On to the next painting, this time of the back of Origin. I must admit that it has been several weeks since I painted the front and ideally, they would be painted “back to back”, so to speak, to keep the colors consistent. I found myself puzzling a bit, trying to remember which of my paints I had used the first time, for the front.

I started watercolor about 2 years ago and started in ernest with the delivery of the Daniel Smith Extra Fine Essential Introductory Watercolor set to our cottage in Nebraska. I took advice I found in the books in the San Marcos Public LIbrary to heart, that the very best materials will produce better results. I quickly purchased a secondary color set that included Undersea Green, Quiacridone Burnt Orange and Carbazole Violet. But it was Daniel Smith Cascade Green that made me fall in love with watercolor. The granulation of the color in water, the blooms and how quickly the shadows of trees emerged from the spreading paint, suddenly watercolor stopped being “weak tea” compared with oil and acrylic and became a living moving force. Watercolor is like putting a saddle on a water dragon, holding on for dear life while the spirit spurts across the sky.

In the case of this specific painting, I have used a Yellow Ochre that is left from a watercolor set I had purchased in Vancouver while at a conference in 2016. This was a MungYo set, from South Korea, and has been dependable and durable, although not as inspiring as the Daniel Smith paints. I also used Schminke Prussian Blue to represent the chambray and used Daniel Smith Cobalt Teal Blue as the green linen. These two colors are brought back into the batik as well as the Daniel Smith Carbazole Violet, Cascade Green and Schminke Indigo.

 

Forest

One of the first oneshirts that I made is available for purchase, being featured first in the Mothership Studio Tour on April 1st and 2nd, 2023. 

The shirt is gently used and will fit a size 18-22.

Content: 100% Cotton

Care: Machine wash cold, non-chlorine bleach, line dry, do not dry clean

 

The use of fat quarters in my design is directly attributable to the way I purchased fabric for the first few oneshirts. The Quilt Basket in York, Nebraska has been “my store” for 30 years. I left high school early to attend York College as a 17 year old instead of my senior year at Hamilton Humanities Magnet in Los Angeles. My parents were leaving LA and staying behind fir my senior year was not as attractive as my fantasy of college life. In the early 1990s, York, Nebraska was a walkable small town with a variety of shops and was only just beginning to grapple with the impact of WalMart on the local economy.

Stopping by the Quilt Basket to pick up sewing supplies and fabric or to drop off one of my Bernina machines for service is a regular part of a visit to our cottage in a nearby village. I took all of the available coursework in Quilt Studies as part of my masters degree in Textile Science at University of Nebraska in 2003. One of the first things I learned about piecework quilting is that it is much more about consumption display of the huge variety of printed fabrics available after the invention and improvements of mechanized textile printing in the mid- and late-19th century. I feel this same impulse to buy small quantities of the many beautiful fabrics in order to enjoy the diversity of aesthetics on offer.

Forest

Forest is made from 2 fat quarters of two different batik fabrics and a yard of two other batik fabrics. The circles in brown is a colorway of the same fabric used in Origin. The trees inspired the name, although I love trees and forest is my natural habitat. The alternation of fabric at the front yoke and the back wings is due to the limited height of the yard, not quite enough to reach the height that 1 1/4 yards allows. The dotted light and dark sleeve are made from each of the fat quarters. The remaining pieces in the area of the armscye curves were used to make the pockets.

Forest back