Tag Archives: problem-solving

Puppy Love, Part 2

Oh joy!!! I’ve finished something in less than a month; 2 1/2 weeks actually. It’s such a thrill to jump into a project and just breeze through to the end. With this piece, I took a break from thread painting and just did some dense stitching. The new challenge was to establish some designs that would fit with each element of the composition.

The blonde hair of the girl was easy. I used various values of yellow threads in long, undulated lines of stitching.

Next, similar, but shorter, wavy lines were put down with some variegated threads in a pattern that alluded to the hair of the dog. Several times I had to stop and pet my dear Coco’s face in order to really understand the changing direction of her hair. She didn’t mind too much.

Stitching the face was a leap of faith. It is so tricky to stitch the face! If you try to recreate the actual contours, and the lines aren’t just right, it throws off the perceived shape and makes the face look distorted. I decided to go in a completely new direction: loop-d-loops. I covered the entire face in a small repetitive design that had nothing to do with its shape or contour. I still varied the threads, letting the values do the work. I’m really pleased with the results.

The background was the most troublesome decision, just as with choosing the fabric. The print was complex and busy. Afraid that it would become too strong and overpower other elements, I didn’t want to stitch the printed design. I came up with a wandering ribbon design with a tiny meandering stitch to fill in the spaces. I feel like the 2 patterns of the fabric and stitching sort of neutralize each other and take away their power to dominate.

Finally, here’s the finished piece.

Golden Mean Calipers Part 2: Crop a Picture

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.

Calipers video part 2

Using the Golden Mean Calipers

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.

Value Finding Tools

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

See Me on The Quilt Show

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.

“Watch The Show”

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.

The Tangled Web

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 3^rd panel finished in time for my May deadline. I will make the 3^rd 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:

Lay the panels side by side. (Panel 3 is just a large sheet of muslin)

Mark the corner points and 1/3 marks along each side.

Run a line of string string between each of these key points.

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

A diagonal goes down the face, hits the shoulder, belt buckle, then follows the line of the tail
Another diagonal follows the line of the neck, a crease in the blanket, and the shadow of the back haunch.
The lower horizontal connects the reins, rifle, and blanket fold

In the center panel:

Lines on the center panel

A diagonal connects the hand, a stripe of the blanket, a line of rope, and then runs down the back leg
Another connects the eyes, bottom of the rope and follows the tail.
The lower horizontal runs along the belly of the horse

In the left panel:

Lines on the left panel

I place the horses in the center between the horizontal strings
Diagonals from the upper left corner will fall along the head and back of the horse and also connect the nose, chest and stirrup.
I also sketch in lines for the background so that it will all come together in the end.

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

Does This Butt Look Big??

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.

Just the Right Face

Too much shadow.

The second figure has come together, but I don’t like the face. Even though it is turned away from the viewer, it is still important to get it right.

Hair and face distinguished.

First, I don’t like that the head is a solid black shape as it creates too much shadow. Replacing part of that black shape with brown helps to distinguish the hair from the face.

reference tools

With that done, my attention now turns to the line of the profile. To make it accurate I refer back to a drawing I did for my book showing the correct placement of features. I hang it next to my fused image. BONUS: the drawing happens to be almost the same size as face of my rider. Using a ruler I hang in front of the fused face, I place pins to mark important benchmarks: top and bottom of the head, bridge of the nose, bottom of the nose.

From there, I make some nips and tucks and put the best face forward.

Now its right!

The 2nd Horseman

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.

Blanket Statement

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.

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