Crochet in Art

 I Love Crochet

I Love Photographing Things I Love  

I Love Digital Artwork 

Put these things all together and what do you get? 

Art made with crochet, photography and digital manipulation

Crochet swatches to measure tension

I started  off making some swatches to work out the gauge or tension of my work. If you crochet a square with 20 stitches and 10 rows, the finished size of this will depend on

1. the thickness of your yarn
2. the thickness of your crochet hook
3. if you crochet loosely or tightly 
4. the weather - whether it is hot or cold
5. the type of yarn you are using - whether it is smooth or textured

I took a few photos and the next one caught my eye a couple of weeks later. 

Mmm, I thought, I think I can do something with that.

Crochet photograph used to digitally make a new work of art

The program I use to do artwork with my photos is Picmonkey. There is a free version as well as a paid version. I used the free version. Here's the link http://www.picmonkey.com/

My image at the top of this post -'The Crochet Network' - is made with the photo above and digitally manipulated in Picmonkey.  

Do you join your different skills together?
I'd love to see some photos of your work. 

Here is a link to an article about crocheted beanies 
and another about art and using it digitally.  

Enjoy! 

Follow me on instagram for more crochet photos @tossyv

Art on Instagram

Lately I have been having lots of fun displaying some of my art on Instagram. I find it is seen by a lot of different people. Whenever I upload a painting, people show their appreciation more so than for other subjects. Interesting. 

This tells me that people appreciate art.

Watercolour Rose

I guess that somewhere in their inner self they appreciate the creative skill.

A collection of watercolour paintings

The next step to show the artist your appreciation is to purchase paintings that you like. This helps the artist enormously by showing them they are appreciated in a physical way. It allows them to buy more art materials and create something else. 

Instagram
Instagram is a great way to see a lot of an artists creative pieces. 
Please check out more of my paintings @tossyv

Colour
Colour speaks to the soul. Colour and the subject matter of a painting speaks to individuals. People's like and dislikes are specific. This is why a painting can speak to one person and have no effect on another. 

Using Instagram can help you decide which colours and subject matter you prefer. It is an interesting exercise to g
flick through an artist's paintings, then those of another until you find the style that suits you.   

Vintage Renault car

 Art by Therese Vahland.

Start Painting Folk Art

Do you long to paint but think you can't? I understand the feeling because once that was me too. Now I delight in having a paintbrush in my hand.

All my life I had been crafty, doing lots of knitting, sewing and crocheting, plus lots of other crafts. As a child I loved to paint.  Each Christmas and birthday I hoped for a new set of paints. 

Time passes. I spent it having children, doing gardening, and raising lots of animals like goats, donkeys, sheep and smaller livestock like rabbits, chickens, ducks and geese.

When the time was right I took my first 'grown-up' painting class. The style I opted for was just making its first tippy-toe steps into Australia in 1989. Well, the first class came and went and I eagerly looked forward to the next week, then the next. I had withdrawal symptoms when I was not there and wanted to learn more and more.

By the next year I was teaching this new, simple way of painting to a class of eager students in a smaller country town. They were just as eager as I was. 

My life was changed by 

a paintbrush and paint. 

I discovered a love of colour. Colour meant nothing to my mother. She always said it didn't matter. She grew up in a different era where there was no room to be choosey. To me, colour was and still is, VERY important. 

For years I taught many classes a week to eager students who stimulated me to learn more. I longed to write a book to help others learn to paint - people who could not get to my classes. Eventually it became a reality.

'Getting started in Bavarian Folk Art' by Therese Vahland

A second book followed.

'Companion to Getting started in Bavarian Folk Art' by Therese Vahland

Painting, paint and all its paraphernalia took over my life. Over the years my painting style improved and changed. I began to experiment. First I used acrylic paints as watercolours, then I used watercolour paints themselves. Well, all my dreams came true when I used watercolour paints. Here was colour that dould be reworked - just add a little water. Acrylics give vivid colour and dry quickly, but once they are dry, they cannot be reworked. There are benefits to both types of paints. Now I move between the two as the mood takes me and depending on what the subject matter is. 

