Re-purposing Some Older Work

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles is asking for donations of 10 in squares fiber artwork to be sold to help with funding. The "Fiber Shot" sale will be held in conjunction with the Kaffe Fassett show beginning March 11th.

Thinking about what I could do to participate, I dug out some old design exercises which have been sitting in a box for 10 years. Two sets of identical shapes were cut freehand to make a still-life. The second set of shapes was re-arranged to create an abstract composition.

I've been uninspired to do anything with either of the pieces. The first still life was fun to make, but lacks any imagination and didn't hold my interest, so I made some sketches, and decided to cut it up and make "fruit salad". I cut it up before I could change my mind, so now I'm committed.

 

I plan to cut it into smaller irregular squares and mix it together with some greens and purples. The other piece may just get some borders added.

Improvisation - part 2

I took a second look at the "round robin" quilt I came home with from the cqfa meeting a few weeks ago. There was a large green rectangle that was drawing too much attention in the original, so I trimmed it down into smaller pieces and redistributed them. Added some more of the blue print fabric, and continued the black as a border. Need to decide how big I want it so I can finish the piecing.

Improvisation with Friends

Saturday was spent at a meeting & workshop for Contemporary Quilt & Fiber Artists (CQFA). In the afternoon nine of us did a "round robin" inspired by a chapter in Sherri Lynn Wood's new book:

We each began by selecting fabrics from our collection to set the color scheme, and made a quick pieced block from some of the fabric. A strict fifteen or twenty minute time limit kept us from overthinking the process.

Our baskets of fabric (all except one signature fabric) and the block we worked on were rotated to another person. We then added some pieced work using the fabric given to us plus our own signature fabric.

As the quilts progressed we were encouraged to see what the quilts had to say and "add to the conversation" with our own piecework. We were given a little more time with progressing rounds as larger pieces needed to be completed. Thirty minutes for the last round and to "complete the conversation".

There were no great masterpieces, but each quilt was attractive and unique, and we all had a sense of accomplishment in a relatively short time. It will be fun to add a bit more piecing to balance the design and enlarge it to the size I want.

Design Internship

I've finally earned my certificate in Graphic Design at Laney College. I'm working as a Design Intern with a team other six other designers at Oakland Digital & Literacy Center this summer.

Our first assignment was to create a digital announcement in our own style. I created a pencil drawing which I scanned into Photoshop. It was "painted" in Photoshop using the Brush and Mixer Brush tools.

A lesson in “Hand Written” fonts

I had an interview for a summer internship yesterday, and got some great advice on the font choice used on one of my portfolio pieces.

For my final project for a design class, I chose to do an ad for my favorite pair of sandals. Since hand drawing at least part of the ad was a required element, I had the idea to create the ad around a woman who likes to hike, and likes to write and draw in her art journal. Nearly all of the text for the ad was written in the journal, and I chose a font called “Segoe Script” (shown in left sample below) because it looked like hand writing, and would give the casual feeling I was trying to achieve in the advertisement.

 

The problem with using a font to represent handwriting, is that it’s a little too perfect. Escpecially for large amounts of text with repeating letters, it’s quite obvious that it was typed on the computer. It’s usually better if you want to represent handwriting to actually write it out by hand (right sample).

I’m much happier with this project now that I’ve made this change. The images I created are all black and white drawings which I scanned into Photoshop. I used the Brush tool and the Mixer Brush tool to “paint” the images in Photoshop. This was the first time I used the Mixer Brush tool, and I found it to be alot like blending two colors of wet paint together with a brush.

Rowell Ranch Rodeo Parade

A couple of weekends ago I went to the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Parade in Castro Valley so Camilla could hand out tote bags and flyers for her school. I went with my camera to take lots of photos and get inspiration for a final project for my Photoshop class. I got frustrated trying to put many photos together to represent parade and community and not just the rodeo. My initial efforts looked very cluttered and busy, and didn’t have any focus.

Going back to planning stage, I decided I could make an effective poster with just words. I picked a simple background drawing, and then focused on how to arrange the words for good visual impact. The parade has been around for over 90 years, so I had the idea to make a vintage looking sign. I gave it further character by placing a photo of some old boards you might find on an old ranch (actually my backyard fence) behind the image, and then blending the two with many layers.

Inspire Oakland Billboard

I was excited to find out last night that my billboard design for ODALC’s Inspire Oakland program won 2nd place. You can expect to see it on a billboard soon.

For my design, I decided to focus on the view from Arrowhead Marsh located in Martin Luther King Jr. Park near the Oakland Airport. I imagined viewing the distant skyline from the air. Some artistic license was used in bringing the buildings much closer.

Watercolor was used to paint the view in a stylized way with bright hues, and I allowed the distant downtown to blend into the bay and marshland below. I created a second painting of my hand lettered text, and the two paintings were brought together in Photoshop.