More Artists, Patterns, Suggestions, and Finished Projects: Very Late Summer Q & A

USPS commemorative stamp for Georgia O'Keeffe

I really like the idea of featuring women artists and telling us how to find their work. I never have thought that the women get the recognition they deserve. When are you going to introduce us to another one?

Right now! And you will ‘meet’ two more contemporary women painters in All About Color, Part II in a couple of weeks.  I agree with you that women have been neglected in the past — even ones who were famous in their own times. I have two huge books on art history and it is like pulling teeth to get good information about the women artists of past periods. But times are changing!

This post's contemporary artist is Australian. Her name is Katie Wyatt (www.katiewyatt.com) and her focus is on form. She paints landscapes and seascapes in oil paints, using both brushes and palette knives, creating rugged land forms from memory. She shows sharp layers of rock formations and coastlines against a simple background of sky, using rich, imaginative, and vivid colors. Dark lines of shadow indicate the depth of, and distance between, the geologic features. Vegetation is more suggested than portrayed. People or animals are not usually featured. Her paintings are large, complex, and evocative.

After viewing one particular painting, my fingers fairly itched to start composing a scene from one of our Western national parks, like Bryce Canyon or Grand Canyon, using ribbons, strips of colorful fabrics, and trimmings, accented with surface stitching! I have already started collecting materials, but I have a long way to go to find everything I need. I will show you the finished project in a future post.

Dead Horse Point, Utah   (public domain photo)

Why don't you show us some of the artist's work?

If you are interested in an artist, you should want to know more about her — or him. I have listed a Web address for the each of the artists I have mentioned so far and I will continue to do so. Or you can simply enter the artist's name in your search engine and you will find a lot of interesting material, including pictures of the artist's work. Most of them are featured by several galleries or participate in numerous shows. Of course, artists like Georgia O'Keeffe (see the commemorative stamp at the top of this article)  passed away before they had a chance to have a Web site. Nevertheless, you can find a lot about them by entering their names. I am just the scout, folks. You need to be the explorers on your own.

Soccer players color mock-up

While we are on the subject of featured artists, do you remember how I was inspired by Tilly Willis's print style to do something similar with women soccer players? I showed a very preliminary black-and-white sketch of two players with a ball. J.D. applied some of his computer magic to get something closer to what I envisioned. You can see the result above. It's still not quite there, so next I'll cut stylized figures from colored paper and move them around the background until I get a mock-up of the athletes' figures in a composition that I like. Then I can trace each of the paper sections onto needlepoint canvas for stitching in tent stitches, along with some proposed top-stitching. I will show the finished needlepoint in a follow-up post so you can see how the project "evolved".

Did you ever finish your version of the new 8-way bargello?

Finished 8-way needlepoint by Annake

Yes, but there were some changes in the final project. I'm very frugal, so I was determined to use a piece of leftover canvas, rather than cutting up a larger piece. The best piece I could find was not wide enough to accommodate squares that were 4 stitches over 3 threads or bars. It would accommodate squares with 3 stitches over 2 threads or bars. So that is what I used. The "squares" are more like little rectangular bars than the squares on the pattern, and that has caused some minor differences in the final outline of the design. Technically, I have a Gobelin stitch 8-way rather than an official bargello 8-way. Once I had established the center of the design, I began to rotate the canvas 90 degrees between sections, which also dictated tiny differences. I do not follow my designs slavishly. If one technique is not working well, I will modify it or exchange it for another technique. If I feel that a color should be darker, lighter, or altogether different, I go with my instincts. I used the dark turquoise yarn that appears around the center of the design to tent stitch the narrow background. This makes the design stand out a bit more than continuing with the pattern stitches would have done. I will not put it under glass because I want viewers to enjoy the tactile experience of touching the actual stitches. I like it and I hope you do, too.

A long time ago you were working on a cut-paper pattern of squirrels and oak leaves. Did you ever finish it? One of my kids is having an all boy birthday party in early October. I thought I might use that design for some of the decorations. He doesn't want anything "girly" and he doesn't want Halloween decorations We're renting a movie for most of the entertainment, but any other ideas for decorations or activities would be welcome. Thanks.

I did finish the design — a long time ago. I thought we had published it on a follow-up post, but J.D. can't find it in his archives. I found it in my files, so here it is, along with a full-sized outline of the squirrels that you can download.

Squirrels and oak leaves paper design

Downloadable squirrels outline

It would be easy to use the squirrels as corners for placemats and paper napkin rings or as decorations on party favors. Colorful artificial autumn leaves and acorns are decorations that could be used again for Thanksgiving and saved for future autumn occasions. You might make a large squirrel on posterboard and cut out a squirrel tail for each boy so they can play "Pin the Tail on the Squirrel". An old-fashioned game from my childhood featured apples, hung on sturdy strings, that we were supposed eat bites of without using our hands. The one who ate the most of his or her apple in a specific time won a prize.  J.D. says you must have lots of candy corn and sugar pumpkins!

"Are You Nuts?",  photo by J.J.

Dear Readers,

This is really the beginning of "Crazy Season" for Annake's Garden. Not only do we have harvesting and preparation for what we are being told will be a very cold and snowy winter, but this month begins a series of art and craft shows that runs until mid-December. My grandmother had an appropriate expression: "as busy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs". That will describe us for the next few months! So I am apologizing in advance for the fact that we will not be publishing quite as many articles as usual between now and the first of next year. We have two rather than our usual three planned for this month. We will continue the series on Color, along with "how-to' articles, teachable moments, and additional Q & A's.  Please bear with us.

On the road to autumn...

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