Parigi

April 26th, 2018

The title of this post is a tribute to my friend, the late Paris Mannion. She once told me that in Italian, her first name translated to Parigi. I called her that off and on until she died.

I visited Paris (the town) last week, so here are some photos and my usual random comments.

Notre Dame, looking across the Seine.

This was the third time I’d been, the first with my friend Paris/Parigi. As I walked through the cathedral, I was struck anew by her kindness. Years ago, we’d gone overseas to take photos for one of her books. Notre Dame had nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of her book, but she went out of her way to take me there and some other places she thought I should see.

This time I went with my family. My husband and I wanted to share Paris, at least a small section of it, with our son before he’s grown and having most of his adventures away from us. We need to do more of that. The clock is ticking away. The first year of a child’s life feels as though it lasts ten or twenty years, then the years abruptly speed up and begin zooming by.

 

Wood model of Notre Dame, inside Notre Dame. One wonders if there’s another microscopic model inside the model, making the whole thing self-similar. The fractal nature of Notre Dame, if you will.

 

There was a mass in progress when we visited. It sounded far more pleasant than the roaring and bloviating of the religious leaders of my youth. Perhaps the fact that it was said in French helped.

 

The famous rose glass window, or at least one of them.

 

Currency deposited in a collection box by the faithful. I thought it made an interesting shot. It must be costly to make repairs on a medieval pile of stone, a more-or-less constant process.

 

I adore gargoyles. I live in a very bland, suburban neighborhood. I  wonder if it would be improved by hanging gargoyles off some of the houses. They wouldn’t have to be the same style as the ones at Notre Dame. We could make effigies of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, which would be appropriate for Silicon Valley.

 

The angels are looking on as though to say “Dude. That has to hurt.”

 

Now we’re in another cathedral, Sainte-Chapelle. It’s a short walk from Notre Dame, also on the Ile de la Cité, and well worth visiting for the sake of its stained glass.

 

“Here is a Bible with which to cover your shameful nakedness. Go forth and keep your privates covered.”

I could probably think of a title for this if I worked at it, but perhaps it’s best that I don’t. The balcony just outside Sainte-Chapelle was covered with relief sculpture depicting stories and parables.

 

The lesson I take away: if you have difficulty nursing, try substituting peasant-grade gruel for mother’s milk.

 

Basement or undercroft of the Conciergie.  That’s a lovely-sounding name for a place where people were tossed in dank cells before being hauled off to the guillotine. Marie Antoinette was there for a time before being taken before a tribunal and having her hair and then her head lopped off.

There were some fascinating informational displays about the Revolution. I confess that I wasn’t as horrified as I could have been at the notion of citizens rising up and ridding themselves of vain, bloated rulers who cared little about their welfare. Not that there’s anyone in the U.S. I want dead – just gone.

 

There was an art installation inside the Conciergie. It involved diverting water from the Seine and having it flow through a channel in the undercroft.

This sign amused me. Evidently the water is so questionable it’s worthy of a warning sign. Don’t touch it, don’t make coffee with it, and for heaven’s sakes, don’t float little paper boats in it.

 

Sacre-Couer. It sits atop a hill and can be reached via a countless number of steps or via a funicular. The last time my husband and I visited, we climbed the steps. I complained viciously the whole way. Guess what we did this time?

 

The Pigalle, with a McDonald’s sign nestled up against a sign with a topless woman. That tickled me.

 

The Sexodrome. I love that name. It has something of a Mad Max sound. I have no idea what goes on in there, but I imagine it involves people riding motorcycles while waving artificial phalluses.

 

Tilework on the sidewalk in front of the Moulin Rouge. I thought the little windmills were charming.

 

Butt crack of Venus de Milo, on view at the Louvre. Everyone was queued up in front of the statue, but I thought the back was equally interesting. It’s a view one doesn’t see every day.

 

“How big do you think the Mona Lisa will be?” I asked my son.

“Big!”

“Can you show me with your arms?”

“Well, no. But I think it’ll be at least as large as the other paintings.”

Yeah, it was a shock to him. It was a surprise to me the first time as well. Somehow we expect the Mona Lisa to be monumental in size, not a foot or two on a side. Who knows; if da Vinci had known the painting would be so wildly popular, perhaps he would have made it larger.

 

Evidently France didn’t get rid of all of its rats during the Revolution.

 

Fontaine de l’Observatoire. I’ve always liked these creatures, although I wonder what they eat. Definitely not hay. Perhaps seaweed?

 

Medici Fountain. Some of these photos make me sad. This is one of the fountains I visited and photographed with my friend before she died.

Paris/Parigi had a dream of retiring overseas, in one of the places she’d lived during her youth. She became ill and passed away before that could happen.

 

An architectural element on, I think, Rue Monge near the Arenes du Lutece. How cool would it be to look out the window of your apartment and see something like that?

 

Down in the catacombs, an incredible underground repository with the bones of more than six million people. We’d never been, but we thought the boy might like it. Glad we went. It’s good to try something a little different each trip, and it was fascinating and thought-provoking.

I’m very glad we bought tickets in advance, though. The line for walk-up tickets extended down the block!

 

Another tasteful arrangement of bones down in the catacombs. Who knew there were so many artful ways to display them?

I guess that’s a bit tacky of me. There were once people surrounding those bones. Some reverence is in order. Someday I’ll be reduced to bone or ashes or goo myself.

 

Another tasteful sign. It seems that people have to be warned to not eat burgers or hit the bottle when they’re in the catacombs.

 

On our final evening, we visited the Eiffel Tower. Going there is something of a tourist cliche, but we had to take our kid. Otherwise, he’d have conversations with his classmates like

“Did you go up the Eiffel Tower?”

“No. My parents wouldn’t take me.”

There are just certain places you have to go if you’ve never visited a town before.

That said, I was heartbroken by the anti-terrorism measures. The area around the tower used to be a big, green open space with people strolling and lazing. Now it’s fenced off, there are deep gulches, and one must go through a security inspection to enter. I suppose one of the goals is to make it hard to roll a truck full of explosives in and take down the tower.

 

Anti-terrorism measures were visible everywhere we went, as part of Operation Sentinel. From the moment we landed at Charles de Gaulle, we saw roving bands of soldiers carrying assault rifles and convoys of similarly armed police officers. It startled my son, who said it made him feel as though he was in a video game.

Oddly enough, it didn’t make me feel unsafe the way I do when people in the U.S. are enthusiastically exercising their right to carry guns and, presumably, form militias for the purpose of quelling slave rebellions. Perhaps that’s because when people in the U.S. openly carry guns, frequently their goal is to intimidate. By contrast, the police and the soldiers in France were trained and conducting anti-terrorism activities. We were merely fat American tourists, spreading around money and mangling the pronunciation of French words. We weren’t particularly interesting to them.

 

The Statue of Liberty, seen from the Eiffel Tower. Or, as my son put it, “the real Statue of Liberty”.

 

We arrived at the tower at dusk. As the sun went down, lights in the surrounding town began to sparkle. The bright object at the upper lefthand corner of the photo is the Arc de Triomphe.

 

All too soon, it was time to head home. There were intermittent rail and airline strikes around the time of our stay, but we made it out okay, flying out over Iceland (above) and the Atlantic while covertly ogling the extremely handsome male flight attendants. Some of them may have even been straight.

The flight home was like being on a flying restaurant, with champagne and liqueur and other goodies shoveled down our throats at frequent intervals.

I could live in Paris, at least for a short time. It was blissful getting away from some of the garbage here in the U.S., exercising and eating healthily while avoiding Facebook and reports of current political horrors.

We’ve only been home a week. I already want to escape again.

“Coffee Break”, part one

March 30th, 2018

This entry walks through the creation of this image, “Coffee Break”, which will be printed on fabric and transmogrified into an art quilt. As usual, click on images to enlarge if desired. (One of these days I’ll get around to fixing the site’s style sheets and layout. One of these days. Probably about the time I get my sewing machine repaired.)

 

As with much of my work these days, Coffee Break was created with a combination of 3D graphics and Photoshop. Here’s the layout in wireframe mode, showing the models in the scene.

 

Assets

If you work in 3D, you either have to make your own models or find them readymade. I did the latter in this case, using purchased models of a fairy, wings, hair, and the forest in which she’s relaxing.

