Mini Quilt and School

I am not sure if I mentioned it here or not - probably not, but I joined a Closed Yahoo group called the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge (FFFC) I found the group through the Art Quilt List when they had a call for new members. Anyway they have a monthly challenge which is posted the 3rd Friday of a month, can be based on a theme or just about anything that the challenge leader for that month comes up with. The August Challenge was to use a photo of a garden (yours or even out of a magazine) abstract it and create a quilt. I decided to see what I could come up with using one of my photos of my Christmas Cactus which I took last December. I took the photo's with the idea that one day I would make a quilt out of them so when I saw this, even though my plants aren't technically a garden I decided to go for it. I am posting 3 pictures, the original photo, what I did using Photoshop and the final quilt. There are some differences between the design and the outcome that I made for design reasons, but it is pretty close.

School - 3rd week of classes are done. And so far I am still surviving. Monday we got our test back in Computer Graphics, I didn't do too badly which I found a relief. I am still working on my drawings, well pen and ink studies for the Color and Design class, and don't want to show them just yet. I finished one, but don't like it so am doing another which I think is turning out much better. I am using an apple with seeds as the source of my second study, I wanted to use a pear but couldn't find one that actually had seeds. I know bosc pears have seeds, but I didn't want to do a bosc pear - bother. Anyway the apple is drawn and I am not doing another. I am at the ink in stage of these abstractions, I know I am not being very clear here, but when you see photo's you will understand, and feeling a bit nervous about doing it. Ink doesn't come off once on, and I hate second guessing myself.

Drawing class on Tuesday went well I think, I turned in my shoes (homework was to make 3 drawings of a shoe) - sorry I didn't get pictures of them, maybe I will take photo's when I get them back. Not sure of my grade on them, I don't think I got the different quality of line that the instructor was looking for (sigh). In the class on Tuesday the instructor had set up an arrangement of black and white objects, apparently he had been busy painting over the weekend. Mostly simple shapes, balls, blocks, cones (Styrofoam) with some bottles and vases added in. I did one which I will add in here, moved, did another (won't show that one) moved again (we are at easels, standing for the class) then the instructor came by and gave me a bit of one on one - he used tone as an over all tool to get the large shapes and not to worry about the details, which could be put in later. This is a problem I have always had drawing, I tend to work too much detail from the start of a drawing, any way I am posting the drawing he played with, and then I am posting the last drawing I did trying to use more tone and shape and less detail. We will see how well I can learn this lesson, and it is really an important one and will make figure drawing easier, not to mention landscape drawing. I think he was concerned that I would take his criticism as that I wasn't doing a good drawing, but I am aware from past instructors that I tend to to begin with too much detail so I didn't take it that my drawing was bad, just that I need to loosen up, and start more generally. Erasers are my Friend

My first Drawing of the table, note the pictures aren't all that great, I was being lazy and didn't get the board out to support the paper tablet.

Dwg 2, This is the one that Instructor demonstrated the type of technique he wants me to use, I did the image layouts he applied the tones

Dwg 3, my last drawing where I was trying to use more values and less details