Patience Required

 

The reference photo

Blog 35

It has been some time since I wrote about one of my needle-felted paintings. I had the idea for my latest artwork while I spent a night with my husband's relatives in a palace in Venice. When I took pictures of the place in the morning, I discovered a woman in the house across, taking care of her flowers. I immediately knew that I wanted to capture this scene in a painting. This image is the first artwork inspired by my recent travel. It is also the largest needle-felted painting I have created so far.


The working title of this 18" x 24" unfinished artwork is Morning Chores or Tending the Flowers, Venice. At this point, I am undecided about the title. I am still very early in the process and will change parts of the reference photo according to my vision, which might influence the final choice.

For the first time, I drew the rough areas of my composition onto the fabric because the roof line and windows have to be more or less straight, especially for a roof that spans over the whole width of the painting.

 

Working on a large piece like this needle-felted Venetian house is challenging because it takes a long time to see progress. Keeping the shingles more or less parallel has taken some patience. You can see from the photo that I still have to finish the right side.

 

I continued the work on the left shudder of the right window. I cannot wait to add more detail, which will be more fun.

 

 

Another challenge will be to keep the sides of the painting straight. When I felt, I like to create a three-dimensional effect by adding more wool to certain areas and pushing the fibres together tighter in other areas. This way, I achieve parts where the wool fibres and those of the base felt piece cling together tighter, which results in waves in the artwork. In my smaller-sized needle-felted paintings, I can balance them out with ease. It will be interesting to figure out how to do the same with a larger artwork.

Not all needle felting artists create artworks with straight sides, but I prefer to frame my wool art behind glass to prevent dust from settling on the painting. To keep the costs for framing down, I create pieces that fit into standardized frame sizes.

Once I am past these hurdles, the detail work should be more exciting, and I look forward to sharing my experience with you in further blogs and upcoming workshops.

Pumpkins and Plumes, wool, 8" x 10"

If you want to create a needle-felted painting of pumpkins, I invite you to my virtual October workshop, Ready for Pumpkins.