The fairy model is the digital equivalent of a posable doll. I like to credit those who provide or create the assets I use. Alas, this model is merely credited as a “Daz Original”, so I have no idea who made it. It might have been created by a Bulgarian artist working in a shed, a corporate slave at Daz headquarters in Salt Lake City, or someone else entirely.

Regardless, I appreciate it. When I need to make a specific figure, I do, but otherwise the process is so time-consuming that it’s nice to be able to get figures “off the shelf”.

 

This fallen tree is part of a construction kit that includes trees, vines, and little chunks of terrain. The pieces can be arranged as one pleases to create a custom environment. It was created by Stonemason, aka Stefan Morrell, an artist whose models and scenes are much beloved. He’s an interesting person to read about in his own right:

 

Arranging the scene

I began by arranging the fallen jungle tree in a sunny field, then plunking my creepy bald fairy on top of it. The resulting image is mildly disturbing. It’s a good example of the adage “you have to start somewhere”.

One of the nice things about working in 3D is that we can rapidly try out different lighting, figure poses, models, and camera setups. We can keep the elements that have potential, such as the tree and the fairy, and change the things which aren’t working.

 

The second iteration of work. The fairy’s pose looks more natural; I’ve moved her left hand so that it’s draped across her thigh instead of stiffly hovering above the tree.

She now has hair and wings and her eyes no longer have a hideous staring quality. I’ve added some trees in the background, so we have a sense of place. The scene now feels more natural than having a fallen tree sitting out in the middle of a meadow.

However, we’re not done. The lighting is poor and the waterfall background behind the trees isn’t a good addition to the scene.

 

I’ve added a light source in the upper lefthand corner of the scene, beyond the edge of the picture so we can’t see it. The light gives the scene some contrast and dimension.

Her hair shows up better beneath the light, but the color is uninteresting.

A tree in the foreground gives the scene some depth. I’ve also turned on the depth of field setting for our virtual camera. Our fairy and the tree she’s sitting on are in focus. However, the trees in the foreground and background aren’t. This helps draw us into the scene.

The fairy now has a book, a fancy-looking volume bound in leather with gilt embellishment. This helps develop the story behind the picture a little. We aren’t just looking at a random bored fairy who’s sitting on a log; we’ve caught her in the midst of doing something.

The type of book tells us something about the fairy: she appreciates classics. Perhaps she’s even reading a volume of fairy tales. If she had a stack of magazines or a trashy-looking paperback with a studly bare-chested male elf on the cover, that would tell us something different about her.

 

The fairy’s hair is now red, which is a little more interesting than the blonde.

I’ve added a coffee cup, which adds to the story: we’ve interrupted a fairy who is taking a coffee break or simply trying to have a quiet moment or two to read. Perhaps she’s been trying to dig into her book for ages, but when she sits down for a break at home, her kid starts bellowing about the oh-so-stressful mission he just completed in Far Cry 5 for the ElfBox One. She feels like her head is about to split open and some not-very-dainty things are about to erupt from her delicate lips, so she’s flown off into the woods for some quiet time.

I debated with myself about what kind of cup to give her. The possibilities are limited only by what one can download or create. How about a coffee cup shaped like a cat’s head or a feminine china cup painted with roses? As with the book, each option tells us something about the fairy. However, I didn’t want the cup to become a distraction, so I opted for something simple and white.

As is often the case with this kind of work, once you fix a few problems and rough in the major parts of a scene, other issues become obvious. At this stage I noticed that her back wing was at an angle, which makes it hard to see. That got added to the list of things to fix for the next iteration.

 

Here’s the final scene in wireframe mode. As my husband puts it “No, it wasn’t faked in Photoshop. It really is a scene put together in 3D.”

 

The entire scene as viewed from the top. We can’t see the fairy, but she’s at about the middle of the picture, hiding beneath the trees.

 

Here’s the scene viewed from top with the trees turned off and some color turned on.

The essential components of the scene:

  • Camera circled in pink. This behaves much like a real-life camera, with settings including f-stop, focal length, and depth of field.
  • Fairy, book, and props circled in blue
  • Light source circled in yellow. 3D programs offer many options for lighting scenes, such spotlights and point lights (similar to a light bulb). I usually find them annoying to position and adjust, which is no doubt a character flaw on my part. Instead, I often plop a plane in the scene and make it glow as though it’s a light.

 

Our fairy scene with a very minor adjustment to back wings, so they’re more visible.

I rendered this at 6300 x 5400 pixels, 150 dpi. That’s large enough to fill a 42 x 36” piece of fabric. So I’m done now, right? I spent hours putting this scene together and I let it render for 20 hours. Surely it’s ready to send off to the printer?

Ha ha ha ha ha. No. In some ways, the fun has only begun.

 

Post production

Look for problems

Maybe other people don’t have trouble with their renders. I always do. Always. Always. Even when I inspect the scene over and over and over again before rendering, I find problems. Sometimes they’re bad enough that I make adjustments in the 3D program and do another render. Other times I address them in Photoshop.

Here’s a typical problem, stuff poking through other stuff. When I zoom in on the picture at 100% and inspect it, I see moss and a leaf poking through the book. That might not be noticeable when the entire image is the size of a postcard, but when it’s blown up large enough to go on a wall, it’s a problem.

Ideally, one would find that kind of thing before blowing a day on rendering. However, if not, one can sometimes fix it after the fact in a program such as Photoshop.

 

Brighten up the scene

The picture looked a little dim for my taste, so I brightened it up. To do that, I opened the picture in Photoshop, duplicated the layer, and set the blending mode of the duplicate to Color Dodge at an opacity of 50%.

One can try different blending modes and opacities. It’s a good experiment; sometimes there are happy or at least interesting surprises.

 

Add a background

Right now the background behind the trees is black. That’s okay, but I wanted just a little visual interest so the scene would feel more realistic. However, I didn’t want the background to be so cluttered that it would fight with the foreground for attention.

I began with a large version of this picture, which is somebody’s imagining of a jungle. (It’s part of the Heart of the Jungle background set.)

 

The jungle picture after a gaussian blur in Photoshop

 

I could get the jungle background in my picture by adding it to my 3D scene, starting a new render, and waiting another day for the computer to finish that set of calculations.

However, I’m lazy. It’s faster to mask out everything in the foreground of my picture and drop the background in with Photoshop. Using a mask such as the one above is a nice way to isolate elements and make edits after the fact. It’s often faster than rendering the scene again.

Daz users: see my entry “How to make masks in Daz Studio/Iray”.

 

Here’s the scene with the jungle background dropped in. It’s a subtle change but it adds a little life.

 

Adding steam from coffee

Our next task is to give the coffee some steam. Again, one can use props and do this directly in one’s 3D program, but I prefer to do it in post.

The steam is a graphic from Textures.com, a wonderful resource for those who do 3D or other sorts of graphic work. I’d post a photo of it, but I’m concerned about violating their terms of service. Here’s the link.

 

I’ve pasted the smoke/steam on a separate layer. Its blending mode is screen, which makes the black background of the smoke disappear without further effort.

 

Next I stretch it, rotate it, and erase the parts I don’t want in the picture. Voila. “Steam”. Only you and I know that it’s actually incense smoke which someone was kind enough to photograph and share.

 

Here’s the scene with steam added. It’s a small touch but it adds a little life.

 

Adding light rays

I want some light rays. They should come from the upper lefthand side of the screen, mimicking our light.

There are plenty of tutorials on making light rays in Photoshop. Here’s a good one.

 

I begin by making a new layer in my Photoshop document, setting my color palette to black and white, then rendering clouds (Filter -> Render -> Clouds). I then go to the menu bar and select Image -> Adjustment -> Threshold and hit “okay.” (All of this is in the tutorial I linked to above, btw.)

If I’m feeling wild, I’ll select a portion of the graphic with my marquee tool and resize it/expand it so it fits the screen. Different black-and-white patterns yield different results, so it’s good to experiment with them.

 

Finally, I take the layer with the black-and-white graphic and go to Filter -> Blur -> Radial Blur. I put the center of the blur near where the light source should appear, set the blur method to zoom, and fiddle around with the amount until I’m happy. There isn’t a preview mode on this blur, so sometimes one has to CMD-Z or CNTRL-Z, go back to the radial blur filter, and try a new blur amount.

This sort of looks like light rays. Sort of. But now I have a new problem – how to get the light rays in the picture without obscuring the items in the foreground.

