For the squash you can see I am painting with a transparent base textile paint and building up the color with transparent glazes to create the shading. I used water instead of a textile medium to make the paint more transparent for the glaze. As I added more color the fabric got too wet and the paint began to bleed on the right side. I quickly grabbed a blow dryer to dry the paint before it bled too much. (Using a clear textile medium would prevent the bleeding, but if you are careful with the amount of water you use you can often do without.)
A blow dryer can be a great tool to have on hand when you are painting. When you are glazing paint you want to build up the color gradually, the paint needs to dry between layers. This is really important if you are glazing several colors on the same area, if the layers are not dry the colors will mix and get muddy and you will not have depth in the color.Next I painted the dark green on the squash and glazed a darker shade of green at the top and bottom of the squash to increase the illusion of it being dimensional.
The blossom is painted a similar golden yellow with a tiny bit of red added to the yellow to deepen the color.
I painted the background with Jaquard brown (not neopaque) straight from the jar.
I liked this initially but after a couple days when I came back and looked at it, the splotchiness bothered me and I felt like the flower did not have enough range in value, it looked a little flat. I think it is always good to set work aside and come back and look at it with a fresh eye. You will often see things that were not apparent before.
Using only violet paint, I glazed light washes on the flower in the center and in the shadows where the petal curls to give it more depth and I glazed light washes on areas of the leaves where there is some overlap to give them a little more definition and in a few places on the stems to give more dimension. Then I painted the whole brown back ground with medium to dark glazes of violet multiple times, this evened out the background and warmed it up to an aubergine tinted brown. Purple is the compliment of yellow, adding it to the background creates more contrast with the the colors of the plant making it pop and come forward from the background.
Hi Judy
Great painting! I do love how you take it step by step and explain what you have done. What exactly are you using or what do you mean by "glazing" your color ? Do you actually use a glaze or is that what you call the process itself?
Carol
thanks carol,
Glazing is the process of building up color by using transparent layers of paint. I add water or clear medium to the paint on the palette to thin the paint to a light wash. This allows more control over the color so it does not get too dark or too bright too fast
I have another question, after looking at my paints (I couldn't wait! :)) How do you tell if a paint is transparent? Or are you making it transparent by adding the medium to it?
I have pre-ordered your DVD & am anxiously awaiting it! I also like the idea of a colour class on-line if possible. It is difficult for me to get to classes with my travel schedule.
Hi Cindy,
Generally textile paints come in three different types. I will use Jaquard as an example, they make paints they call Textile color: these are the ones with a transparent base, Neopaque: have an opaque base, and Lumiere: the metallics have a semi transparent base.
To make the paints have less coverage for a technique like glazing, you can use a product Jaquard makes called Colorless Extender, this is basically the clear textile medium without the pigment added. So if you add a little paint to the extender you would have a very transparent paint, like a watercolor with the same viscosity of regular textile paint. This is probably the best method for glazing since it retains the viscosity of the paint and will not bleed on fabric the way adding a lot of water can.
Love this walk-through... Can you list what kinds of paints (brands) you used?
Cheryl,
I used Jaquard textile color paint in brown, violet and white and Stewart Gill Student grade textile paint green and yellow.
I really like the Stewart Gill paints for their pure pigments, the colors are wonderful. The Student grade paints are much more economical than the other lines of paint they sell in the little jars, but I don't think student grade is an appropriate name for these paints. They are closer to glazes than solid paint. I would not recommend these for a beginner/student, I could see people getting very frustrated using them in an illustrative way without more painting experience. My sister had a hard time working with them and had a lot more success when she switched to the Jaquard paint. They work really well for surface design techniques though.
Judy, if you ever give a painting workshop - I'm SO there. I LOVE your work - and saw your quilts at the Denver Show a couple of weeks ago. Magazine photos just don't do them any justice, I was completely in awe.
Hi Claudia, thanks.
I have put together a workshop for painting, now it is just a matter of getting booked some where near you, lol. But in the mean time the next closest thing to taking a workshop will be to get the Quilting Arts workshop DVD I made on painting fabric for whole cloth quilts. It is one hour long and covers some of the basic techniques I use when painting.