Now with more needle felted creations!

 I really wish that I could tell you some powerful story of what inspires me to make a piece. But the simple truth is that with all of these pieces I was basically trying to embellish simple shapes differently.

Everything can be mostly made out of basic shapes. You art majors already have this drilled in your heads, but us self-taught artists need to remind ourselves of this and start training our eye to look for the shapes.

How you connect the shapes, how you put them together to form a seamless piece, that is the secret, and it is different in every art form. It takes lots and lots of practice. Below you have two unfinished egg shapes, one of which is smaller and they are joined together at the unfinished areas to create a body. I had recently learned to make the sausage shapes more rapidly so I had them at hand.

I joined them at the center back. Then I was inspired to do a mummy shape. Maybe because it is the season?

Can you break this guy into shapes too? He is a character right?

Even with the simplest of shapes, you change up the color, and then you have an endless variety. These little guys are my answer to my stained glass-felt obsession in 3D form. I hope to have a kit to make them available in my store within the next two days. They are perfect to make for beginners, because they can be any shape, have any amount of eyes and you get to play with blocks of color. (Or maybe that is just my favorite part?)

All the little creatures shown here today are available in my store, should you wish to take them home.

Art Challenge Day 4 and 5

Yesterday was a very busy and emotional day, so nothing got done on the challenge. 

However today I'll bring you two things. We will call this first one Day 4's project.

This is a project that I have been working on for a while. It is my first felt piece with a wire armature inside, and I have to say that I will probably never do that again. I kept hitting the wire inside as I was felting it, also the armature does not move as smoothly as I was hoping for.

Because working with the armature was uncomfortable, this guy sat for a long time. When I first covered the armature around 3 years ago (I still lived in the US) I thought that he was going to be a bear. Then about 3 months ago I got it out again and decided to make something dinosaur-eske, but in fun colors.

Then the blue was too boring, so I added polka dots, three shades of blue and tusks.

There he is walking away. Since I am not used to an armature inside I keep thinking that I misjudged that length of the legs, when really, they are only bent outwards. 

This little guy I will call Day 5's piece.

He started out as just a head many months ago. At the time I was thinking "monster head broach". 

Today I decided to give him a body, not worrying too much about the shape of it, keeping the focus mainly on the head.

Then I tried making the arms 2D for a change. Sure he is a little strange, but that is exactly the point of a monster: to stretch your imagination. To try to make something unique and never seen before.

If anyone is wondering my kitty is doing better today, fingers crossed that he keeps improving.

Art challenge - Day 3

I decided to do a mixed-media piece. Really playing with contrasts, bright colors and negative space.

I get my felt backgrounds locally here in Madrid from Fieltros Olleros which has been in business since 1863 and has a huge selection on wool felt, acrylic felt, and a mix. I buy the 100% wool felt and they always seem surprised when I do. I hope that doesn't mean that they will stop making it. 

I bought a natural color piece of background felt because I thought that it would go well with my kits, but it does not because it is heathered and it makes it hard to see the stencil lines. However ,I think that it makes a nice background and negative space for this free form mixed-media piece I did yesterday.

I used: black worsted weight yarn, different colors of scrap wool, and water color crayons. I was hoping that in using similar colors of wool and crayon I would get different heights and effects. I don't think that that plan succeeded, but I do like the finished piece a lot. It is bright and vibrant and holds interest.

The I finished another monster that had been languishing in the un-finished pile. He has more detail added to him and I added front legs.

He has a head tilt that I am leaving in, because I think that it gives him personality.