If you have followed my career, my focus has shifted during the last couple of months. I still love painting in my studio and outside. However, at the moment, I concentrate on creating needle felted paintings. I will also simplify my teaching schedule to offer more workshops to teach others how to create their own. Felting is a slow process and requires patience. It is a reflection of a change of pace that I wanted for my life that was very busy and hectic. I am drawn to the softness of the material and love the challenge of creating my vision in wool. I can sit down and felt for a couple of minutes or hours without worrying about drying paints or cleanup of brushes.
You might be wondering what needle felting is and how you can use it to create artworks. In the next couple of blogs, I will provide more information about felting. I will focus on needle felting.
Before I describe the process of needle felting to you, here is a list of basic materials you need for getting started:
To create a felted artwork, most people use wool rovings and battings. You can also find many vegan-friendly materials that I will examine in the upcoming weeks because some of my clients have an allergy to wool but would still like to participate in my felting workshops.
Felting needles have tiny barbs at the end. When you stab the needle through the wool roving or batting, the barbs catch on the fibre scales and push them together so that the fibres cling together, turning into solid felt in the process.
Felting needles come in different gauges and differences in the location and number of barbs. The gauge number refers to the diameter of the needle. The higher the number, the finer the needle. For most projects, a medium (36 gauge) and a fine (40 gauge) needle are sufficient. The number of barbs influences the speed of felting. A higher number helps you to felt quicker. However, needles with fewer barbs are more suitable for fine detail work. For big pieces, you can also use a needle holder that can hold several needles at a time.
To avoid poking yourself, you need an old cushion or foam pad that should be a couple of inches thick so that the needle cannot poke through.
Needle felting makes it possible to create two- and three-dimensional artworks. Three-dimensional pieces are sculptures of various subjects. Two-dimensional artworks are called needle felted paintings, even though you don’t use any brush or paint to create them. If you would like to learn more, join me again in two weeks. I will show you the step-by-step process for a little felted painting.
If you are interested in registering for the November workshop, you will receive a CAN $40 discount if you register by October 1, 2021. Here is the link for more information and registration: https://www.kerstinpeters.ca/product/felting-experience/.
No comments:
Post a Comment