Sweet River Studios

I finished quilting the bird and background areas, which took me about 4-5 days working in 2 hour shifts. I'm not one of the those people who can sit and quilt for hours on end. My shoulders usually hurt and my brain gets tired and I start to make too many mistakes. So I work in bursts. I quilted a vine/flower motif in the background and then I just quilted a meander filler stitch around those. Now, to find the right binding.

In part 2, I posted a picture of the quilt with a piece of clear vinyl laid on top. I tested out various quilting designs by drawing on it with dry erase markers. Trying to figure out the quilting designs for this quilt has been rather hard. I guess the colored pencil drawings are making it hard. Do I quilt them or not? I'm no longer debating about it. I've decided to quilt the portraits. It'll be a challenge but I think every quilt you do you should give you at least one challenge. So far I've not really had one for this particular quilt so there it is. I just hope I have enough thread colors. I've also added a German Shepard to the quilt. Grandma really, really loved her dog and never got another shepard. She's had other dogs since then but she never talks about them, just her shepard. It's not an exact portrait of her dog but she'll love it just the same. I've been gathering some additional quilting threads this last week and I'm goin...

Well it's taken me forever to continue posting about this quilt. I wanted to add a wash of color to the quilt to soften the glaring white fabric but I lost my inks. I looked for several weeks and had to continue posting about my other applique quilt project in the mean time. That quilt has had a serious set back and I'm really not happy about it or with my self since it was totally my fault. Of course it was my fault! I'm the one making the darn thing. Anyway, I still can't find my inks, so I finally broke down at the end of June and purchased the ink that I know I have lurking in my house somewhere. I'm pleased to say that I got the ink wash on last week. It really helped to blend the colored portraits together. I also got the edges a little darker. When applying the inks, I was trying to only blend so far into the portraits. They have white areas that I did not want to color and if the ink gets to the white area it's not going to come out and it m...

I finished the 50th Anniversary quilt for my parents in February and I've taken a few weeks off to think about my next art quilt project. I usually find inspiration by picking a subject first, then I consider what else I can put on the quilt. I decided my next subject would be my grandmother. She will be 88 in April and she's my last remaining grandparent. She's a really kind woman and I'm glad she's been in my life so I thought I'd do something special. Since I made a colored pencil portrait of my parents, I thought I'd do the same for this quilt. So I went through all the family photos and picked a few pics of my grandma that looked nice. I picked one from when she was a teenager, one with her holding a great-grandchild and one with her with some flowers she got on Mother's Day. Grandma loves birds, flowers, Ohio State football, has no sweet tooth to speak of, has always weighed 127 lbs. her entire life and loves everyone she meets. Since I can...

After I got the backgrounds painted on my portraits, I decided to take my practice portrait and try to put a light wash of black on dad's jacket so the pencil lines would blend in a bit more. That went horribly wrong. I had black ink seep into the bride's veil and into the white collar and in his boutonniere. I also added tulle to the veil and thread painting to the dress.  After all that, I don't think it really did anything for the picture, which was a bit surprising for me. I also forgot to fix the neckline of the dress. I needed to find the center and flip the left side to the right to make it even. I could only see one side in the picture and forgot to make the other side the same. Again, I'm glad this one is just practice. I also started to define the tiara on mom's head piece. The picture basically showed a white blob. There was no definition whatsoever and I had a hard time seeing even the basic shape. So I basically made it up using seed beads. This was...

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.

I'm still having trouble controlling the bleeding of these inks.  As you can see, at the top of the shell, there was major bleeding. I've been blotting with paper towels trying to soak up any excess water or ink before it bleeds but it doesn't really work all that well.  I left this to dry and when I came back the inks had wicked out a lot. Its also really hard to get rid of those hard dry lines and if you want to put a lighter color on top of the darker ink it won't work. You'll have a dark ugly spot in your lighter area.  You have to paint over it with the more opaque white, let it dry then paint over it, which also has its problems. My first application of paint, is just to rough in the areas with a light wash of color, then I simply keep adding darker areas, until I'm happy. Apply highlights, white or light colors, after everything is dry. I added the blue and brown/yellow areas (water/sand) last. You can see how the dark bleed area looks after...

This portrait painting was fairly quick and easy. Since I'm getting used to working with the inks and figuring out what works and what doesn't, I'm finding painting with them is getting easier. What I have the most trouble with is controlling the wicking or bleeding of the colors into others. So I decided I would put down white first for the bear. The white is much more opaque than the others and I thought the blue would have a hard time wicking into it when it dried.  I mixed some emerald green into the water water and some white into the cerulean blue and got a good mix of aqua blue with areas of depth. And as you can see, the paint goes on much darker or more vibrant and dries a little more even. I added some blueish/gray to the fur, face and ears and darkened the eyes nose/mouth with dark gray and black. Lastly, I added some blue and white rings in the water. This little painting came together in about 4 hours.