Sweet River Studios

I posted about the quilt borders a few days ago by accident. I meant to post the center panel part 3 first but oh well. It's okay. Just pretend you didn't read about the borders first. A few months ago, I decided to finish my center panel. I wasn't certain if I was going to thread paint it or not. It's a nice painting and I really didn't want to screw it up because its a really big panel to have to re-create. But all the other animals are thread painted or at least the backgrounds are but I had some reservations about thread painting the rhino. When I used the white ink I had (like for the polar bear) it was a lot more opaque and dried harder than the other inks. So when I tried to thread paint over it it looked like giant holes where punched through the paint which looked really bad. So I avoided thread painting on white areas or ink mixed with white. And the rhino has some white on it and mixed with other colors so I was concerned it was going to look really b...

I've gotten a lot of my Animal Quilt done and I'm ready to begin the borders. I had this grand idea to make the borders 10" wide and make one with an arctic, savannah and jungle theme with additional paintings of animals but this seemed really daunting to me for some reason. Maybe because they're quite large? I didn't want to screw them up and have to start over? I dunno, but for whatever reason I was dreading doing them. I am really struggling to get excited about them. They're big, complicated animal/nature scenes and I'm worried about them. Period. Just worried about them. I also keep going back to the footprint theme. I thought before I would have footprints that would fade away as the animal progressed showing that the animal is disappearing. Then I thought I would simply put the footprints of the animals on the back of the quilt. At least they would be somewhere, right? After sleeping on the problem, I thought I should figure out something else fo...

I have completely forgotten the name of this little frog. Golden Mantra is sticking in my head but I guess it doesn't matter. I worked on the background first and then the frog.  I had some slight bleeding into the background but I'm not sure I care. This little frog was pretty easy to do and its a decent painting but I just don't think this one is doing anything for me. I was going for some diversity in my quilt but I may have to find another animal to paint.

After getting the rhino and grasses finished for the center panel, I started working on my tree.  I drew only one limb, a few branches and leaves and the tree trunk.  I quilted the outside lines first then I started in the center of the tree and stitched some curvy lines up and down the tree trunk. Then I continued with wavy lines out the branch. I plan on making some more branches so my tree will look more like a tree. I also want my tree branches to be outside the center panel and out into the sashing areas so that the tree will look much closes to the viewer and give it some "pop." After doing the initial quilting, I colored the tree with my Inktense pencils and the color goes on looking darker since its wet, which is fairly misleading as to what your going to wind up with. I felt the colors were too light and didn't vary in intensity at all, so I went back in with the Tsukineko inks and darkened some areas which really helped. My tree also looks pr...

All the 10x10" animal squares for the quilt are done. I just have to figure out how much/little to quilt them. I've been working on the center panel quilting/painting the tree and leaves but that's for another post. The borders of the quilt are 10" wide and I was going to paint them and include some plants, flowers, animals and maybe an insect or two. I wanted to include the Quetzal bird because he's really colorful and I doubt many people have even heard of it. So I went ahead and painted it. The painting looks okay but this little guy looks more iridescent and the paint just didn't capture his brilliant plumage. So, I decided to try to thread paint it using embroidery thread. I tried to match the colors to what I had in the way of thread and started with a zig zag line in the different areas to stabilize it a bit. I don't have any stabilizer ironed to the back of this and I probably should have.  I started with the yellow a...

I have to admit I really like how this one turned out.  I was thinking "oh good lord another gray blob to paint and have to make it look good" so needless to say I wasn't thinking this would turn out well. And since the manatee lives in tropical water, I went for aqua blues and greens for the background.  I started by roughly outlining the animal in gray and adding darker grays and some browns for shading. I kept adding darker colors to add shape to the animal and white to highlight skin folds and sunlight. The background looked kinda drab so I added some water leafy things to add interest. Overall, it definitely looks like a manatee enjoying a swim.