 

Yep. It’s mask time again. This time I’ve made a mask which isolates the fairy, her props, and the foreground tree. I apply that as a layer mask on the light ray layer and set the layer blending mode to soft light. After I play around with the opacity, I end up with this:

 

Adjust brightness balance

It feels like the scene is most of the way there. However, the tree at left is bright and distracting.

I’ve muted the foreground tree out with a layer mask. But – oh, great – now the tree behind the fairy looks too bright. Shall I make another mask for that?

 

No. I’m sick of fiddling around with masks. It’s brute force time. I grabbed the burn tool and darkened the tree by hand.

 

Adjust eyes

Her eyes seem a little dark. She’s a fairy. Even if she’s having a rotten day and just wants to drink her coffee, she should have sparkly eyes.

 

Here are her eyes after using a dodge tool on the midtones. Now she looks depressed but with, you know, sparkly eyes.

 

Darkening of graphic during printing process

My goal is to print the coffee break scene on fabric. However, from sad experience, I know that when I send out images to print on fabric, they often come back dark. Here’s an example from a different project.

 

Check out that boot. That’s the boot in the file I sent to the printer, with subtle highlights and surface texture.

 

Here’s what I got back on fabric, an amorphous blob of black. Guess what? The fabric printer doesn’t do subtle highlights, at least not if they’re on the dark end of the color range.

 

Similarly, here we have a pile of rocks. They are distinct, individual rocks, happy in their grayness and individuality.

 

Aaaaand here’s what we have after printing on fabric. Another black blob. I can use thread to fix some of this, but it’s vexing.

No, it isn’t unusual for prints on paper to look different from the images one sees on screen. However, this is the most pronounced case of that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps its related to the fact that we’re printing on fabric, not glossy paper stock.

Regardless, anything at about RGB 70/70/70 or less will be black. Thus, the next step is to go through the scene with an eyedropper tool and the info box displayed. If I don’t want something to turn black, I need to adjust it so it’s brighter than 70/70/70.

 

Here’s a shrunk-down version of the file sent to the fabric printer. It’s 6300 x 5400 pixels, 150 dpi, which is large enough to print on a one yard length of “Cotton Poplin Ultra”.

 

Here’s the printed fabric. See any difference? I sure as heck do. As usual, the darkest tones in the design are even darker more after printing on fabric. In particular, the light rays I so carefully, lovingly put in are all but invisible. I’ll see if I can pep them up through my thread choices, but it’s annoying. I specifically corrected for that. However, I didn’t correct enough. Let the designer beware!

Next stop: quilting.

New year, new finish

January 14th, 2018

When my husband and I married, we combined the accumulated goods of two adult lives.

My goods included a set of metal, screw-together shelves that shimmied and bowed when books were stored in them. The metal shelf theme was complemented by a sheepskin rug I’d purchased at CostCo, under the mistaken impression that it would make a room with metal shelves romantic, and a hand truck whose tires eternally went flat and stank up one of my closets.

His household included a battered bedroom set with intricate carving and extremely shapely Queen Anne legs. The set was so effeminate that when I visited his apartment for the first time, I was startled. “What interesting furniture,” I said uneasily, then chastised myself for the bigoted stereotypes that were racing through my brain.

He paused in the act of urging me backward, so that I might recline and get a better view of the ceiling, and grunted “Mmm. Yeah. That stuff was left behind by Mrs. R—.”

This explanation did not reassure me. “Mrs. R—? Who’s that? Was she your girlfriend? A landlady?”

“No,” he said, then he spun a complex tale of the set being abandoned at his place by the mother of a part-time stripper and the paramour of a fellow who frequented a car restoration shop on a street nicknamed “Methanol Alley”. “So-and-so was dating her daughter. The set was better than cardboard dresser I had in Flint so I kept it,” he finally concluded.

I came away utterly bewildered. How had the bedroom set wound up in his home? Why did it matter that the woman’s daughter was a part-time stripper? Where on Earth did one find dressers made of cardboard?

Perhaps some mysteries are best left unexplained.

His bachelor dowry also included a worn set of end tables which, he proudly declared, had been in terrible shape when he purchased them. Their condition had not improved with age.

 

I didn’t own any end tables, so they were a welcome addition to the marital household. They were battered and hideous, but so what? They still did an admirable job of supporting lamps, plates filled with stale pizza crusts, and stacks of overdue library books. Besides, we soon faced more pressing issues than ones of appearance: a baby with deep-seated objections to sleeping and pets who liked to empty themselves on the couch.

As the baby grew older and transitioned into boyhood and tweenhood, the fact that the tables were battered even seemed like a positive. At least we didn’t have to worry about furniture getting banged up when feral packs of boys visited! Kids could spill things, put their feet up, or even stand on the furniture and do the Macarena. Nothing they did would make the place any worse. If their parents found the tables low class or didn’t let their children visit, so much the better.

Then, all at once, I grew weary of the worn surfaces. One day I approached my husband and asked how he’d feel about my refinishing them. It was a delicate matter. They were heirlooms, after all; one couldn’t get a patina like that on furniture overnight. No, those surfaces had history. They spoke of repeated assaults from ocean waves penetrating shipping containers, lonely cats sharpening their claws, and spilled beer soaking into piles of questionable magazines.

“Sure, make art tables out of them,” he said, barely looking up from his crossword puzzle. “I like that idea.”

Art tables. I had no idea how to make art tables, not that I’ve let lack of knowledge or common sense hold me back before.

“What kind of art tables? Shall we glue pictures to them? For example, we could all mash our faces against glass, take photos, and glue the photos down so it would look like we’re stuck in the tables.”

“Sure. Do that.”

“What if I cover the tables with pompoms and wiggly eyeballs?”

“Sounds good.”

“Would you be horrified if I painted them with stripes and polka dots?”

“Go for it. I trust your artistic judgement.”

At some point during the questioning, I realized that he really and truly wasn’t that worried about the matter. I also realized that I didn’t want to invest much energy or money in creations that might get wrecked. These were tables, after all, not artworks we’d hang on a wall. Whatever we did to them, they were still fated to hold books and glasses of iced tea.

That was how I found myself bellying up to a copy of Filter Forge, a program for creating Photoshop-compatible filters. With over 12,000 filters already available for use, I figured one of them would work just fine for designing fabric I could decoupage to the tops of the tables. That would give the tables a colorful, painterly look without too much effort on my part. It would also help disguise any imperfections in the surface that remained after sanding and filling.

Here are the steps I went through.

 

Step 1: Design and order fabric

One could simply purchase fabric from a store. However, I opted to design the fabric myself. I tackled that first, since there can be a lead time of a couple of weeks for fabric to be printed and delivered. While the fabric is being made, one can move on to other tasks.

I auditioned quite a few designs before settling on these:

 

(By the way, should you want to try these fabrics yourself, they’re available on my Spoonflower store.)

They were bright and modern, in keeping with our art-filled mid-century house. I did find them a bit garish at first – I believe the statement I made to my husband was “Good lord; these make my eyes bleed”. However, he encouraged me to give them a try. I’m glad he did. I’ve since come to love them. They now seem cheerful and lively rather than obnoxious. Perhaps that’s because the effect of a bright, large-scale print is moderated when used on accent pieces or a small area.

Notice that I created two designs, not one. I could have simply had two identical lengths of fabric printed, one for each table. However, I knew that if I did that and couldn’t get the fabric aligned exactly the same way on each table, it would drive me nuts. Maybe nobody else would know, but I sure would! With two similar but different panels, they don’t look “wrong” if the tables are juxtaposed.

While the fabric was being printed in Durham, North Carolina, I prepared the tables for painting and decoupage.

 

Step 2: Disassemble, Sand and Putty

Here’s one of the tables in its original state. The tops of both had quite a bit of wear and damage, so they required sanding.

If one has teenagers handy, they make a convenient source of labor. I later disassembled the tables to make it easier to sand all of the components.

At this point, a neighbor stopped by and mournfully said “Oh, but they’re wood. Can’t you just varnish them?”

Yes, if one has a surface that is actually wood, or is veneer in reasonably good condition, one can simply do a light sanding and apply varnish or another protective coat. I like the look of wood, so I would have preferred to do just that.

However, that was not our situation. These tables probably came from People’s Table Factory #5 in a Chinese town dedicated to making end tables. When the tables were new, they resembled wood, much like a bra stuffed with silicone inserts or socks may appear to contain breasts. (A bit of wisdom I learned as a child while watching a relative who had a poor body image prepare for dates.)

