Pumpkin Art Quilt Demo

© 2014 Loreen Leedy

While browsing for produce in my favorite store in early October, I rounded a corner and found heaps of bright orange pumpkins. It was a striking display and later I couldn't resist making one with fabric. In addition to using paint, the idea was to render the pumpkin without laboriously cutting fabric shapes to create the image...but how?

A orangy yellowy batik with leaves seemed like a good starting point. This is actually the reverse with some of the paint showing through but it gives the general idea. Some reference photos helped with making a same-size sketch on tracing paper. I lightly drew it on the fabric with a white chalk pencil (or possibly regular school chalk, can't recall.)

The scribbly pencil lines on the the right side of the sketch are where the darker values will go. 

Rectangular chunks of fabric were arranged either randomly or with some values placed with the light source from the upper left. The rectangles were glue-basted in place. Then the lines were painted with black acrylic using a pointed round brush. The acrylic bled a bit on some of the fabrics but it was in keeping with the casual look. 

In order to separate the pumpkin from the background, acrylic paint was applied. First the black lines were masked off with torn-edged paper tape. It's a low-tack white paper tape, no idea if it's still being sold (this stuff has been rattling around in my studio for YEARS.) In any case, it worked well to protect the line work. The paint was applied with a scrunched up piece of waxed paper, which gives a nice random texture. The pumpkin gained a cream-colored "glow" and a plum shadow. It looks good but another time I may skip that step.

With the mask removed, the emerging pumpkin requested a few more chunks of fabric. The edge of striped fabric at the bottom was tinted orange and the stem got some brown lines. Love the stripes. Stripes make me happy!

It's always helpful to desaturate a photo to look at the art in grayscale to determine if there is enough contrast. Looked good to me.

Batting and a backing were pinned to the top for the quilting stage. In order to preserve the irregular blocky edges, the stitches stop about a half inch from the edges. The stitching consists of free-motion straight and zigzag stitches, mostly. I haven't decided how to mount this yet...on a stretched canvas? On a plain quilted support?

The balance of realism and abstraction works as I had hoped in this piece, which is nice. One minor complaint is that the style of the line work is somewhat old-fashioned...perhaps "retro" is a more positive way to look at it. Being hypercritical of lines is an occupational hazard of being an illustrator, alas. Also, the bluish chunks look a little out of place. There are some blue tones in the thread but from a distance that doesn't show. Then again, maybe it would be boring without the blue. If I really wanted to it would be fairly easy to cover up the blue with different fabric, but it's not bothering me enough at this point.

© 2014 Loreen Leedy

So that's the story of this pumpkin, hope you enjoyed it!

Loreen

my web site

A quick Adobe Illustrator Live Trace tutorial

My uber-talented artist friend Joyce Shelton asked me about using the Live Trace feature in Adobe Illustrator. Thought I knew how to do it... ummm... now I do! It allows you to convert a scanned drawing to vector lines. There are many advantages to vector art, one being that you can enlarge it basically infinitely without losing any resolution. So let’s use some of Joyce’s art to see how it’s done:

Her original was drawn with ink, but a pencil drawing is okay, too.

Scan art into Photoshop or similar program with 300 ppi resolution. The scan Joyce sent me was actually too low res, but it worked anyway.

If artwork is in pencil or otherwise lacking in contrast, use Levels to make it more black and white without losing too much detail. Save in psd, jpeg, or tiff format (others may work, but I haven’t checked them all.)

In Illustrator, open a new document and use File> Place to get the pixel artwork in there. If for some reason that doesn’t work, use Select All, then Copy (in Photoshop) and Paste into Illustrator.

Use the black arrow tool to select the artwork if it isn’t already. Go to Object> Live Trace > Options and a dialog box will open.

Put a check in the Preview box (on the right side in CS4, anyway). Tweak the various controls while looking at the image, which will update as you change the settings. Here are the settings I used:

To look at the original artwork again for comparison, uncheck the Preview box, then check it again if you want to make more adjustments.

Note that the Ignore White box is checked. This way you don't get all the white paper turned into shapes, which are a royal pain to get rid of.

Once you get the settings the way you want them, you can save as a Preset to use it every time, if desired. Even so, you might have to tweak the settings for each drawing.

Click on Trace and dialog box will close. Go to Object> Expand and the artwork is now all converted to paths. If desired, you can adjust the lines with the various tools in Illustrator.

By default, the black lines are all Grouped so when you select a part with the black arrow, the whole thing is selected.

Copy and Paste into Photoshop. Select Paste as Pixels then hit Return to complete the Paste. If desired, add color in Photoshop.

The image shows a detail of the converted artwork, with yellow behind it so you can see the white is gone. It doesn’t give an exact copy of the original line work, but it looks pretty good, and is much, much faster than trying to draw similar artwork from scratch in Illustrator.

