Quilt Museum Project, Supplies

In my last post about the Quilt Museum Project, I forgot to mention the supplies I have been using. I guess I'll just start this post about supplies, and I'll continue to update it as I progress each section.

Link to all related posts here.

• Drafting / Roughing
• Pencils (wood and mechanical)
• Rulers (wood and metal)
• Calculator
• Watercolor paper
• Right-angle triangle
• White-nylon eraser-pen
• Reference photos
• Computer
• Patience
• Inking
• Medium-sized dish
• Container for water
• Small dishes for mixing ink
• Bottle of India ink
• Brushes
• Syringe for water
• Calligraphy pen with nibs
• Blotting tissue
• Paper towels for messes
• Steady hand
• White-nylon eraser pen (after ink dries completely)
• Patience
• Painting 
• Brushes
• Acrylic paints
• Blotting tissues / paper towels
• Syringe for water
• Steady hand
• Plastic palette
• Dishes to mix water
• Painter's knife
• Forgiveness
• Patience 

Music (alphabetical):

• Binarpilot - B-Sides
• Binarpilot - Nordland
• Chameleon Circuit - Chameleon Circuit
• Chameleon Circuit - Still Got Legs
• Charlie McDonnell - This Is Me
• The Classic Crime - Vagabonds
• Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves (audiobook)
• Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood (audiobook)

Quilt Museum Project, The Basics

Link to all related posts here.

I will explain my current project (as revealed here) as the process goes, as well as share some of the behind-the-scenes pictures.

For a big project, what you first need is a space to do your work and supplies. I just happened to have a large table, and a drawer-set full of art supplies.

[Yes, those are chalkboard walls]

From the beginning, I knew I needed to stock up on paper. For the last project, my supply budget was pricier, so I ended up using huge sheets of 300-lb. watercolor paper. This time, I figured I could scale it down on the costs and be more careful with the paints. I just had to figure out how many sheets to get--and this required measurements of the space in the museum, as well as those of the rendered buildings.

One problem with this was, even though I photographed progress on my last street-view project, I forgot to take / save meticulous notes on dimensions within the art. So, I had to do some sleuthing: I knew the painter's tape I used was 1" wide, so I measured, and did calculations from there.

[Resized the images on screen to match and calculated dimensions--this took a while]

Next, one needs reference pictures to work from. Since this current project is basically larger version of one I had done before, the reference photos and sketches still work.

[Rough sketches with pen and some notes]

Once I got the paper and figured out the "work space" on the sheets, then came the fun part of sketching guidelines, and then actually roughing out the buildings from references. This is what is taking a lot of time--some buildings are wider than one sheet, so drawing between two pieces I have to make sure everything will line up in the end result.

In reality, these two buildings are no where near each other. While saving paper, though, these two were the perfect size to fit on the same panel without encroaching on the margins to help with painting in the future.

Essentially, this is where I am in the project. Once I have all the pencil roughing done for all the panels, then I will ink each one, and finally paint. Keep an eye out for updates--I hope to really get creating in the next week or two.

New Project: Background Info

Link to all related posts here.

I've been keeping this one in the shadows for literally the last year, but now that the project is actually rolling along--and I've gotten the go-ahead from the people I'm working with--I will shed some light on it. Also, to counter a deluge of links over words, there is a list of links at the bottom of the post.

So, last year (June 2010) at the Museum of Northwest Art's annual art auction, I did this piece*. It is a three-part painting of a section of downtown La Conner, from street-view. This was a big step for me, as I have never been really interested in architecture / buildings in general--that is until I stumbled upon BLDGBLOG. To my surprise, many people liked it, it sold, and I was approached by some people from the local Quilt & Textile Museum to work on a project with them.

What they wanted, was a very similar view of La Conner, but of the section of town that would showcase the Gaches Mansion, where the museum is housed. Part of this project was in part inspired by an old, Japanese scroll showing many houses and shops all lined up as you walked the road. This then inspired local quilters to do a similar thing, but with part of Anacortes--a neighboring city to La Conner--in a quilt, of course.

After a few meetings, we worked out that they wanted me to do larger paintings of buildings as I had done in my auction piece, and then those would be used as references for quilters to create a full, quilted version of my paintings. Right away, the Museum had told me that the show they wanted it for was in July 2012, which was when they would be hosting another exhibit of Japanese quilts, which fits, because all of this was initially inspired by an old Japanese scroll.

Very early on we made a rough timeline, where we would discuss the project fall 2010, I would complete my paintings by around summer 2011, which gave the quilters from fall 2011 to spring 2012 to create their quilt replicas of my work. Also, we agreed it was a good idea to have my paintings available for when the show opened in July 2012.

At the moment I am working on roughing out the buildings, inking, and painting several parts of the project, but I still wanted to let everyone in on the secret while I have a little bit of down time. In the next few weeks I'll update with some behind-the-scenes pics and explanations, so stay tuned, and enjoy the links below.
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Museum of Northwest Art's homepage.
* My original piece
La Conner's Chamber of Commerce page
BLDGBLOG's page -- lots of scrolling and exploring
Quilt & Textile Museum's homepage