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.

Spring Travel Journal Part 4 - Venice

Drive to Oriago, pencil, sketchbook, 6 3/4" x 4 3/4"

 

Blog 26

Venice had been on my bucket list for years. In 2013, we had booked the first trip, which got cancelled due to floods. This time, I was frustrated because it was pouring when Ingo’s cousin, her two children, my father-in-law and his sister left Schenna.

 

Villa Pisani

After three hours, we stopped near Stra to visit the grandiose Villa Pisani, a Baroque rural palace close to the Brenta Canal. We had enough time to stroll through the villa’s beautiful garden with flowers and many hundreds of years old trees and orange and lemon trees. Unfortunately, the labyrinth was closed for repairs, but we saw the sun peek out behind the clouds. We continued our journey to Oriago.

 Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena (Church of Saint Mary Magdalene), Oriago

Before we continued on board the Tiepolo, we had lunch as part of the cruise to Venice. I have never seen people eat so much food at a time. We started with a fish or meat platter as an appetizer, followed by spaghetti with seafood or ham and a salad. Then, we received a platter of two big slices of fish or meat. I let half of the food go back and wasn’t even upset that we didn’t have time for the dessert of fruit salad with ice cream, even though I love ice cream and fruit.

 

Villa Foscari (La Malcontenta)

We stopped at the Villa Foscari (La Malcontenta), where we had a short guided tour. While the frescoes were exquisite, the palace and gardens were no comparison to the ones of the Villa Pisani.

quick sketches along the way

 

The sun warmed me so much that I moved to the upper level and had a fantastic view of Venice. However, I was disappointed once we moored because the entire area was extremely overcrowded.

sketch while we were waiting for the owner of the Airbnb

 

Luckily, Ingo’s cousin guided us away from the crowded areas to our Airbnb, a Venetian Palace on the fourth floor of an old house. In retrospect, I can hardly believe we stayed in so much extravagance. The faucets were golden, and the stunning table with inlaid work (worth 100.000 Euros, according to the owner) looked made for royalty. I was so nervous we would break or soil anything that I could only cherish the experience once we locked the door behind us again.

 

one of the bedrooms

After breakfast at a local cafe, where we enjoyed delicious sweets while people-watching, we went to the DaVinci Museum. We saw multimedia exhibits of his art and life-size models of his inventions you could operate. The kids had lots of fun, and I was in awe of Da Vinci’s genius and foresight.

 

outside terrace of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum

sketch in the museum garden

Our next stop was the Peggy Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, a beautiful building on the Grand Canal. I am not a great admirer of modern art, but I liked the innovative works by Kandinsky, Severini and Metzinger. Plus, the museum’s view over the Grand Canal was spectacular.

Afterwards, I got on one of the swaying gondolas crossing the Grand Canal while other boats drove up and down the canal. It was not the best choice for someone with extreme motion sickness. I was sure we would end up in the water. The ride in one of the water buses was much more pleasant and stable. Even though it was overcrowded, we had a great view of the Venetian buildings. 

 

capturing our driver

I returned to Schenna with a multitude of impressions and inspiration.

 

 

Can you believe we didn’t have a single drop of rain during our Venice trip? However, the sky was grey again the following morning. In the afternoon, the rain showers returned.

view of the Santa Maria della Salute from the water bus