Planets Triptych

This week, I've been finishing another UFO.  It's a piece that I started in the summer.  I started working on it after seeing a piece that my friend Diana did based on Carol Ann Waugh's Stupendous Stitching. Later, after signing up for Carol's online class, I had set this aside and I did the large colourful piece called Spirals, Lines & Serendipity.

In an attempt to finish up yet another of the unfinished pieces that I have lying around (thanks Tracey for your challenge!), I pulled this out and got back to it.

Each of the individual panels are mounted on 8" X 8" canvas squares, and the intension is to hang them vertically as shown here.

I've called it Planets because of the various spheres and the batik patterns on them.

Dimensional Exploration

close-up to show some of
the hand stitching

I've been working on a piece that is one piece of silk dupioni on which I've been working to create dimension in the piece using only stitch and a little shading. I'm please with the results, and plan to explore this idea further. 

Playing With Colour

I decided to sign up for Joanne Sharpe's Color Love 101 in an effort to learn more about using some of the wonderful, colourful watercolours, markers and other media I have in my studio.  I've always been a little afraid of watercolour paints in particular, so I hope that this gives me some knowledge about how to make the most them.

This first image is a page I did using watercolour paints and Tombow markers.  It already has some dimensionality showing, but after playing a little more with my Intense pencils, pencil crayons and my trusty 'White Out' pen, I'm happy with the bright, crisp colours and the 3-D effect I've been able to achieve.  Wow.  To think this is just the first lesson and I'm already feeling more confident!

Playing With Shadows

Today I spent some time in the studio playing around with shadows.  I love adding that layer of black under shapes to give the illusion of the shapes floating above the piece.  The colours in this were inspired by Vicki Welsh's colour palette from the colour palette challenge.

The background was pieced and the rest has been fused.  The next step will be the quilting.  I love this part because it just seems to bring the piece to life.  I'll post again once it's done so you can see where I take it.

Thanks for visiting today.  Have an artfully wonderful day!