In reality, the aprons and tops are veneer-topped composite. The veneer was peeling and had chipped away badly. One could order sheets of veneer, painstakingly trim them to shape, and glue them in. I am not that dedicated and, as my husband stated, repairing the veneer would cost more than he paid for the tables to begin with. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s still on point.

I opted to apply filler, sand the tables, and prime, paint, and decoupage.

 

One of the table tops after sanding and applying filler. The surface is smooth now, if visually unattractive.

 

Step 3: Prime and Paint

Here’s one of the tables after disassembly. The legs have been primed in preparation for painting. I used Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer, which was mentioned in this article on painting furniture.

At this point, the fabric had been printed and shipped to me. I took it to a craft store and chose several bottles of acrylic craft paint to match. One could also have paint custom-mixed at a paint store or lumberyard. I opted for craft paint because it’s dirt cheap, available in a wide range of colors, and I don’t have to beg a store employee to mix it for me.

Acrylic paint is nice because it can be cleaned up with water. I keep a bucket filled with sand outside my back door, so I can empty rinse water into it rather than down my drain.

The table legs, after painting green stripes down the edges. I quickly abandoned that idea in favor of painting the legs a solid blue. I simply couldn’t get the edges of the stripes crisp enough for my taste.

One of the table tops after being primed. The pencil outline is in preparation for painting a green border around the edge of the table.

I wanted a painted border around my fabric, rather than running the fabric all the way to the edges of the table tops. However, since the tint of the paint is visible through the fabric, it was important to have a white background in the center so the fabric would be as bright as possible.

Painter’s tape applied along the pencil marks. The tape kept the edge of the border nice and crisp while protecting the white background in the center.

Sorry; I neglected to take a photo just after I’d painted the border. Pretend that white section around the edge is green and you’ll know what it looks like, though.

I painted the legs, drawer front, and other sides of the table top as well. I also purchased and painted plain wood knobs for the drawers, so that they’d match.

 

Step 4: Prepare fabric for decoupage

I’d never decoupaged furniture before, so I consulted this article. It recommended using Mod Podge, a traditional decoupage medium that’s available at most craft stores.

 

The fabric is a little easier to work with if it’s impregnated with Mod Podge before applying it to one’s surface. (A tip I learned here.) The Mod Podge prevents fraying and makes the fabric easier to handle and position.

To prepare the fabric, start by taping a protective layer of waxed paper to your work surface. Lay down the fabric and apply Mod Podge to one side. After the fabric dries, flip it and apply Mod Podge to reverse side. Allow the Mod Podge to dry thoroughly before moving or cutting the fabric.

I found that I had a few crinkles in my cloth after this process. However, I was able to press them out by sandwiching the fabric between lengths of parchment paper or beneath a teflon sheet and using an iron at low temperature.

Next, I cut the fabric so that it would cover the unpainted rectangle on my table tops, with a little bit extra to overlap the painted border by about 1/8”. A rotary cutter and a long quilter’s ruler are invaluable for this, although an X-Acto knife and a T-square could also be pressed into service. I can’t imagine making those kinds of long, straight cuts accurately with scissors, not when they’re going to get juxtaposed with the straight edges of the furniture. Any little wobble in the cut will show up. However, perhaps others are better with scissors than I am.

 

Step 5: Adhere fabric to tabletop.

Ah, those four words make it sound so simple. So pleasurable, even. “Adhere fabric to tabletop.” It sounds as though you’ll smear goo all over your tabletop, waft the fabric over it, and everything is just going to go perfectly. I do believe I invented some new words when I worked on the first tabletop. Here’s what I learned:

  • Alignment marks are your friends. In particular, the pencil line I drew when marking the border of the table was invaluable for lining up the fabric.
  • Work in sections. Apply Mod Podge to one section of the table at a time. Smearing Mod Podge along the width of the table and maybe 1/3 of the way down the length worked well for me. Get the fabric aligned and stuck down in just that section, then apply Mod Podge to another section. Be sure that all sections of the table that are beneath the fabric receive Mod Podge so that the entire piece of fabric will adhere.
  • Use a brayer to press the fabric down evenly without distorting it. If you can’t lay your hands on a brayer, try a rolling pin.
  • There may be air bubbles. Small ones can be removed by piercing the fabric with a pin, then rolling the heck out of it.

Here’s a brayer. It has a handle attached to a hard rubber roller. I bought mine for a graphic design class about a thousand years ago. Sometimes art or craft stores carry them. Again, if you can’t find one or don’t want to spend the money, a rolling pin should work.

 

This is one of the table tops after the green border was painted around the edge and the fabric was Mod Podged down.

You can see that the edge of the green painted border shows through beneath the fabric a bit. It’s just a small edge, maybe 1/8” wide, and it isn’t really noticeable when using the tables. However, it demonstrates how the color of the paint that’s behind the fabric affects how bright the fabric is.

 

Step 6: Apply clear coat

Clear coat is important both as a protective finish for the paint and because the Mod Podge is not waterproof.

The legs, drawer front, and aprons received coat after coat after coat of Minwax Polycrylic, per recommendations in this article. I smoothed the surfaces gently with an ultra fine finishing pad after each coat had dried, until I achieved a perfectly smooth, glossy finish.

Unfortunately, that approach didn’t work so well on the tabletops. I was working on them outside a spray booth. After each coat, I found something embedded in the finish: hairs, hapless insects, an entire Triumph Bonneville motorcycle. It seemed that the tabletops were doing their best to break my heart.

One night, after yet another gentle sanding to remove foreign objects, I got mad, grabbed a can of Rust-Oleum Satin Clear Enamel, and began spraying. The surface felt rough and disgusting after it dried. It was also even and fairly attractive, so I sprayed on a couple more coats.

Good enough.

 

Step 7: Screw furniture back together.

Here a finished table, sans drawer, and an unmodified table are juxtaposed. Perhaps the picture symbolizes the journey from beginning to end.

A finished table with drawer installed and optional hound dog accent. I’ve found that most furniture looks better with the addition of a dog or two.

I was initially skeptical about this project, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well the tables have worked out. They function as pieces of pop art. As a bonus, we like seeing the tables so much that we now keep the surfaces bare.

Given how horrible they were to begin with, though, we could have done almost anything to them and they would have looked better!

How to make masks in Daz Studio/Iray

December 13th, 2017

This is a quick note for people who use Daz Studio, in case they’re looking for a simple, lazy method for creating masks in Iray.

This question came up for me when I was watching Val Cameron’s Fantasy Art Master videos. He does quite a bit of work in post, rather than hassling over getting everything just the way he wants it in the 3D package. To do that, he frequently uses a mask to isolate whatever element he’s interested in.

However, in the videos I saw, he was using 3Delight rather than Iray. That raised the question of how to make masks in Iray. Perhaps it’s common knowledge; it turned out to be fairly simple, once I messed around with it. However, when I Googled around, I didn’t find the information I needed, so I thought I’d pass it on.

Here are the steps we’re going to go through:

  • Delete or hide the objects we don’t want in the mask
  • Delete or turn off sources of light
  • Change background color so that it contrasts with our scene elements (may not be necessary, but it’s handy)

Here’s our starting scene. Our character, Aspen, is casually hanging out by a giant sphere, wondering why she’s been plagued by premature hair loss.

We want to isolate the character and the sphere from the background. This is a simple scene so there aren’t many extra elements. However, I do need to turn off the floor.

Here we are with the floor turned off.

We now want to remove or turn off all light sources. I confess that I find this much less straightforward in Daz than in other packages I’ve used, such as Blender. Illumination can come not only from obvious lights in the scene, but from light-emitting planes, sky domes, camera head lamps, and the environment.

Note that if you want to emphasize some aspect of the scene in post, you can light it as desired and proceed with making your mask.

I’m still in perspective mode, so I’m going to create a camera, select it, then turn off its headlamp.

By the way – click on the images if you need to see them larger. I need to go revise the style sheet to make that obvious and, um, I’ll get around to that sometime. Yeah. I’ll revamp the site any day now. Probably over Christmas break, when I’m revising my latest novel, creating new artwork, and replacing the ugly-arsed light over the kitchen sink.

The environment is another possible source of illumination in this scene. To address that, I’m going to turn the environment intensity down to zero.

Looks like I was successful in turning off all sources of illumination. Unfortunately, I can’t see a silhouette of my scene. That may not be important as far as the render – the scene should render out against a transparent background regardless. However, it’s nice to be able to double check our setup.