Come join me in my love of painting the simple style of folk art. The beauty of folk art is that you are guided through every step along the way. It is perfect for beginners. You do not need to know how to draw or paint to begin this. My books walk you through every step of the way.

You can find more information about the books on my webpage. 

Join me on Istagram to see some of my colourful work. Don't get a shock now. 

Remember, I love colour. 

@tossyv

Painting with Pastel Colours by Therese Vahland

I enjoy painting all sorts of subjects and on all sorts of surfaces, from regular canvases, watercolour paper, wood and tin, furniture and even walls. I have also decorated different flower pots from plastic or ceramic. The more variety the better.

Shades, Colours, Tints

I also like to vary the density of colour used in my paintings. Sometimes I will use pastels shades and other times, very bright colours with lots of vivid colour. 

Pastel Paintings 

These paintings have an 'old world' effect and so are done in pastels.

On wood

On watercolour paper

 Beautiful Australian cockatoos have some more depth of colour for the Australian bush. The white cockatoos stand out from the darker green, giving an overall pastel effect, although the green was quite dark.

 

Australian cockatoos on watercolour paper

Vintage teacup on watercolour paper

This vintage teacup is also on watercolor paper. This has a pastel effect because of the central cup and doiley. However the dark brown gives a depth of colour. This dark colour makes the white stand out. 
Think of using dark and light together, even if you painting has a painting mainly with pastel colours. 

For lots of bright colour, follow me on Instagram @tossyv or on Twitter @Tossyv 

The most important thing to do is pick up your paintbrush and start painting!

The Magic of Colour

An Angel in Byzantine art

Colour is Magic

Today we are surrounded by colour, all the colours of the rainbow and all tints and shades of these colours. Primary colours of red, blue and yellow, as well as secondary colours of purple, green and orange are available to us. 

Artists use these colours with joy. I love making my paintings very bright. Others use pastel colours, and still others delete colour and go for black and white. It saddens me that architectural colours for modern houses are charcoal grey. For decades, the insides of houses have been painted cream, but the current colour in Australia is a grey. I find it so boring and lacking in feeling.

The Beginning of Red, Blue and Purple

About 3000 years ago it was not so easy to get colours. People used natural colours of the earth or those they could get from plants or ground rock. 

Only royalty or the very rich were able to use the colours of red, blue or purple because of the expense and difficulty of making the dyes. 

In the book 'Secrets of the Knights Templar, the hidden history of the world's most powerful order' by SJ Hodge, he explains how these colours were made:

'The dyes used in the veil in the Temple (of Solomon) were red, blue and purple. The red was extracted from the blood of beetles and the blue and purple dyes were extracted from sea snails. The dye is believed to have originally have been produced by the ancient Phoenicians (the Phoenicians were a race who lived at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and who became an important society between 900 and 700BCE)

The red, blue and purple dyes were highly valued and Tyrian purple in particular was prized as it did not fade but grew more intense over time, even if exposed to sunlight. Extracted from the glands of particular sea snails that are found in the eastern Mediterranean, it was extremely costly to produce. This meant that few 'ordinary'
people had seen such colours on fabrics, so when they were used in Solomon's temple they were talked about with wonder, as if they were substances acquired by magic or from God.'

(Tyre was an ancient city in Lebanon on the Mediterranean coast.)

Modern Colours

 We are so lucky today that all colours are readily available to us. Fifty years ago, silver and gold were not readily available in paints or pens. Today the new inks have made pens of silver, gold and copper colours available. They are also readily accessible in acrylic paints. 

Irridescent colours adorn birds and beetles. We can add irridescence to our paintings made with acrylics. Paints, pencils, colour and availablity have changes the artworld so that our children and grandchildren cannot even imagine a time without 

RED

BLUE 

&

PURPLE

Practice your Painting

If you want to be a good painter, you must PRACTICE.

It really doesn't matter if it turns out good or bad. It will never get any better until you do it. 

