Sunday 1 June 2014

First in Flight

I'm mega behind in contributing to the monthly challenges, but did complete the April challenge.  We were on vacation for February and part of March, and it took me awhile to get back into the art studio.

This is my first attempt at creating an original tesselation.  I purchased a new program from TesselManiac and turned the kite shape into a hummingbird.

I traced the repeat pattern on tissue paper to create this piece and then painted each bird with various inks and pencils.  The inks were mixed with clear Aloe Gel, and the Inktense pencil colors were blended with water.

They looked a bit like blobs, so I used a Sharpie marker to add eyes, and baby wings to each bird, and quilted around them.

The purple First in Flight hummingbird is stitched with 2 different Madeira metallic threads.

The sky was painted with 4 different shades of ink and Aloe Gel, and machine quilted with a variegated Madeira rayon thread.

Diane


9 comments:

  1. What a clever and stunningly visual piece of work Diane, Very well executed.
    Ann

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  2. Very reminiscent of the designs by Escher.Nicely worked

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  3. Very interesting piece. Now off to research the use of Aloe Gel.

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  4. Beautiful and I didn't see the tessellated birds at first! Way cool! Please share about how/why you use Aloe Gel. First I've heard of it and I'm always looking for some new ways to play.

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    1. Painting with clear aloe gel is lots of fun. It tones the inks down so you get some nice pastels. I used 1 tsp of CLEAR aloe gel - the colored aloe gel won't work - to drops of ink.

      I made a color sampler for myself - 1 tsp aloe gel, 1 drop ink, mixed well, used a paint brush to paint a little color block. Added another drop, mixed well, painted another little color block, and so on up to 6 drops in that 1 tsp of aloe gel.

      You can also mix colors together to create a large color selection.

      I let it air dry for 24 hours, heat set with an iron, and then washed the aloe gel out.

      All the inked birds were created from 3 colors Daler Rowney FW acrylic artist ink #119 Rowney Blue, #651 Lemon Yellow, and Liquitex Naphthol Crimson. The two different inks were mixed to create the purples and played just fine with each other.

      If you have anymore questions, ask away. I'll do my best to help.

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    2. Gently hand washed the aloe gel out. I should have said that. I do not think this will hold up to machine washing.

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  5. Seems like an interesting Tesselation program and worth investigating.

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