To address that, I’m going to change the background color of my viewport from black to white.

Now I can see my figures silhouetted against a white background.

When I render this out, my scene is silhouetted against a transparent background. I save it as a png in order to retain transparency. To make a classic black/white mask, I can pop in an appropriate background color in Photoshop.

Here’s a more complex scene, first with a transparent background then with a white background. I had to turn off quite a few light sources to isolate the desired elements. However, it was still a fairly straightforward process.

Hope this helps someone. Happy rendering!

Where is the story?

September 19th, 2017

Succulent, 38 x 32″

Here’s my latest, Succulent. It’ll be at PIQF next month. I managed to finish it just before the submission deadline, battling my sewing machine the whole way. (And have I taken my machine in for repair yet? No, I haven’t. However, I’m still whining about the fact that it’s broken despite the fact I’m now past deadline and could do something about it. It’s a good thing I’ve never claimed to be wholly logical.)

It was interesting. By interesting, I mean that I really hate doing work at the last minute and I’ll do almost anything to avoid ending up in that situation. However, I had a firm commitment for another piece that HAD to be done by a certain date – for a top-secret exhibit, natch – so this one had to be postponed for awhile.

Most of my recent work has been 3D-based. Succulent is a little different, although it’s still based on the output of a computer.

Back in 2009, I saw a plant about the size of my hand and absentmindedly took a photo of it. I think I was at Balboa Park in San Diego at the time; the place is covered with plants.

That photo had a nice abstract quality that has fascinated me over the years. I finally sat down with it and ran it through some custom Photoshop filters to increase saturation and simulate a watercolor effect. I had the resulting image printed onto fabric at Spoonflower, then did the usual batting and stitching and muttering that transforms such things into art quilts.

This piece used thirty-three colors of thread. I have no idea how that compares to my usual work; it isn’t something I normally focus on. My philosophy is that you use however much thread and however many colors you need to, and it usually isn’t worth dwelling on. I always use a lot of thread, but I don’t deserve a freaking medal for using up an entire manufacturing plant’s worth of polyester. When people look at a piece, it either speaks to them or it doesn’t.

However, occasionally – very occasionally – it is interesting. In this case, it’s a reminder of the complexity that can dwell beneath apparent simplicity. When I look at  the quilt, I’m surprised at the fact that the design was able to bear up under so many different hues. Perhaps it’s because the shapes are so simple and bold.

Now I’m dwelling in the land of “what’s next”? My usual work mode is telling stories, either visually or with words. Succulent was a bit of a departure from that. It’s a pretty piece, with its play of light and color, but there isn’t much of a story there other than “look closer and pay attention to the world around you”.

I don’t know which story I want to tell next. This happens after every project, and I hate it every time. It doesn’t help that I can hear that Chuck Close quote in my ears, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

In the meantime, I’ve been taking an online course on fantasy artwork and making things like this:

A winged naked guy is hanging out on a cloud bank. He’s naked because … let me think about this … there’s no laundromat nearby. He tried hauling a washer up there, but it kept falling through the clouds, plus there was no real water supply to plumb it up to. Try not to dwell on the other sanitary implications of that situation.

When he wants to go on a date, he flies down to Target and buys a nine-pack of tighty whities. Not that he needs to, because there’s nothing up front to hide. No geometry, if you get my drift. Which, I guess, really makes dating pointless … having 2.4 flying kids and a flying dog isn’t in this guy’s future unless he adopts. Never mind. Forget I mentioned it.

How many times have you seen images similar to this, with a naked dude or a scantily clad woman hanging out by a cloud bank? Yep. A lot. That’s why I won’t be taking this image any further and making a quilt out of it. That is, unless I get desperate and can’t think of anything better or more original. Then I’ll make up a nonsense story about how the idea came to me in a dream.

This image wasn’t too hard to put together, but the filthy little non-secret about 3D/CGI is that if you work in that medium, you’re going to be fiddling around. Always. Always. Always. I have never had a project that didn’t have at least some minor issue. I’ll want a different texture on one of the models, or the lighting isn’t quite right, or something will outright go to pot and I’ll have to figure it out. I’m a perverse creature and I enjoy that process, but I know some folks don’t.

 

Here, for example, we have one of the early surface designs for Game Over. I thought my little plastic polar bear should have a little plastic scarf. However, it looked awful. Delete.

 

In this snippet of a scene, a bare-chested hottie was groping away at a willing female. Later I discovered that the hottie was so enthusiastic his fingers were jammed right through the woman’s belly. I wish I’d inspected the scene more closely before poking the render button.

 

I was trying to come up with a new hottie. (I don’t remember whether this one is a stock character or something I modified.)

That thing on his head was supposed to be hair. Unfortunately, the hair texture didn’t get applied to it, so it looks more like a shower cap. Perhaps that’s why he appears so unhappy.

 

I thought that creating a realistic velvet texture for one of my scenes would be AWESOME. Too bad it looked like a green porcupine. There was another one that looked like mottled decay. Wish I’d saved a picture of it. On second thought, perhaps it’s best that I didn’t.

 

An early version of the surface design for Gusher. Gosh, wouldn’t it be swell if oil really spewed out of that oil well? It should be straightforward to simulate with particle effects, right?

Whoopsy. That took a few iterations to fix.

 

Lately I’ve been toying with idea of a series inspired by the paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. You know the ones … the paintings where he has chicks hanging out on uncomfortable marble furniture by the water, waiting for dudes to come home on fancy-looking boats.

That should be straightforward to whip up, right?

Oh dear. Her legs are poking straight through her dress. Gee whiz, I can’t fix that in the software I was using. That means I’ll have to take the woman and her dress into a different piece of software.

Or … hold on! Change of plan! Instead of her wearing a Hellenistic dress, what if she has on a vaguely apocalyptic outfit? Think “Mad Max Visits the Mediterranean”. And, um, she’ll be waving a gun around. She hasn’t had her coffee yet and she’s annoyed about the guys on that ship in the background cruising around in her bay. When they clamber up to her marble gazebo, she’ll shoot them all.

Or not.

None of this is working for me. Guess I’ll go make some more naked guys with wings. Maybe that’ll be my new series. Naked Guys with Wings. It’ll be a gender swapped version of Victoria’s Secret angels.

Current Publications

September 8th, 2017

Current Publications. I think that may be one of the most insanely dull titles for a post I’ve ever come up with, if not the dullest. That’s a shame, because I’m quite excited about the work and exhibits  documented.

Once or twice a year, I sit down to make sure the information on this site is current. While I have a goal of documenting works as I create them, that often doesn’t happen. Some projects have fairly stiff limitations on when work can be made public and, well, by the time that date rolls around, I’m on to the next thing.

Thus, it’s nice to see a cross-section of the work I’ve been doing over the past couple of years committed to print. It’s also nice to be reminded that I’m a part of a global team effort with other artists, creating work that celebrates, cautions, and entertains.

 

Machine Quilting Unlimited

The September/October edition of Machine Quilting Unlimited has a nice six-page spread on the development of my artwork, Do Dragons Like Cookies?

I created the quilt’s surface design using 3D/CGI, a technique that lets one create and move digital objects to create a scene. It’s been one of my loves for about 25 years, and makes a nice change of pace from painting or other digital techniques. It isn’t at all common in the quilting world, so I hope readers will enjoy the article.

The article came about in a very serendipitous fashion. Publishing a piece on my 3D work had been on my to-do list for the year, and I was delighted when the opportunity to work with MQU appeared. They were lovely people to work with, and I’m very excited to see the article in print.

MQU can be found at bookstores, fabric stores, and online at  https://machinequilting.mqumag.com.

The quilt itself will be at IQF Houston this fall, for those who are in the area and wish to see it in person.

 

Fly Me to the Moon

This book documents a traveling exhibit of quilts commemorating humans’ voyage to the moon. It’s one of Susanne Miller Jones’ efforts; during the past few years, she’s spearheaded several exhibits covering nice, meaty topics.

I have one piece in this exhibit, celebrating the moment when Apollo 8 broke free of the Earth and took three men, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, into orbit around the moon. This marked the first time humans had made that voyage; it also demonstrated the viability of traveling to the moon.

The book is due to be released September 28. It can be purchased from Amazon and various other book retailers.

A current exhibition schedule and photos of the exhibit quilts can be seen at https://www.flymetothemoon.gallery.