Hope this makes sense, let me know if you have any questions. Happy Live Tracing!

Painting faux granite

Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? The photos below should make it clear...feast your eyes upon the hideous green formica countertop that we lived with for seven long years. Before anyone gets too excited about the prospect of transforming laminate countertops, let me make it clear that we ripped out that green monstrosity.


However, note the strange bulge behind this backsplash, and the feeble attempt to cover up the top of it with a random strip of green trim. Apparently the first builder made a half-wall, then later someone added the rest of the wall but since the lower part was not plumb, they decided to fudge it this way, leaving a bizarre wedge of drywall behind the backsplash. Basically, the wall is a mess and a professional contractor friend of ours had never seen anything quite like it.

Anyway, after our gorgeous shivakashi granite counters were installed, I had to figure out how to cover up this little glitch. First I used drywall compound to fill in the gap to make it as level as possible with the granite. You can really see how off kilter the wall is here, because the granite top is actually level to the floor while the green monster wasn’t.

The drywall compound was sealed with latex paint. Then the fun began. I used Golden OPEN acrylics to paint with because they don’t dry nearly as quickly as regular acrylics, which leaves more time for blending. I mostly used the stiff stencil brush on the left because I didn’t need fussy details, just needed to smear some paint around.

I applied a base coat of sort of a pinkish gray.

Next came some patches of the various colors from the granite. These acrylics dry a little darker, but don’t shift as much as regular acrylics. If you click on the photos, you can really see what’s going on. It doesn’t matter if the colors aren’t exactly right at first, they’ll be blended into each other.

The darker streaks that follow the flow of the granite really make it happen. The painted area isn't as smooth as the granite, of course, but I put some glossy sealer over it and it's very hard to tell it isn’t the real thing with a casual glance. My husband was flabbergasted at how well this turned out...so was I, frankly. I asked several people who came over to see if they could spot anything that looked faux painted to match something else, and no one could figure out what it was.

Here’s the other end. The wall wasn’t as crooked, but there was still about 3/8" that had to be faked. The actual width of the granite is the same on both the backsplash and the counter, three centimeters, I think.

In case anyone is wondering about the gap along the top edge, well there was no way I was going to paint all that, plus it would get too much wear to hold up over the long term. We’re still looking for the right trim piece of tile to cover it up, or possible wood molding. And we still have the lighting, some cabinets, and a few other things to do. No worries, I have my new faucet, undermount sink, and much lighter, glam countertops, so who cares about a few little details?


Hope you enjoyed this little detour from my usual artistic pursuits. You just never know when mixing some colors may come in handy!

Uploading your custom background image in Blogger

It’s a little tricky but worth the effort to use your own image to give your blog a unique identity, rather than the prefab ones anyone can use. I created a new blog for my children’s books yesterday, and wanted to use them for the background image. 


First you need to prepare an image. Mine is a photo of a stack of my books, laid as horizontal as possible so there won't be awkward visual jags when the image is “tiling,” that is, when the image repeats horizontally and vertically to fill the space. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can create a seamless image in Photoshop using the Offset filter (here is an online tutorial). The image is supposed to be less than 200K...more details about size are on the Use Your Own Photo etc. article linked below. Anyway, here’s the book stack image:

The template is Ethereal, with a 3-column layout as shown. (Not all templates have a background image.) 

I customized most of the colors, type, etc. in the new Template Designer, which is found under the Design tab. The Template Designer is great, it gives you a preview of your changes as you test them. 


However, if you click on Background in the Template Designer, there is no option to upload your own image, you can only choose from what is there. The answer is to go to Blogger in Draft to do it rather than the usual Blogger Dashboard. It looks the same, except there are a few additional options. Here are the steps:
Make sure you’re “signed in” to your Blogger Account and are in Blogger in Draft.
Click on Design, then on the Template Designer (right under the Design tab.)
Click on Background (upper left), then click ON the Image box itself.
You should see a button for Upload Image, so go ahead and upload your image.
Click Done, then choose Tile and check Scroll with page.
Click on the orange Apply to Blog button on upper right.
A yellow alert that says Template Applied should flash, then it will go away.
Click Back to Blogger (upper right) and your image should be on your blog.


If not try again, or check the article Use Your Own Photo for Your Blog’s Background and the Comments for clues, .


To see the actual blog we’re talking about, click here.


Good luck!

Finding a color scheme in a photograph

Deciding which colors to use in artwork can be daunting at times. One great idea is to use a photograph with color combinations that speak to you. The image below is a detail cropped from a larger image. The complete photo along with dozens more donated by fiber artists for the “Inspired by Photos” Photo Hunt are available here. By simplifying the image in Photoshop or a similar program, it can be easier to see the hues. The image below was created using Filter>Pixelate>Mosaic. In the dialog box, make sure the Preview box is checked so you can see a live preview. Try various cell sizes... below is 25.
Below is a cell size of 50.
Below is a setting of 75. Some colors are lost as the cell size gets larger. In particular, I would most likely put the black and near white back in.Of course, you don’t have to use the scheme as is. Below I chose Image>Adjustments>Variations, then clicked on More Yellow. What’s nice about Variations is you can see several options at once to gauge which is most appealing.
An advantage of this process is the chance to break away from one’s usual color choices. So, start rummaging through your photos to find interesting combinations to try in your artwork. Happy creating!

