and yellows combined to give me some streaks of green.  There's only a bit of recognizable swirls on the left but otherwise, an epic fail.  I am really pleased that I so quickly diagnosed the problem and corrected to get the twinkling stars above.

Having one success and one failure, I then attempted to get the swirling marbling that I like so much in my traditional marbling work.  I did two different attempts, adding more blues and some greens to my palette.  The bottom blue one was an attempt at sky horizon and the second was adding more colors and seeing how well the swirling worked with greater contrast.

These satisfied me on the marbling techniques.  I feel I've got a handle on what works and I will be working further with it in the next month or so.  The rest of the class, I spent playing with the pouring technique and creating acrylic skins which was all kinds of very messy, drippy fun.   As I play further with the skins I created, I'll share what results from those.

Regardless of the future experiments, this was a hugely successful experience for me.  I got into that creative joyful spot and enjoyed myself tremendously.  May you do the same real soon!

Fiber artist #3: Carol Bryer Fallert(-Gentry)

Yes, I know, the #FiveFemaleArtists thing was for March but life happens, no?  I'm going to finish anyway.

Carol Bryer Fallert came to my attention in the late 90's when she started her feather studies series.  I share her love of color & curves,  and appreciated the change in perception of zooming in on a familiar object.   Here's the first in that particular series.

But it wasn't until she did a large dancer piece at the same time I was beginning my dancer series that I decided to keep an eye on her.  Her work dealt with similar concepts as mine while differing in treatment enough to generate interesting ideas for me.

She not only has an extensive body of work which can be seen  at http://www.bryerpatch.com/ but has reached the point in her life/career where she is mentoring the rest of us with her free articles and tutorials.

I'm spending part of this week exploring what she offers at http://www.bryerpatch.com/faq/faq.htm.  I appreciate her offerings not only because of her decades of experience creating and teaching but also because this is a wonderful collection of articles relevant to my work in one convenient place.

Fiber artist #2 - Esterita Austin

Continuing my #5femaleartists posts about fiber artists who have influenced me with Esterita Austin.  Esterita teaches nationally (mostly at quilt stores) and I was fortunate enough to take her class about using paint on fused applique compositions.  The class I took is no longer listed on her page as she's developed new and more interesting classes. 

For me, that class was an eye opener.  It was in the early 2000's and I had not yet discovered silkscreening or even painting on quilts.  I was doing everything with fabric and thread.  The class used a composition she had developed with rocks in the foreground and a couple of tree trunks on the right.  The fabric requirements specified multi tone and color fabric.  And I learned an amazing amount about letting the fabric carry the values of shadow and highlight and adding emphasis through paint. She was originally trained as a painter and all of her classes use that training skillfully to teach quilters to use an artist's eye. Clearly this workshop was important to me since I'm remembering so much detail 15 years later.

Workshop result with some additions

After the workshop, I was in complete love with the tree trunks.  Most of the texture on them was added by some delicate painting which really popped them as 3D.  I later added the sunset sky by printing on sheer fabric from a nice photo I had.  And there was some other experimentation with shiva paint sticks and rubbing plates done that added visual texture to the water. 

Several years later (2013/2014)  I took a second workshop from her on doing fabric self-portraits.  The piece that came out of that workshop (see below) is the only piece ever displayed in my Georgetown studio that had someone walk into the studio, make a beeline to the piece, and ask loudly "Whose is this?  How much does it cost?"  That was a thrilling moment for me but I told him it wasn't for sale. 

I found the emphasis on tone rather than color freeing and have used things I learned from her regularly in my work.  I haven't browsed her class list in a while but looking at it for this blog is making me think it's time for another workshop.  This time I'll go for the paint on sheer fabric one as I already had using sheers on my experimentation list for this year.

I heartily recommend browsing her gallery and her students gallery for some other samples of this type of colorful work.