This is the same for anything, whether it is

• being a good cook
• riding a horse or
• playing tennis

Just practice. 

Here's my practice for the day. Without practicing painting you cannot experiment. You often learn wonderful things when you experiment with a paintbrush and paint. 

With this simple oval piece of wood I used a few methods. 

Background  

Painted in black. Dry.

Background Decoration

Painted in blotches of red, green and yellow, all bright colours. I mixed flow medium with the paint and put the paint on fairly thickly. 

Over the top of that I placed a piece of plastic wrap. Yes, the wrap did stick to the paint and it did take some of the paint off. That's why I put it on thickly and kept it moist.  

This left a more muted background. Dry.

Flower

Draw on a simple daisy. Remember, this is only for practice. Paint the petals of the flower white. Let dry they paint again, still white. 

Leaves and Stem 

Paint in a mid green. Dry. 

Drying your Painting

Never put a second layer of paint over a layer of wet paint as the second coat will lift the first coat. Acrylic paint doesn't take long to dry. While one area is drying, paint a different area.

Using paynes grey, add flow medium to it. You only need a teensy bit of each. add shading to the white petals. Let dry and deepen again. 

Decorating  Leaves and Stems

Add commas in a creamy green to the leaves. Touch up the atems with rich gold. Then add shading of paynes grey to the stems again. 

Edging

Add a gold edge to your painting. Mix flow medium to your paint to make it spread more easily.  

Putting the Final Touch to your Painting

Using rich gold mixed with flow medium and a flat brush about 1cm or 1/2 inch, make criss cross patterns all over. Let dry.

Give 2 or 3 coats of varnish to your liking and enjoy.

Painting for sale - by Therese Vahland 

Please contact

Little Missy Duck Painting in Pen and Wash

Pen and wash painting is just SO easy. You can use either your watercolor or acrylic paints. Whichever you use, your paints will last forever. 

Benefits of Pen and Wash Painting

There are two main benefits here. 
If you happen to be allergic to chemicals, even the ingredients in watercolor paints or acrylic paints, and you experience a great urge to use your creative talents, you will be exposed to far less chemicals when using this method of painting. Sometimes you only need to touch the tip of your damp brush into the tube of paint. This is then mixed with water and goes a LONG way. 

If you don't have much money and a tube of paint is like gold to you, then this is a very economical way to use your creativity. A little paint goes such a long way.

Little Missy Duck painted in Pen and Wash Acrylic paint

Method

• Lightly draw your design with black lead pencil onto your watercolor paper. Watercolor paper comes in different thicknesses. To start with use 210gsm paper. You will not have to stretch it. If you use 180gsm you will need to stretch it. That makes it more complicated to prepare. 
• Wet the area you want to paint with clean water. 
• Add a touch of paint to the area and watch it spread through the water. Paint another section while that one is drying. Paint each area until you are happy with your design. Let dry.
• Take a fine point permanent pen and outline your painting. Make some of the lines broken or made of dots for added effect.
• Sign it then frame.

Remember

When painting different areas of your painting, do not paint adjacent areas at the same time unless you want them to blend. Paint areas that are not touching to keep the paint in the area you want. 

For sale

Little Missy Duck
Size 7 1/2 inches x 5 1/4 inches
13.3 cm x 19 cm

Other articles you may be interested in

• Tole Painting

• Extend Your Artistic Talent with Folk Art and Painting

• Printmaking on a Gelatin Plate by Therese Vahland

 

Extend Your Artistic Talent with Folk Art and Painting

Folk Art, Tole Painting

This method of painting is a great method to learn when you want to paint but don't think you can. In Folk Art Painting or Tole Painting students are helped little by little to learn to paint. It is the basics of painting. You learn

• how to hold your brush
• which paint to use
• which colours go together
• background colours
• design
• control of the brush

Folk art flowers, also called Tole painting or Decorative painting

When a student becomes proficient they can progress to more complicated pieces. 

An array of painted folk art or Tole items

Bavarian folk art painting originated in the country villages of Europe. Painters would go from village to village decorating houses and furniture for the poorer people. The designs were very simple. 

Here are some simple designs I painted to decorate my chicken shed.

Hen and Rooster on wooden plaque

Eggs on a wooden plaque

 

Watercolour Painting

When a painter feels ready for more adventure they can try watercolour paints. Subject matter is vast. Painters can paint simple things at first then move onto more complicated studies. 

Watercolour painting on paper

Computer Programs and Art

Another thing I like to do is combine my paintings with the use of computer programs. www.picmonkey.com is a useful, simple program to use. 

Four separates paintings combines digitally

Printmaking

If you really get the artistic bug you can try some printmaking. This is a different form of art that you do not use a paintbrush to make. It can be made from lino, stamping, using copper or aluminium plates, solar plates or plates made from gelatine.

Printmaking on a gelatine plate

Computational Art

Prints can be enhanced with computer programs. Save your print to your computer then enhance it with a computer program, for example Photoshop, GIMP or Picmonkey.

 Using the computer you overlay one print over another and frame it digitally.

Overlay and frame your print

 So you can see there are plenty of ways to extend your skills and you pick up a paintbrush for the first time. 
Enjoy

Printmaking and Chickens

Who would have thought that Printmaking and Chickens would meet?
I love my hens. They are a great source of joy for me. There is always something going on in my garden when the hens and chickens are out foraging.

I love taking photographs of them. Can you see the little chicken hiding at the back of it's mum?

Some of these photographs get turned into pieces art.

Some get turned into prints. At the moment I enjoy making gelatin monotype prints. These original hand-pulled prints can then be used in Computational Art.

The prints are scanned into a computer. There they are often layered one on top of the other. This makes a nice combined print and can add new hints of colour and shape.

From here they are put into various computer programs to highlight and intensify colours. The resulting prints have more interest with subtleties hidden here and there.

Enjoy.

Other articles you may be interested in:

Painting and Printmaking

Printmaking and Computational Art, byTherese Vahland

Gelatin Prints by Therese Vahland

This video shows a few of my prints.  It is a different way to show them. They are all made on a gelatin plate. 

For more of my prints have a look at some previous posts on this blog. 

If you click on Art in Labels over on the right hand side, all my art posts will come up

Chat soon,

Thérèse

Gelatin Print & Computational Art: Therese Vahland

Monoprints

A monoprint or monotype is a one of a kind print. It cannot be reproduced exactly the same. With printing on a gelatin plate, you cannot reproduce the background exactly the same. If a print is over printed with another design, it will not come out the same. The ink or paint varies. Therefore it is called 'mono' meaning 'one'.

Monoprints can be drawn on to enhance their design. They can have another design overprinted on the first design, perhaps introducing new colours, subtleties or designs. A ghost print can be used for the second printing. 

Here is an example of a first print:

This is the same print as a ghost print:

I prefer the ghost print of a gelatin plate. The heavy colour is gone but the marks and whisps of colour make it so interesting. 

Computational Art

Compurtational art uses digital means to manipulate the the print. Both prints need to be scanned into the computer. Then using a computer program one print is overlayed over the other to give a further ghost-like appearance.

This print then needs to be printed by a computer printer onto photo quality paper or onto canvas that can be put through the printer.

When combining prints this way you have the luxury of being able to try out different prints until you get one you are happy with. You can move the top print around and flip it until it complements the base print.

Further, you can add colour to introduce more interest:

Try this out and let me know how you go.

Other posts about printing you may be interested in:

   Printmaking ideas by Therese Vahland

Printmaking and Computational Art, byTherese Vahland

 Art Work

Printmaking has been a favourite art for me ever since I did my first silk screen artwork way back in Teacher's College. Since then I have explored many form of art including pottery, sculpture in both limestone and clay, painting and drawing. I especially like Life Drawing. 

Different forms of Printmaking

In printmaking I have explored collographs, chin colle, solar prints (I really like these), woodcuts, linocuts, copper plate etching, dry point etching and gelatine plate plus a few more forms. 

Gelatin Plate Printing

At the moment I am experimenting with gelatin plates. With some of these I also manipulate them using Computational Art. This is with the use of a computer where colours and design can be manipulated and some prints overlaying another, printed, perhaps hand marked and printed again.

Computational Art and Printmaking

 

All Prints for sale

Printmaking on Gelatin Plate by Therese Vahland

Printmaking  has been ane of my loves for over forty years. I have been making a lot of monotype gelatin prints lately. 

Here are some of the prints I have done.

Here is a great video by Linda Germain to show you some of her prints.

Printmaking on a Gelatin Plate by Therese Vahland

I have been using my gelatin printing plate for a few weeks now. Often the plates don't last very well. Mine has done well over 150 prints. When the plate starts to break down, I remelt it and pour it again. This way it is good for another 30 to 50 prints. 

 

When making my plate I used distilled water so that no bacteria would be present in the water. This helps to keep mould at bay. My other secret ingredient also helps to purify the plate. 

 

Hereis a sample of some of my prints:

 

 

 

Printing on gelatin plates is easy and fun. This video shows a more sophisticated way of making a print look like a painting. It is for those with more experience. 

 

Why don't you try some?

Altered box & TP Steampunk Desk Organizer

If you are crafty at all then here's a great way to recycle things you would normally discard and make something useful with it.

Enjoy

Tole Painting

Give me a paintbrush, some paint and something to paint on, and I am happy. 
I like simple, uncomplicated painting and this is what has drawn me to Tole painting. Tole painting is known in Australia as Folk Art painting and sometimes as Decorative painting. What's in a name? They are all beautiful painting.

I found that tole painting is a great way to teach people to paint. very often people love the finished product but have no idea how to get to that point. Because tole or folk art painting is so simple, or naive, people who have never painted or drawn before are happy to learn this type of painting. 

Once they learn the basics, they often take off into other styles of painting. 

Tole painting is made up of lots of little strokes. As you learn these, you learn very good control of your brush and how to manipulate the paint.

The Power of Red

Red Energy

Red is a very powerful colour. It has the lowest vibration in the visible colour spectrum of light. When you look at a coloured picture or painting, the first colour our eyes pick up is the colour red. 

Artist's Red

There are three primary colours from which all other colours can be made from. These are 

• red
• blue
• yellow

Secondary colours which are made from a mixture of these colours are

• red + blue = purple
  blue + yellow = green
  yellow + red = orange

Complementary colours are opposites on the colour wheel. The opposite of red is green. So when you put red and green together, they sparkle and they make each other stand out. 
  

Advertising

Red is used as an advertising colour to make things jump out at you. Think McDonald's fast food chain. Red gets you moving through quickly. 

Red attracts, but you don't want to hang around it very long.

GrumbleTumms food van

 Energy

If you are feeling down and tired, put on some red clothes. This will cheer you up and get you energized. 

When little children get agitated and irritable, if they have red clothing on, change it to blue and it will help them to calm down. 

Red in the Garden

Red flowers are very strong. Red hibiscus and red roses will grow very well in hot sunshine. Other red flowers are nasturtiums, dahlias and poppies, tulips and salvias. They bring strong colour into a garden. Generally, bees are not as attracted to red flowers. So, it you are allergic to bee stings, add some red flowers into your garden. 

Chakras

Chakras are energy centres of the body. There are 7 main energy centres and numerous minor centres. Each of these main energy centres are assigned one of the seven colours of the rainbow. The Base chakra is located at the base of the spine inside the body. The colour associated with this is red. 

Red Crystals

Red crystals are used on the red Base chakra for healing. These red crystals are a reddish brown to black colour. They are red jasper, red calcite, garnet and ruby. They balance the energy of the ares and help the blood inside our body.

Red Food

Red food is important for our body. The bright red colour has special nutrients which help us to stay healthy. Some of these foods are tomatoes, red peppers, red capsicum, beetroot, strawberries, raspberries, apples, rhubarb and cherries. 

 Graphics and designs by Therese Vahland