One recent display venue was Webster Presbyterian in Houston, which some informally refer to as the “NASA Church”. Various members of the congregation were and are involved with the space program, and shared memories sparked by the artwork: http://www.websterpresby.org/VisualArts

I was touched to see my piece augmented by remembrances by Jerry Carr who, among many other things, was Commander of Skylab 4.

 

Quilting Arts Magazine

The October/November edition of Quilting Arts Magazine contains a selection of quilts from the HerStory exhibit, another of Susanne Miller Jones’ efforts. One of mine, celebrating the life and work of physicist and laureate Maria Goeppert-Mayer, is in the magazine.

Quilting Arts can be purchased at bookstores, fabric stores, or online: https://www.interweave.com/store/quilting-arts-october-november-2017-print-edition

The HerStory exhibit is just beginning its travels. A portion of it will be debuting at IQF Houston this fall. That will have another of my quilts, an homage to the artist Mary Blair. Susanne keeps an updated tour schedule on her website: http://www.susannemjones.com/herstory-exhibit-schedule/

 

Threads of Resistance

It’s funny how one’s attitudes can change over time. I grew up in a household in which the only news consumed was that broadcast in the evening on the television, lines read by a serious-faced white male broadcaster. Beyond mocking the county commissioner for re-graveling the roads only during election years, politics weren’t discussed much at home. My father sometimes declared that he was politically independent, neither a Democrat nor a Republican, yet if pressed, I doubt he could list many instances when he voted as a Democrat, if there were any at all.

I was unclear on what any of it meant, other than picking up on an “us versus them” mentality more suitable for sports teams. The first time I went to vote as an adult, it was a horrible shock. I was ill-prepared and I didn’t recognize most of the names or issues on the sample ballot. That spurred an endless cycle of having to research every blasted issue every blasted election year.

One thing I learned along the way is that politics matters. It can be annoying, confusing, tedious, and inspire one to new heights of cynicism, but it really matters. Politics affects issues both minor and major.

Among other things, it affects whether citizens have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, and whether people of different colors are allowed to drink that water from the same fountain. It affects how well the firefighters and police are paid in one’s town and whether they have adequate equipment. It determines how we treat people who don’t look like us or speak our language, but have resources we want. When there’s a tragedy or a disaster, such as a hurricane hitting a city, it affects whether there’s a government-based aid organization ready to help.

Politics is a reflection of a society’s values and priorities. It isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a matter of people dividing themselves up into different groups so they can hoot and jeer with a sports team mentality.

As we grow older and have kids and grandkids, our thoughts may turn to the situation we’re leaving behind for them. That, too, is impacted by politics. Will there be unspoiled national parks? Will issues such as global climate change be faced and addressed in a responsible manner, or will elected officials continue to avoid the issue or outright deny that it exists? Will citizens continue to have some degree of free speech? Will journalists be harassed or tossed in jail when they attempt to report truths to the populace? Will we treat refugees from other countries with compassion or with contempt?

After witnessing the behavior of the Trump administration for seven months, I have very grave concerns. So do many other artists. That is, in a nutshell, is the drive behind the Threads of Resistance exhibit.

More than 550 pieces were submitted to this exhibit, expressing concerns about the actions and policies of the Trump administration. Sixty-three were accepted into the traveling exhibit; I’m proud to have two of mine included.

The catalog shows the works which were accepted into the traveling exhibit. It can be purchased at Amazon and various other book retailers.

All of the submitted pieces, plus an exhibit schedule, can be seen here: http://threadsofresistance.org/schedule.html

I encourage people to go have a look at the exhibit and consider the issues. They have broad, long-lasting, very serious consequences that transcend political affiliation.

Above

May 29th, 2017

Above

Above. 24.5 x 45

 

Here’s my newest work, Above. It’s so named because it reminded my husband of a view of a landscape as seen while floating in the sky. This is shades of the video for “And She Was” by the Talking Heads.

My internet friend Quinn McDonald has written eloquently about how recent events have affected people’s creativity. Amusingly enough, I’m having the opposite experience. I’m turning out tons of work. Unfortunately, much of it has a depressed, apocalyptic tone or, like this piece, is executed on the fly while listening to Terry Gross’s calming tones on NPR.

Closeup2

I don’t know what inspired me to create Above. Maybe there wasn’t any inspiration, save using some excess materials that were cluttering up the corners of my workroom. It truly is a Frankensteinian creation, comprised of chunks of old bed sheet, fabric scraps too small and irregular to piece together, and a bag of exotic yarn ends. Happily, although it’s quite a bit different than my usual work, it’s already been claimed.

Closeup1

When I do a piece of work like this that’s crazy, with bits of this and that salvaged and thrown in in no particular manner, I think of my maternal grandmother. Perhaps the work is something of a tribute to her.

My mother and I lived with her parents for a time after she divorced my father. In my memories, they were humorless people and not particularly warm. Both of them were poisoned by a particular strain of southern Christianity that embraced hatred and stupidity. It’s a strain that believes that questions come from Satan, one should regard reading materials other than the Bible with deep suspicion, and that “n—— aren’t human and should go back to Africa”. The philosophy is far more focussed on relishing the punishment of unbelievers and their eternal roasting in hell than it is following the teachings of Jesus.

Given all that, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that we weren’t close. Perhaps it’s difficult to be warm or affectionate when the core of one’s life is a philosophy that’s focussed on hatred and judgement. Or perhaps having a daughter and her child land in their household put them under a strain and they resented it. Still, they took in my mother and me, and I do appreciate it. They were never cruel to me. There was a roof over my head and food on the table at every meal. This, despite the fact that I must have gotten on their nerves.

I was a genius at conjuring up mischief. My grandmother had fragrant white roses planted out in front of the house. I would rip the roses off the bushes and shake them around, purely for the pleasure of seeing the petals fall down like snow. I would also pull unripe peaches off their trees and scrape away the fuzz with a fingernail, because the fact there was fuzz on a fruit fascinated me. These actions weren’t well received. Still, my grandparents weren’t cruel to me. There were sharp words but they didn’t yell or paddle me, despite my returning to that rose bush over and over again.

My grandmother was a quilter. Both of my grandmothers were, actually. That was simply what one did in their era, particularly if one was of a particular social class. They gardened and canned, they sewed clothes for their families, and they hoarded the leftover fabric scraps to piece together quilts to keep their families warm. In my memories, my paternal grandmother’s works were pieced quilts that followed a pattern. I don’t remember much about my maternal grandmother’s work, other than the crazy quilt.

That crazy quilt was a glorious thing, patched together out of salvaged scraps of cotton, jersey, and velveteen. It didn’t contain any fancy stitching or other embellishment, but it didn’t need it. The assortment of fabric types and colors and textures was sufficient to elevate it to the status of art.

I doubt that my grandmother intended it to be a work of art, because art wasn’t part of her universe. In her world, a picture of praying hands or of a long-haired, suspiciously Caucasian Jesus was sufficient art for a household. I’m sure she simply viewed the quilt as a frugal means of staying warm. It was art though, and quite marvelous. I loved every inch of it.

I spent hours with that quilt. It was my solace. My parents couldn’t simply agree that they didn’t get along and seek a divorce, you see. There were religious considerations plus my father was determined to stay in the marriage because, I think, of me. I understand and appreciate that, but it really was quite awful. My mother was paranoid schizophrenic and my father just plain hates women, so there had to be beatings and kidnappings and all manner of other nightmarish bullshit before they split up. So many things happened. So many. Life was out of control. But after the divorce, the quilt was there.

I used to take that quilt, wad it up, and explore its topology. I’d do that by the hour, when I wasn’t intent on destroying my grandmother’s roses. I’d use marbles for the activity, pretending they were tiny human spelunkers. They’d run through the caves and canyons in the quilt. I’d try to understand how the manner in which I’d wadded up the quilt led to certain formations, then I’d wad it up a different way and try to understand that.

Eventually the living circumstances changed. My mother and I moved out, urged on by my grandfather’s bellows of “Pack your duds and get out!”, a subtle hint that we’d worn out our welcome. Much of that period is a haze. There was a multitude of different schools, a rotating cast of boyfriends for my mother, and worn, cracked apartments that smelled odd. I’d let myself in after school and sit up into the night watching Mannix or Hawaii Five-O or Ironsides while my mother slept for whatever menial job she was attempting to hold down. Her life was hell. She had few job skills and the mental illness made life frightening. Each time she got a new job, there’d be a honeymoon period, then her co-workers would be “out to get her” or (in her mind) even kill her.

