Girl With a Pearl Earring

Another project inspired by a Craftsy.com class (Lola Jenkins)...this one is my take on the Girl With a Pearl Earring:

 

 

For those of you who don't already know, this a variation of what is often considered to be Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece painting:

 

 

 

 

Yeah, yeah, also a book and a movie. I know.

 

This is another piece, much like the Flowering Desert, that represents a turning point in my fabrical creations. In this one, I learned how to use colored pencils on fabric, which is honestly something I never would have thought would work. I would say that this piece is the one that I most enjoyed doing...using the pencils to blend color more precisely than I could with paint was hugely rewarding.

 

The class taught me a bit about the importance of shading. I am not an art student, so this obvious bit of info was something I needed to learn. When you work on a piece, you're so close up to it that you forget, well, I forget, that consideration needs to be given for what it looks like from a distance as well. The shading causes a much more vibrant piece; much more depth. The veteran artists reading this will say, "Well, DUH," but talent for me was not downloaded Matrix-style into my head...I had to actually learn these things. ;^)

 

"I know kung-fu...er, art stuff!" 

 

As you can see in the picture below, the smallest bit of shadow under her cap, eye lids and cheek bones added much needed dimension. Within the lips and eyes, I added layers of colors and lines that are hard to detect from a distance, but wonderful detail to see when you're looking closely. Another cool trick learned from Lola Jenkins is to use a White Out Pen or Liquid Paper Correction Pen to make white dots on the eye. For such a little thing, it makes a huge difference on the piece. Another thing I did was to use a Pigma Micron 05 Pen to accentuate the black thread lines. After you use the colored pencils, the black can get washed out a bit and the pen helps it pop again.

 

 

 

For once, I remembered to take pics of the progress. I have a tendency to become so immersed in my project that I forget to do things like this, and I really need to get on that because it's fun to go back and see how it developed.

 

I started with the line drawing in thread, using free motion quilting. The face came next. I did the face first because it was the most difficult and I prefer to make my mistakes early on before too much work has been done (if possible). If only I followed that rule in life as well.

 

 

Next came the coloring of the cap, which was FUN! I use Prismacolor Pencils and the shades are wonderfully vibrant and rich. Perfect for blending. It would have been near impossible to screw this part up, as it's pretty easy to blend mistakes away or simply color over them. 

 

 

 

I used a lot of shading and color in the robe as well, although it's difficult to see in this picture. Just small bits of color that you can see when you're close up. I decided to make her robe in the gray scale to draw more attention to everything above the neck. (For the record, that doesn't seem to work quite as well when I wear grey shirts: The bittersweet aspect of weight gain is big boobs.)

  

Once the girl was done, I sat around mentally wringing my hands over what to do with the empty space of the background. Had I used a more interesting fabric, I suppose it could have stood on its own, but as it was, it bored me.

 

Despite the work that went into this Girl, it was really supposed to be a learning piece. So I ultimately decided that's what it would remain, and I got funky with some more free motion quilting. First came the straight lines as shown above. They weren't enough. So I just had to go and get nutty:

 



 

I don't have a name for the circular design I wound up adding in. My father said they looked like oysters, so I guess that's as good of a name as any. After the quilting was done, I posted some pics on Facebook to see what people thought about the background. The response was 50/50, so no help there. But what was done was done and I hung it on the wall. After sitting with it for a few months, I've decided that I like it.

 

Here's the finished product: