Koi Study

My Koi study was created in May 07 for a show with the Artist Mothers Group (artistmothersgroup.com). It consists of 3 pieces: a watercolor, a wool illustration, and a mosaic of the same image.

I began the project with a light pencil drawing of the koi to be used as the watercolor in the series.

Now on to the wool... The supplies needed for this were my FiberGarden friend's drum carder (named Leonard), silk gauze, a frame, foam, felting needles and many natural colors of wool again my pal at FiberGarden/ahandmadegift.com and partner in all things wooley help me out with the colors since she has enough wool to insulate her house. I began the by laying a peice silk gauze over the wooden canvas stretcher and tacking it to the frame. Then I put the frame over the peice of foam. Next I carded a batt of light gray merino wool and loosely placed the batt over the silk. I used a charcoal pencil to create kind of a carbon print on the back of my trace of the original pencil drawing and transfered it to the flat light gray batt. This process only slightly left the image and dimensions behind and everything was worked in.

With my needles I began layering the colors onto the the peice as you would while painting. Felting needles are very fine sharp needles with barbs on the outside that grab the wool fiber and force it through the material as you work so you are literally working with each fiber.

When the peice was finished I trimmed the edges to the right size. The peice was mounted using Super 77 and framed.

The mosaic was a labor of love late into the nights before the show. I started with plywood board cut to size. To speed the process of glueing the glass and rock on to the board I used a hot glue gun. Many peices were cut with snippers but some need my trusty wet saw's help. The tiled peice was then carefully grouted and cleaned. To frame it, I mounted copper to the outside edge and screwed the mosaic to the back board of the frame.