She’d have “spells” of depression or paranoia. I’d try to reason her out of them, not realizing that there was something organically wrong that kept her mind from functioning properly. Something as simple as a word scratched out on a piece of paper could become a plot in which people were trying to deceive her. Sometimes she’d turn on me with a sly, chilling smile on her face, and tell me that I was trying to hide things from her but she could see through it. She was going to leave me an inheritance when she died someday. I wouldn’t try to hurt her, would I? I wouldn’t try to get that money sooner?

I was only in the third or fourth grade. I couldn’t keep up with how quickly her mind could warp facts to fit a delusion. We’d spend hours talking. I’d about have her convinced that her coworkers really weren’t carrying razor blades in their shoes so they could kill her, then I’d make a mistake, she’d seize on it, and we’d be right back where we started. It was exhausting and about as fruitful as chatting with the Mississippi River and asking it to not form oxbow lakes after an earthquake. Still, she tried. Life was terrifying for her, but she kept trying.

The summer before fifth grade, I moved in with my father and his second wife. That proved to be its own story. I never really saw my mother’s side of the family after that. I barely saw my mother.

My grandmother passed away at the age of 93. I know only a few bare facts about her life, but I still have the memory of that crazy quilt. She raised a bunch of kids, she housed me for awhile, and she made a marvelous quilt. She did the best she could with what she had. I respect her for those things. When I look at my own work, I think of her.

 

Tidbits

May 14th, 2017

MothersDay

 

Thought this was fun. I made this with some pretty minor variants to a Photoshop filter I found in the Filter Forge library, “Little Swimmers”. The filter was made by a user known as geekatplay. Nice filter; good of the person to make it available on the library.

 

TORlogowhite500

I’ve mentioned the Threads of Resistance exhibit a couple of times. It’s an exhibit created “to protest the Trump administration’s actions and policies”. The exhibit is in the jurying process, but they’ve posted the submitted works and artist’s statements, which is a classy touch.

The group received over 500 submissions to the exhibit, which is a massive, impressive outpouring of work and concern. I have no idea what percentage of those will be in the exhibit, but posting them online lets all of the artists’ voices be heard.

 

I’m working. I guess that’s an understatement. I’ll probably wait to post about most of it until it’s done, but this is fun:

 

Scar0

 

That’s a portion of a texture map that’s getting applied to a 3D model of a guy’s body:

Scar

 

It’s been fun, or at least interesting, learning how to make scars. I won’t go on a rant about diffuse maps versus displacement maps versus blah blah blah. Let’s just say that my little scheme to find a free photo of a scar and use that to build a skin texture didn’t pan out. Yes, there are stock photos of scars. I am also too cheap to use them.

The “good” news is that there are plenty of scars on my own body and, if I can keep from gagging when I glimpse my pot belly, I can even use them as references. So this hunk is going to get covered with an assortment of scars from my C-section, appendectomy, and gall bladder surgeries. He may end up with a “dashing” C-section scar across his face, masquerading as a dueling or battle wound.  Shhh. Don’t tell.

Do Dragons Like Cookies?

April 4th, 2017

DoDragons1000

Here’s my latest quilt, Do Dragons Like Cookies? 

It measures, um, 39 3/4″ wide by 32 1/2″ tall. Thought I’d throw that in. Some folks like to know about sizes.

 

The stitching

GirlAlone1000

A closeup of some of the stitching. Don’t look too closely at the craters on the moon. They aren’t scientifically accurate. They’re more along the lines of “stitched in a desperate, manic fashion after drinking far too much coffee”.

I’ve been thinking of coming up with an obnoxious label for my style of stitching. We have McTavishing and thread painting and I don’t know what else. I’ve been toying with names like StitchGanic (a bad combination of Stitching and Organic), DesperationStitch, and my favorite, ResentStitch. What do you think? Could I market a book on ResentStitch®? I’m envisioning chapters with themes like “What to do when the coffee runs out,” “Is there a problem? Just sew over it,” and “Yes, I totally intended it to be that way.”

 

DragonAlone1000

Whee. More stitching.

 

SnowflakeAlone1000

And … even more stitching. I have nothing nice to say about the process of sewing the snowflakes. Let’s just say that the closer the wings got to the little girl’s body, the harder it was to make out what was printed on the fabric. And I designed the @#$% thing. In several places I ended up making my peace with the Devil’s Thread, aka clear polyester monofilament.

 

GirlReverse

What the heck. I’ll throw in a couple of views of the reverse. Some folks like to see that sort of thing. Just pretend that I went over the surface with a lint brush before taking the photo, okay? Pretend you don’t see stray threads here and there.

 

DragonReverse

This piece is notable for being the first I can remember where I avoided the Valley of Despair. (The Valley of Despair occurs when one has been working on a project for so long that one can’t remember the beginning and one can’t see the end.) That may be because I broke the project down into half hour increments this time. Each time my timer went off, I made a hash mark on paper, then got up and stretched. It made a world of difference as far as time tracking, taking care of my body, and having a tangible measure of progress.

 

About the surface design

The surface design is a 3D rendering printed on cotton. If you’ve looked at my work recently, you know the drill: you create or acquire geometry on the computer, apply textures to it, light it, and have a computer calculate what the scene would look like.

GirlDragon10Wireframe

Here’s the scene layout in wireframe mode. Hopefully that makes it clearer what I mean by “geometry”.

I originally intended this piece to be a lighting study. I thought it would be fun to do a scene inspired by paintings such as The Lanterns, by Charles Courtney Curran, and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, by John Singer Sargent. However, instead of a bunch of little girls with lanterns, I used a dragon and a fairy holding a firefly. I can’t remember why. Probably it was late at night and I was getting a little loopy.

Here are the models I started with:

Girl

This little girl is Skyler, offered by Daz.

This is what she looks like when she’s loaded into a scene initially. Boom. No clothes, no hair, just the computer equivalent of a rag doll for you to pose and dress and so forth.

 

dragon

This is the Millennium Dragon LE, also by DAZ.

 

GirlDragonV1

The scene took shape pretty quickly. I threw some wings on the little girl and had her kneel on a rock, offering the firefly to the dragon. Mind you, I’m not sure why one would offer a firefly to a dragon. The dragon in this initial version is large and definitely on the menacing side, so perhaps the young lady decided it would be smart to offer whatever she had on hand.

 

GirlMFD

Paddling around in one’s skin can get chilly, so I put some clothes on her. I chose the Morphing Fantasy Dress (MFD)  from Daz because of its versatility. It’s a very basic dress, and one can do a great deal with it by modifying textures. The MFD has been around for years, so there are tons and tons of textures available, things people have created and offered for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

 

GirlDragon1_5

This test render shows the scene lit by the firefly she’s holding in her hand. I was experimenting with some different camera angles to see if there was something more striking than the first view I’d come up with. I like this angle quite a bit, but decided the one from the side was more striking.

The dress has a fern surface applied. One of the things I like about the MFD is the availability of free textures. One can download anything from a belly dancer’s outfit to a meat dress to a princess dress and swiftly try out different looks for one’s scene. Even if one doesn’t use a particular texture, one can get a better sense of what may work.

In this case, since I was working with a fairy, I downloaded a fern fairy texture. This one was offered by a user I know only as Chohole, who has shared many, many textures with the community.

 

GirlDragonV2

Back to the original camera angle. The firefly has been replaced with a cookie, and now the scene has the moon as a backdrop. (Courtesy of the Iray Worlds SkyDome Super PAK)

Our story is beginning to come together. In the way of children since time immemorial, our fairy is offering a treat to a wild creature she wishes to befriend. Hopefully the dragon will like gingerbread!

That dress isn’t quite right, though. It was nice for previewing the fairy look. However, we’re no longer in a woodland setting. She has snowflake wings, icy white hair, and the whole scene seems quite cold. Perhaps a snowflake dress would be better?

 

GirlDragonV3

This dress texture was courtesy of a lady named Trixie, whose ShareCG profile says “I’m just a ranch lady, raising cattle … this is my hobby 3D textures”. And very nice they are, too. Thank you, Trixie!

I’ve curled the dragon’s tail around so that it curves toward the fairy. That felt more balanced, plus I didn’t like having the creature’s tail lopped off by the side of the picture.

