Movin' West

When painting, I tend to move east to west as did many road travelers back in the day!! On the north east edge of state of Arizona is the beautiful "Painted Desert" Moving westward, not far away and near the town of Holbrook is the fallen trees of the petrified forest. In order to see my drawings on this fabric, I do place a light box under the drawing laid under the fabric. The drawing looks like the end of a cut of a cucumber but It will be a tree log when I'm done. The light box helps big time.

On The Road Again

I'm still running to "beat the band"(complete) to get the final 2 10 ft. fabric maps to be quilted and exhibited with the Route 66 traveling exhibition which will begin exhibiting this August. I've previously done 4 large 10 foot+ panels following the historic Mother Road from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. Thats 6 of the 8 states through which Route 66 existed. Heading now into Arizona, a wide state with many landmarks along the original route. All the panels were previously background painted at the same time so we are now tackling adding the physical route and reflecting a few of the elements we anticipate the 60+ surrounding art quilts will represent. We've seen some of the pictures of finished quilts ( Spectacular!!!) and anxiously await the deadline date ( June 15th) for the rest of them. The first thing as I begin traveling again Route 66 again is to get a full size paper drawing of the route. This is a bigger challenge than I thought as the route no longer exists across all 8 states so some cities that were on Route 66 aren't anymore. It' all doable with a little patience and persistence. First things first... a pencil drawing using my necessary tools (including Kirkland chocolate) Once I've stopped erasing and redrawing, I use a black permanent marker to create a final contour drawing of various elements. There's much to see in this wide state, so this one will be extra fun to paint. Here is the big picture lying across my work table!!!

Love The Birdie

Carol Dye loves her bird. It is often a bit difficult to paint something you know and love that much. ( Angst comes to the forefront whether we like it or not). This common emotion is one good reason to tackle such things in a classroom environment. As the teacher, I don't know this bird and can see the birds makeup objectively. A slower beginning got crackin' as Carol's bird began to come to life. Once Carol got into this art form, she moved like wildfire producing 3 painting images in as many days. You go girl!!!

ZZZZZZZebra

Lorrie Havens of Wrightwood Ca created this piece to be cut out and appliqued onto a wild animal quilt top. The challenge on this piece was dealing with an original reference photo that didn't clearly show the zebras eyes. The way I deal with such things is NOT to deal with them as the stated issue at all. So we set about to duplicate only what we saw in the original photo (which Laurie liked anyway) and the end result was just fine!!!

Beth is sooo productive

Beth Stanton is one focused artist. In this one session, she completed her kitty portrait, got a long ways on a very intricate portrait piece of a street entertainer in France, and quilted her Route 66 Exhibition piece. See the link list on the left to check out the Route 66 exhibition. (c)

Myrna's Portraits at Painted Quilt Workshop

I think Myrna Welton has decided portraits are 'her thing'... for now anyway....Right off the top a delicate portrait of her daughter...Very Well Done!!! .. followed by ink paintings using my drawings of Santa and then KING, the lion. I think she likes this method.

Flippy Flop- Painted Quilt Workshop

Dee Dee chose to interpret on fabric a personal photo of her adoring grandsons tootsies in the sand. This piece is a challenge in that most everything in the original photo was warm colors and near monochromatic. Her challenge was to create interest through texture challenge.... and finally we chose some artistic license on the shadows on the flip flops. Instead of a dark warm shadow as on the photo reference image, an orchid shadow freshened up the overall look.

This is a great idea Dee Dee had. I'd love to line up all of my grandkids on the beach sand this summer and do a panorama of FEET photo. KUDOs Dee Dee.