This painting came together fairly easily. I'm always leery of painting black animals. It can be really hard to distinguish the actual shape of the animal. All that black can lead to just one giant blob of mystery. But I made sure to leave a white highlight down the shoulder and arm which I think really helped. I added some gray/white to the body area and flicked my brush to leave the directional lines which took on the fur. I added gray to the face and white to the arm, head, chest to highlight the black fur. Since gorilla's live in the jungle, I added some tree shapes and greens to the background.

Well, I haven't painted any animals for a few weeks now. I got hung up and couldn't decide a few things. I decided to add a lowland gorilla and maybe a manatee but I haven't decided.  I did discover a cute bird called a Quetzal and I'm thinking I'll add that to the border but back to the harpy eagle. Since this bird lives in the deep jungle, I went for the darkest shade of green I had and painted the background and a branch and let this layer dry. I used gray, white and a dark midnight blue to initially rough in the bird. Finally, I used black to darken areas and white for additional highlighting.  I also added some leaf shapes and squiggly yellow. Not sure why but it needed something to break up all that green and yellow peaks through green in the jungle and it just seemed to work out. Its about the animal not the backgrounds and I think this eagle turned out pretty good.

I started with the elephant in this painting.  I put down a medium gray in the darkest areas and a light gray in the lightest areas. I darkened in the main body/legs area and trunk and put a layer of white down for the tusks. As you can see from the first picture the tusk on the right was fairly far out and I decided I didn't like it there so I moved it further in.  I added some dark wrinkles along the trunk, forehead and ear areas and then I let the whole picture dry. Next, I added the background in browns and yellows trying to mimic the African savannah. I was trying to go for an elephant stepping out of the dust. I added more highlights and darkened the shadows and I added a bit of brown. Elephants are pretty dirty after all. This one was fairly easy to get done and probably took me 4 hours which includes 2 hours of drying time.

This portrait of a baby leatherback turtle was really quite easy to get done. I guess because there's not that many colors.  Painting wet sand is not fun either. I had to use a dark brown with yellow and a darker brown. I applied the white and gray for the turtle first then added the yellow/brown for the sand. I then darkened the turtle with black and added some highlights with white.  I used white to add water reflections in the wet sand and that was pretty much it. Not the greatest painting I've done but not bad either.

The main centerpiece of my quilt is roughly 33x45" so it's fairly big, especially to be painting with inks.  I wanted my main animal to be the one that speaks to everyone. I chose the Black Rhino for the center since there is a very real possibility the animal will be extinct in the wild in the next decade or two and they will only exist in zoos. I'm thinking about the title of "Footprints" for my quilt but as of right now, I don't have any footprints in my centerpiece. I had thought about putting different animal footprints on the back of the quilt, but I haven't decided yet. I could always finish it and simply change the title. So I will continue working on this centerpiece. Even if I decide to make another one this one is still pretty good and deserves to be finished. I'll probably have to order more ink, though. I finished the rhino.  I'm pretty happy with it but I don't know if this will be in my quilt or not.  I'll have...

This painting of a panda came together quickly and I was able to control most of the bleeding.  I first painted the white areas of the panda, then a I added a gray to the black areas. I let that dry and added the background and gray rock the panda is on. I did have some bleeding but I don't think its that noticeable. After everything dried, I went back over my gray areas with black, added dark green veins to the leaves and added fur. My brush really did all the work. Its quite frayed for lack of a better term and is all different lengths which creates a more streaky brush stroke.  I really like how this one turned out.

This little hummingbird lives in western Mexico and is losing its habitat. This isn't one of the typical animals you think of when you think "endangered." Most people think panda, rhino, tiger but there are others. Lots of others animals that are endangered and this little bird hasn't been studied all that much. I started with the background first. I had a lot of bleeding over even though I tried to control it. Next, I worked on the flower and adding color to the bird. After that dried, I added details such as the eyes, flower highlights and black, yellow and white dots to the bird. I thought the white highlights on the flowers would seep into the paint a little bit better and wouldn't be as harsh as they are now. I may try to fix it but I may not. You can also see a faint dark line around the birds belly and feet area. That's the original drawing using the Frixion pen. That line will disappear when I iron it.