 

DressTexture

At this point I decided I wanted to make my own texture for the dress, one which would mimic the snowflakes on the girl’s wings. Here I’ve overlaid the lace on top of a template offered by SnowSultan. If one builds the graphic in layers in Photoshop, it’s straightforward to use the template as a guide, then turn it off, flatten the file, and save the result out as a jpeg for one’s texture.

 

GirlDragonV4

Fairy with custom snowflake lace texture. I had to make several custom textures, actually. It turns out that when you’re rendering out a scene at 6300 x 5400 pixels for printing on fabric, many textures are too low resolution to look decent.

At this point I was also trying some different camera and moon positions. I do like the way we see reflected moonlight on the water in this test render.

 

GirlDragon1000

However … surprise! When I placed the moon behind the girl’s head, the composition became much stronger.

That’s one of the advantages of working on a computer and being able to save a thousand different versions. You can do some experimentation apart from whatever you may have sketched out or planned.

I have no idea how this scene ends. Will the dragon accept the cookie and become her friend or will it chomp her hand? Not all fairytales have happy endings, after all.

Speaking as the mother of a twelve year old boy, I do hope the fairy’s vaccinations are current.

This and That

March 2nd, 2017

GirlDragon1000

Tentative title: Do Dragons Like Cookies? (click image to embiggen)

This is the surface design for the newest quilt-in-progress, AKA the latest thing I’m griping about. And gripe I shall. When I stitch, those snowflake wings and the lace dress on the girl are going to give me fits unless I use what I call The Devil’s Thread: clear polyester monofilament.

 

GusherDetail

Yeah, I finally tried that stuff. I used some on Gusher, in the area with balls and cups and such. I feel like it was a devil’s bargain. Yes, I preserved the fine shading of the cups and styrofoam containers and I didn’t have to do fifty thousand thread changes. On the other hand, the texture of the thread itself is yuck, like something I’d cut out of a vacuum cleaner roller with a utility knife. It glistens. It doesn’t have the same soul as the thread I normally use. I know it’s irrational, but I’m terrified that it’s going to spring loose from the quilt and attack someone.

If I’m going to spend weeks or months hunched over a sewing machine, I want the end result to have some poetry to it, even if the quilt depicts a drowning polar bear or an automaton crapping out plastic cups. There needs to be a good reason I chose to make a quilt rather than printing the same design out on flags to sell at a roadside stand. The stitch needs to contribute to the design. Ideally it would be essential. I’m not so sure I’m accomplishing that with The Devil’s Thread.

 

GirlDragon10Wireframe

Anyhow … on to the surface design of the fabric. This is a 3D rendering. If you’ve followed my work in the past, you may be familiar with the process. Create geometry on a computer, barf some textures on it, set up fake light sources, and let the computer figure out what that might look like in real life. If you look at the wireframe, you can see that the scene is extremely simple.

This time I used some purchased assets (3D models) and posed them rather than making everything myself. The little girl is the Skyler model from Daz and the dragon is the Millennium SubDragon LE. I posed them in the Iray Worlds SkyDome.

Much like using The Devil’s Thread, using purchased models is something I wouldn’t have done once upon a time. Instead I would have laboriously spent days creating every blasted model myself, and I would have made sure that everyone around me was miserable while I did it. I also would have bragged about it afterward, and when the thing hung in a gallery, no one would have understood or cared.

Using the Daz assets was nice. I hate to admit that, because I think some of their marketing verges on pedophilia, and there are a couple of things on their site that I find obscenely racist. (Note the afro-wearing gorilla shown in one of the shots for this product. Seriously. Do we really need to go there?)

That said, sometimes it’s nice to grab a pre-made model and get on with it. Daz has a lot of models. Often they’re pretty darned cheap, especially if you consider the labor that goes into them. (Afro-wearing gorillas notwithstanding.)

 

LaceDress

Look at the lace on that dress. I thought I was being real clever when I created that texture. “Oh, it’ll match the snowflakes her wings are made out of,” I told myself, “It’ll be pretty! Visual poetry!” Yeah, it matches. It’s pretty. It’s also going to be horrible to stitch. Either I use The Devil’s Thread on it to hide mistakes or I spend the next two months hunched over it while I stitch with a magnifying glass.

Stay tuned.

 

blueHair

In other non-news, I dyed my hair blue.

Sometimes I hear people complain, and justifiably so, about becoming “invisible” after one turns a certain age. Let me tell you, when you go around with a head full of long blue (or purple or hot pink) hair, you are no longer invisible. People smile and chat with me when my hair’s blue. I get great customer service. My kid likes it. Sure, I get the occasional stinkeye and backing away reaction too, but that’s also fine. It lets me cull out the people who are superficial.

The main reason to do something like hair dying, though, is because you enjoy it. I do. I could care less about growing fingernails and half the time I don’t remember to put on makeup, but seeing blue hair when I look in the mirror cheers me up.

 

HerStory

Here are a couple of new works, celebrating the lives and hard work of Maria Goeppert-Mayer and Mary Blair. They’re slated for Susanne Miller Jones’ HerStory traveling exhibit, along with scads of works from other artists. It should be a good exhibit; the subject matter is juicy, and the other works I’ve seen have been creative and heartfelt.

I admire people who, to use a hackneyed phrase, “do things to make the world better”. It’s easy to plotz on one’s La-Z-Boy and complain, but quite another thing to conceive an idea and bring it to fruition.

Susanne’s doing just that. She’s conceived and spearheaded several exhibits on thought-provoking topics. That gives artists like me a venue to speak our minds, and it makes for provocative, interesting viewing. One of those exhibits, Fly Me to the Moon, is currently traveling the country.

 

MQU

MQU_2

The latest Machine Quilting Unlimited has a few of the works from Fly Me to the Moon. Yep, that’s my rocket in the second shot. Also, check out the articles about Betty Hahn’s work and on pictographic quilting, which are pretty darned cool.

 

OurStory

Susanne is currently accepting entries for a new exhibit, OURstory: Civil Rights Stories in Fabric. Its goal is to “tell the stories of disenfranchised people and their fights for equal rights”. This is another great topic, and very timely.

The deadline is March 8, so it’s coming up pretty quickly. Fortunately, all one has to do by that date is submit an idea, not the actual quilt, so there’s plenty of time to register.

http://www.susannemjones.com/ourstory-call-for-entries/

 

TORlogowhite500

On a related note, The Artist Circle, a group of well-known quilt artists, is accepting entries for an exhibit to “protest the Trump administration’s actions and policies”.

One only has to skim over the news to see matters of concern – climate change, fake news, education, racism, and on and on. This exhibit is an opportunity to speak out about those issues. The deadline for that is May 1.

http://threadsofresistance.blogspot.com

 

GusherTrim

This thing, Gusher, is finally stitched and faced. I need to do a little inkwork on it, but I think I can call it all but done. Not a moment too soon, either. I don’t know how many years I’ve been working on it. I could look it up, but hey, why don’t I not do that? The number is probably depressing.

The fact is, I’m not one of those gracious people who writes only sweet things or gushes about how many spools of thread they’ve used or how they were inspired by a butterfly tenderly sucking the nectar from a flower. I start projects because I believe in them. Sometimes I get tired of working on them and I finish only because of sheer cussedness. This is one of those projects.

I’ll leave you with a few gratuitous shots.

desk

My desk, or a portion of it. I also call this Still Life with Key Pad, Dust Mask, and Brain Pin.

Sometimes it’s fun to see others’ work spaces. I hadn’t realized how cluttered mine had gotten. It’s taking on a “Where’s Waldo” appearance.

 

Shoes

My twelve year old’s shoe on the left. My shoe on the right. Having your kid outgrow you is one of those rites of passage, I guess. Bittersweet. We want our kids to grow and thrive, and it’s horrid when they don’t, but it would be nice to hold the baby he once was just a few more times.

 

Endcap

Alright. This. (Another “click to embiggen” picture.)

I try to be a decent person. Hopefully I’m a better person than I was ten or twenty years ago, and that usually includes just walking by and not commenting if I see something that I think is nonsense.

I’m going to make an exception this time, though. This was an end cap at one of the local Michaels. It’s for “customizing” slime. Not making slime – there’s school glue, which is an ingredient for making slime, but no borax and no instructions, so I guess we aren’t actually MAKING anything, are we? We’re just taking glitter and plastic crap and mooching it inside a viscous polymer blob so we can, I don’t know, have it fall on the floor, get dirty, and throw it away?

I have clearly outlived my usefulness on this Earth.