This is my second video on how to use the Golden Mean Calipers. This week I show you how use them to crop a photo around a focal point so that the outer dimensions are harmonious and the subjects in the composition are well placed. These calipers are available in my web store. If you find these videos interesting or helpful, subscribe so that you get notified whenever I post a new one. I’m trying to do this once a week until I run out of things to say—like that could ever happen.
Golden Mean Calipers
Today, I want to share with you a tool that I’ve discovered called the Golden Mean Calipers.. I’ve also seen them labeled “Fibonacci Gauge.” can be a useful design tool in your artistic process. There are a variety of ways this particular tool can be used. Let me illustrate a few.
Finding the Sweet Spot Within Your Composition
A focal point is used to grab the viewer’s eye and engage the viewer in your artwork. Generally, it is best to avoid taking the viewer’s eye to the center, for when it arrives there, it will tend to stop and rest. Placing key elements off center will tend to prolong the viewer’s engagement with the composition. Use the calipers as shown below to determine the best placement of the focal point and other key elements of a composition. In portraits, eyes and mouths are important features for focal points.
Use calipers for cropping the sides of an image.
Lay the calipers over a photo print, to determine the best way to crop it.
Use the calipers to determine the placement of a design element within a larger panel.
Taking Elements Off the Edge
Avoiding the middle also applies when taking lines or elements off the edge of a composition. See how the calipers can be used to determine the most visually pleasing locations for the placement of lines that will carry the viewer’s eye to the edge of a composition.
Creating Borders with Harmony
This tool is also useful when adding borders to a traditional block quilt. One method is to start with the blocks themselves. Place the outer points of the calipers at the edges of the blocks. This will give you two new measurements that will be in harmony with the blocks. Use the larger measurement for the total width of the border. This area can further be divided by placing the outer points of the calipers on the edges of the border area. This will indicate pleasing widths for and inner and outer border. All measurements indicate finished sizes. Don’t forget to add seam allowances.
Measure the width of your block.
Create a single border matching the wider measurement of the calipers.
Create harmonious smaller borders.
Divide the border area using the calipers.
Sometimes, a specific finished size is necessary and this isn’t achieved in the process above. In this case, determine the desired total width of your outer borders, open the calipers to this desired width and then measure the distance between the points to determine the finished widths of an inner border and outer border.
Perfect Facial Proportions.
The Golden Ratio occurs naturally within faces and calipers are useful when creating portrait works, either when drawing the face, or problem solving when a face doesn’t look quite right. See the photos below for ways to check the proportions of the face, and placement of the features.
Placement of mouth between nose and chin
Bring of the nose in relation to forehead and chin.
Placement of eyes
If you are interested in learning more about facial proportions and portrait quilting, check out my book, Thread-Painted Portraits: Turn Your Photos into Fiber Art
AND look for videos on my YouTube Channel Lea McComas Fiber Art.
I’m trying something new in my blog this week: a video. This is my first attempt, and let’s just say, it was a learning process. I’m thankful that I get to spend a large part of my day with teenagers who know all about this and are happy to advise their teacher.
Follow this link to learn about the tools I use to select fabrics. Value Finding Tools Video
These tools are available in my web store if you want a set of your own.
Value Finding Tool Kit
Original photo
When I thread paint, I rely on the thread to do the bulk of the work. My technique allows me to blend colors and create subtle shading and contours, as if I were working with paint. In my process I find that there is an OTZ (Optimum Thread Zone). Stitching below the zone creates what I consider dense quilting, and stitching above the zone overloads the fabric and causes it to expand and buckle.
With this in mind, I consider the facelift that is needed by my horse. As mentioned last week, the shape of the nose needs some adjusting. However, having applied heavy stitching to the face already, there is a limited amount of thread that can be added without exceeding the OTZ. This means I need to get it right, right away.
In the original photo, the horse is moving his head as the photo is snapped, so it is blurred and doesn’t provide the details that I need. It is off to the internet to find images of horse heads that face the right direction, at a similar angle, and in the right light. I also look to reference books of paintings done by several Western artists.
sketch of nose on plastic sheet
Next, I place a clear plastic sheet over the face of my horse and outline its shape and key lines with a red marker. That sheet is then set on a white background where black lines indicate where stitching is to be added or changed. In this way, I can audition the additional stitching, erase, and redo as needed until it’s right.
Back at the longarm frame, I keep this plastic sheet handy and begin the facelift. In addition to creating a more boxy snout, highlights were added around the nostril and above the eye to give them more depth.
Facelift results
First Face
I’ve been away from the blog for a while, but, as you might have guessed, progress did continue on the horseman. In my race to finish it in time to submit to the Houston quilt competition, all available resources were diverted to making progress on this piece. I did take some photos along the way and will share that progress with you in my next few blog posts.
Shiny and dull threads for this horse
This week, let’s focus on the stitching of the first horse.
I selected a variety of threads in the full value range. This first horse is pretty dark, and if I think about what the horse would look like in real life, my thread choices would fall in the medium to dark range. My analytical brain has to take over to pick the very lightest threads. Because this horse is standing in water, a selection of threads with dull and shiny finishes were chosen to differentiate between the wet and dry parts of the horse.
