Design Your Own Nature Quilt: Texture Real and Implied

There are two types of texture in art: real, and visual.  Visual texture is achieved with value and pattern changes and is one of the things I teach in class.

Two students brought in mushroom photos to use as their inspirations.  Their photos had a lot of visual texture and these two worked hard at creating it in their pieces.

Here’s Kate’s photo. What wonderful pattern and texture!  Can you see that she’ll REALLY need to rely on value to depict this shape?

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Well, she did just that and this was her quilt, ready for stitching.  Nice!

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Peggy’s photo included the same challenges.

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Again, she used value  and raggedy (“jagged”) edges to complete the task.  Dark stitching has added some definition and she’ll add more.

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

As an aside, these two were seated at the same table and referred to themselves as “the fun guys.” Get it?  They cracked me up.

One of the students, Barbara, LOVES to use actual texture in her work.  The gnarled and twisted tree of her inspiration photo was perfect for some experimentation.

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

She started out composing her tree much like the other students.  However, she added contrasting fabrics on both the top of her tree and underneath it.

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Later, she cut into the tree, revealing those contrasting fabrics below. She also stitched tucks into place, and did quite a bit of machine stitching.

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

The effect was very rugged looking: perfect for a tree trunk!

Design Your Own Nature Quilt with Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Isn’t that interesting?

It was VERY fun to see these pieces come together!

Ellen Lindner

 

 

 

 

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