The idea of this piece was to show an animal shape broken up into different smaller shapes, something along the lines of the camouflaged animals I did a while back. I drew a deer intended to be made up of 13 separate appliqueed shapes, each one with a slightly different design on it. Then I spent a morning printing up bits of fabric and appliqueeing them on a painted background to make up the deer.
Pre-cheating
Well, it sort of worked but I discovered that the patterns on the printed fabric were way too big to be seen clearly on the small pieces of fabric I used for the applique, and the fabric just looked sort of blotchy rather than patterned
So I cheated. With a fine gel pen I went over the patterns of the fabric and emphasised the lines and shapes of the patterns. It’s not too bad, but next time I will have a better idea of how to print fabric with clearly visible design patterns
Post-cheating
Hi Mia, This is Just Awesome!! Your deer is just spectacular with all of the different printed pieces of fabric, and outlining the patterns with a gel pen was inspirational. With all of the different shapes and patterns the deer has a crazy quilt appearance.
Love your cute deer! The post-cheating is even better too. We have lots of deer here, one day seeing two does, a fawn and a three-point buck all in the same area. We see some every day and have started naming them. But I have to say this reminded me of when we raised two pigs, who had very, very different personalities. The first one was very sweet, the second seemed to splash us with food all the time. When we looked at him we visualized those cutting lines you often see that show cuts of meat. 🙂
You are not cheating but being innovative. How clever to think outside the box..I like what you accomplished. You have given the rest of us yet another idea to consider when creating.
Well if that’s cheating it is okay with me, all you are doing is using your creative talent to tell your story. The gel pen highlights the patterns very nicely. I and others that I know have used different kind of pens to make our designs better. I am sure that you will use more gel pens in the future.
Not cheating. Artistic advances!
What a beautiful applique!