SATURDAY POST: Studio Conquered and other Matters

Genevieve again--so word from ANG is that things went wonderfully! Orna is trekking back and should be home this weekend at some point. In the meantime, I did some serious tidying!!

During my cleaning and sifting, I found a bunch of Orna's thoughts on canvas---I would like to call them Doodles in Silk. I think it's interesting to show an artist's process. Sometimes when we see beautiful art, we don't understand where it comes from. We think it just IS. Even with needlepoint, with it's counted squares and detailed precision---the idea that it comes from a place of complete experimentation seems foreign and uncomfortable. However, as with all art, the first stages--- of playing with color and material and design to see what could happen--- are the most important. And so I give you--Orna's Process:

Not too glamorous, to be sure, but there is evidence of real Creative Problem Solving here.  This grey windmill was gone over a few times---various combinations were tried and pulled out. The Result?

Voila! 

Now that IS glamorous!! More refined, the shape altered make it more elegant. Below left, we have a taste of the early stages of Square Dance. Clearly, the idea that remained was working with multiple tiny squares.  But you can see how much more complicated it became as a finished product.

And then there was this little morsel of a thought I found tucked away in some dark corner of a drawer:

You can see how that one little droplet shape traveled from the center out to the edges and multipled--it started as the green focal point, but ended as yellow and gold border. 

The studio is filled with ideas like these--a sketchbook of thoughts in thread. I hope that seeing the experimentation that goes into these very precise and complicated designs will give you all a little inspiration to think outside the box--errrr---boxes of your canvases and try something new!!

That's it for today--Orna will be back next week--we have giveaways, demos and a new series coming up during the next few months, so keep checking back!