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Friday 3 June 2016

DOTTY ABOUT KLEE







  Ad Parnassum is one of my favourite paintings, so I had no difficulty making my choice. The more I looked at the painting, the more complex it seemed. What I find fascinating is the layering, first the coloured squares, then the white dots, followed by a second layer of diluted colour over the dots. I wanted to try to give an impression of complex layers of colour and  I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to approach it. I decided to overlay my fabric scraps with a sheer fabric and then add dots with  white markal which were then overstitched with stranded cotton. I was not sure whether it would work and found it difficult working out what colours of thread to put where as I could not see the overall picture until it was finished. The stitching shrank the piece rather more than I had anticipated and when it was finished it was less than 15 inches square. However I am going to solve this problem by mounting it on a sqaure of black felt (I do not have any at the moment so a square of ordinary black fabric has had to be a stand in in the photograph!). I actually prefer it with the black 'frame' as it makes it stand out and finishes it off better.



11 comments:

  1. I can appreciate your dilemma of trying to do an overlay. I wonder how he actually executed that piece! Your black lines are just right - thin is good.

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  2. Lovely piece, and I can see why you had to wait until your eyes were better before finishing it. I assume all the dots are hand stitched, and they are so wonderfully neat. I too had problems with shrinkage, I ended up having to include more areas around the main section just to get the required size. I agree with Dianne, your black lines look just right.

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  3. A sophisticated interpretation of his piece, Jinnie. I take my hat off to you for all the thought and time you spent on the piece. No wonder it hurt your eyes! But, you have carried it off. Love those two black lines.

    Hilary

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  4. Yes, I was definitely seeing spots before my eyes! I think that the dots would have been better closer together, but I don't think I could have coped with that, not to mention that it took me ages as it was.

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    1. Interesting how many of us were tempted or influenced by this one picture. I was immediately drawn to it because of the dots and my wonderful little dot-making tool from South Africa. I had thought of creating my own image based on a 'picture' of a house and arch, etc, adding the coloured background patches and then the dots - with paint. It did occur to me that the marks on Klee's painting were not dots and maybe that and that I would have to add the second layer of coloured dots, probably put me off.

      I did also seriously think of making a pojagi quilt based on Klee's 'Flora on the Sand' painting but haven't done any pojagi yet so that would have involved learning something from scratch. I probably made the right choice. But the sheers would have given just the right transparency and luminescence I think.

      Hilary

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  5. Wow! Jinnie, you must be so pleased with this piece. It's an accomplished reflection of the original painting, with its palette, its patchwork background, its veiling with the white specks, and the use of the black line to indicate a "subject". PLUS it stands alone as a successful work in itself. Well done!

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  6. Great job! Very Klee-like with your own touch. Love the black lines.

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  7. I wondered how this piece could be interpreted when I first viewed Klee's work and am amazed at how well you did this . It gives the exact 'feel' of the original which is a great achievement ,considering the complexity of the painting.R

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  8. You can see how much thought you gave to the piece so well done on executing it so successfully. Working with sheers can be tricky and everything you have done has worked so well and it came together beautifully. A really good interpretation of, in my opinion, was a very difficult piece to interpret successfully, so well done on your achievement.

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  9. As Heather said, this piece is successful in it's own right. Whilst closer dots may have been closer ot the original, your version has definitely made it your own. Hats off to you - an excellent interpretation!

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