Often, stitching begins with the lightest threads, working toward the dark areas, but this time, I did the opposite. I can’t say why with certainty. Perhaps it’s because the dark threads will complete most of the stitching and the lighter threads will add the finishing touches. The first step is to make some broad, sweeping stitch lines to hold things in place. That is followed by several passes, filling in more and more each time.
These photos show how the work progressed.
While working up close, it’s hard to fully appreciate what is happening. I have to rely on
Reference photo on the computer
what I know should work as I’m stitching. I also keep my laptop near by with a reference photo on display. It is always such a treat to step back and look at the work and be able to appreciate that it has come together as planned. Sometimes, it’s even better, like the stitching along the neck of this horse. That’s when I smile, pat myself on the back, and say, “Lea, you’ve done well. You should have some chocolate.”
After a cup of tea and a few Thin Mint cookies, I had to admit that I was not thrilled with the nose. More on that next week…
I recently taped an episode of TheQuiltShow.com with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. Subscribers to that website got to see that episode last week. Many thanks to those of you that sent kind words through email and Facebook.
Photo by Gregory Case
Now, I can share a link to that show with the rest of you. Click on the link here and you can watch too.
This link will work until May 11, so make a cup of tea and sit back to enjoy.
Let me know what you think Also, for those of you that subscribe to The Quilt Show, I have a new series of lessons in the “Classroom” section of the website. This course is on “Contemporary Batik” If you’ve ever wanted to try batik, but were afraid of the mess, check out this class. It will be FUN, and EASY!! http://thequiltshow.com/learn/classrooms FTI: you have to be a subscriber to the website to access this class.
I’ve managed to get the first two panels of my 4 Horsemen triptych fused together and have come to terms with the reality that I will not get the 3rd panel finished in time for my May deadline. I will make the 3rd panel—someday—maybe in the summer.
Before I can begin stitching, I must to do some planning and prep work now if the three panels are to fit together later. Toward that end, iI want to make sure that each panel works individually AND in concert with each other.
Panels side by side
Here is the process:
In doing this, I can accurately place lines of the riverbank, foothills, mountains, and place the final riders in just the right position. Additionally, this web of string creates a grid for identifying key lines and points of intersection within the piece.
Here is my dilemma: the whole thing is way to large to fit on my design wall. The best I can do is clear the floor in my family room and lay out the panels. Unable to pin into the hardwood floors, I’m left to lay the string on the floor and they won’t stay put. They are continually shifting as I move things around under them. Eventually, I do get a sense of how things are laying out.
I see some good things going on in the right panel:
Lines o the right panel
In the center panel:
Lines on the center panel
In the left panel:
Lines on the left panel
Doing this on the floor stinks! Every time I move something, I have to reposition the strings. To make things worse, my trusty companion, Coco, has her own ideas about the placement of these strings. I love her, but I REALLY don’t appreciate her design sensibilities.
Coco tries to help
Too much off the edge
While fussing over the second horseman and I find a couple of problems with the composition. I’m irritated by the horse’s back end hanging off the right side of the composition. It seems to be too much.
Because I have already finished the background, extending it could be a problem. Can it be done without creating a distinct line down the panel that is obvious and distracting??
Extending the water
I’ve got to try. At this point, I think the key to the expansion project is to break up the vertical line. As I add to each component of the background, I’ve got to stagger the additions of fabric. The water is the largest area and most obvious, but I can camouflage that line with ripples. Here is what I have at the end. Let’s hope stitching hides the rest.
Try to ignore those black lines on the second photo. I’ll explain them another day.
The horse’s patooty is coming off the edge.
I’m back at work on the second panel of the 4 Horsemen. The first dilemma is getting the scale correct. This figure, originally, behind the central figure, will now be in from of him, so he’s got to appear larger. It took some trial and error, but I finally got the size right. I like an irregular edge, so I’m going to hang the horse’s patooty off the edge.
Continuous background
The key with this composition is to keep some key elements consistent across both panels. In this case, it is the lines of the background. As they continue from one panel to the other, they create a cohesive composition. I’m loving this.
Willis to the rescue.
I’m nervous about the pace of my work being slow, and am considering reducing the scope of this piece to 2, rather than 3 panels. I really love the title and “The 2 Horsemen” doesn’t have the same appeal. So, when my parents stopped in to visit on their way to ski country, I put my dad to work in the studio fixing the rollers on one of my chairs.
These last couple of weeks, I’ve frantically been working to complete the fusing portion of the center horseman panel before other, looming responsibilities interrupt me. The body of the rider has taken a lot of energy. There were many tiny pieces and a lot of confusion in sorting out what was what in the photo, but I finally put him together.
The big design decision here was the color scheme for the blanket. The overall scheme for the piece is a double compliment: red-green, blue-orange. Currently, a very dark orange is brought into the composition through the horse. I really wanted to work in some lighter warm orange in the blanket, but couldn’t visualize it. Several photocopies of the pattern were made and filled in with colored pencils. In the end, it was a red, white, blue, and gray scheme that worked with the rest of the composition. See the progress below.
A portion of the original photo
Audition colors on paper. Orange isn’t working
Blanket in progress in red, white, blue–and grey.
Finished rider.
I’ll tell you about the background in a future blog.