Cleaning up stray pixels in Photoshop

This is scanned artwork with the contrast exaggerated to make it easier to see the problem of stray pixels caused by paper texture, dust, etc.
How do you deal with this problem, especially when it’s hard to see where the pesky little unwanted pixels are? Usually when I'm working on an image in Photoshop, the stray pixels are less obvious, more like the image below:
What’s the big deal, anyway... who cares about a few stray pixels? In some cases they won’t matter, but when your image will be used as an illustration it’s amazing how often they turn into glaring blotches in the printed piece that really are bothersome. To find and eliminate them, read on.

This is line work that has been scanned in and lifted off the background white paper. This post explains how to do that.

I zoomed in to erase any visible pixels. But are there more lurking? To find out, add the Stroke Layer style to the lines layer. In the top menu bar, choose Layer>LayerStyle>Stroke. When the dialog box opens, use these settings (most are default):
Size- 3 to 5 pixels
Position- Outside
Blend Mode- Normal
Opacity- 100%
Fill type- Color (pick a bright contrasting color such as red)


Either the drawing suddenly contracted chicken pox, or the red stroke around every pixel shows that there are indeed many stray pixels. Select them with the Lasso tool and delete or use the Eraser tool to remove them.

These car images can be enlarged by clicking on them, by the way.

I don’t worry too much about a few blips near the line work, since they will blend in. It’s the glitches floating inches away that seem to show up most annoyingly in the printed book. Now that the art is cleaned up, time to finish coloring it in. Don’t forget to get rid of the Strokes Layer style. The easiest way is in the Layers palette, drag the Effects to the trash, the small icon on the lower right.

Here’s our little car, ready for his close-up. Wonder why he’s got a sail on top?

Photoshop tip: Remove white from scanned drawing

Scanning your drawn or painted artwork is a great way to combine the best of both worlds... the beauty of a hand-rendered image plus the flexibility of digital image making. This electric tea kettle is a character in my next picture book, so he’ll be the victim today. He’s painted with black watercolor in a dry brush technique on regular Strathmore drawing paper. Once scanned into Photoshop (at 300 pixels per inch) you can see the problem, the white paper background.Before anything further can be done, the image must be made more contrasty with Levels. The main task is to get rid of the paper texture, since the line work is already black. This is done in the Levels dialog box by moving the right arrow towards the center until the paper is really white. (If a drawing is scanned in, you can also darken the gray lines if desired by moving the left arrow towards the center.) The image below shows before Levels on the left, after on the right. Not sure if it will show up very well, but it’s better not to have a bunch of stray pixels all over the place as we continue. (Unless you want the paper texture for some reason, in which case Levels can make it more visible. Just play with the arrow sliders.)The easy way to get rid of the white is to change the blending mode in the Layers palette to Multiply. Many artists do this and it works fine. The Multiply technique works best for black or dark lines, because of the way Multiply mode interacts with the layer(s) underneath. If you want to color the lines and/or move parts of them around without getting bungled up with pieces of invisible white you need to completely separate the line work from the white paper and here’s how (on the Mac):
1 Make sure in the Layers palette that your scanned art is highlighted and in Normal mode. (A layer is highlighted when you click on it.)
2 Be sure the Channels palette is open. While holding down the Command key, in the Channels palette click on the RGB layer. This selects the white.
3 Hold down these three keys Command>Shift>the letter i. This inverts the selection.
4 Press Command>Option>letter J. A dialog box will come up, name the new layer Lines.
5 Turn off (click eyeball) the original scanned layer. You should see the black lines in their own layer.
6 With black as the foreground color and the Lines layer highlighted, hit Option>Shift>Delete. This fills any remaining pixels with black.
Make a new layer underneath the lines, and fill it with white or whatever color. Your image should look similar to the picture above, but the difference is that only the lines are on the layer, which allows you to color them any way you like. To color the lines, be sure to lock the layer first, by pressing the ?/ key. Locking the layer means that transparency will be preserved, only already-existing pixels can be painted on. You unlock it with the same key.

So here are the kettle lines, colored all crazily. This just can’t be done in Multiply mode.
The kettle will probably end up more like this, actually:So, I hope this tip is useful, if a tad geeky. I’m still using CS 1 but this has worked for many versions of Photoshop, so should still be there. The author Deke McClelland wrote about this technique in Photoshop 4 Studio Secrets, which is where I heard about it.