Bird's Eye View of Mt. Hood

You may remember that I wrote that the next show theme for High Fiber Diet is "Bird's Eye View". I started my first piece for this show this week, using my photo of Mt. Hood from an airplane window as inspiration.

I am struggling a little bit and still not sure if I am going to like my finished piece, but, you know, that is usually how I feel at this stage of invention.

I did not want to create a straightforward representational landscape, nor did I want to work totally abstractly. I like that area somewhere between the two. My thinking was to work with the color in a more abstract way. I also decided to do some stamping on plain fabrics to create texture and dimension. With that in mind I made a large drawing to work from and started cutting pieces from solid colored fabrics.

As I cut I was laying my pieces out on a piece of rusty red fabric, thinking I might depart from my usual base fabric choice which ranges from gray to brown to black. This is the fabric that will create the lines.

The red was not speaking to me. I decided, instead, on a taupe fabric for the base. Before I started fusing the pieces, I used two little stamps I carved to stamp a pattern of Xs and circles on the fabrics. Then I used pastel pencils and paints to add more color and dimension to the fabrics. The taupe base proved to be dull—too close in value to the other colors, so I used a permanent marker to darken some of the lines.

Here is where I am with it today. I am liking it better and better, but there is still a lot to add—the land behind the mountain and the sky. It will be quite a wide, narrow piece when finished. The closeup below gives you a better idea of the stamped design and added color.

I'm beginning to think about how the stitching will work with everything else and getting excited about getting to that part. I'll continue to post the progress even if it self destructs at some point!