Thursday, January 28, 2010

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Originally uploaded by ddhabicht
We lost our Internet today, it reminds me how dependent we are. It
provides us access to the world via email, blogs, facebook. I worked
on an incredibly detailed pastel today from a picture posted on wet
canvas last Friday. I hope this posts!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

My book arrived


I received my copy of the 500 quilts book that I have two quilts in, wow , I am in such wonderful company. Some beautiful quilts in this book, I am so honored, I hope you will all buy one so you can be inspired as I was! There is a link on the right side of my blog that will take you to the Barnes and Noble link. Thank you Lark Books for all your hard work in putting this book together

New work


I am working on a new art quilt, it is by invitation only so that adds to the pressure to perform. The theme is a secret so sorry, can't share, but have been struggling with it. I usually get a theme and think about it for awhile and then "POOF" something comes to me and I start designing and construction or painting, depending on what I am doing. But this time I think and think but nothing.... until the other day. I did a self portrait two years ago I thought would work. It is more of a portrait of how I was feeling about my life. I haven't shared it outside of the group of people who were doing the challenge at that time. ( See of this happens to you) So as I am looking for this portrait, digging through tons of sketchbooks, loose paper, drawers, closets, even under beds and I can't find it! AHHH as I am skimming through one large sketch book I find this other sketch I did in a life drawing class that I have always loved, she has this eery look on her face. When I see the picture I always wonder what she might be thinking or what was going on in her life that gives her that far away look. I remember the model and she was good, but she looked nothing like this picture. So I often wonder if it was her I was drawing or was I drawing myself as I applied that charcoal to the paper. Another cool thing that happened was that it left a soft, faint impression on the opposite page of the sketchbook. A mirror image, a ghost of the original looking back at herself, even creepier!! Now I am figuring out how to translate her and my ideas to fabric. Here is my sketch.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sub-Q Quilt entry


I belong to an art quilting group called subterranian quilters, or Sub-Q. It is a group of talented art quilters. Sadly we lost our founder suddenly last March. The group was unsure about staying together after Sally's death. This quilt was our first group project after we decided to keep going to honor her vision for the group. We dedicated the quilt to her.
The project was to recreate a section from a photo. I had a picture of orchids and I divided it up into 6 sections and changed it to black and white or grey scale. Everyone who wanted to participate took a section and enlarged it 400%. Their challenge was to put the color back into the quilt and recreate the picture using any techniques they wanted to. The group used so many different techniques it was amazing. And I love the colors that everyone choose, no one saw the original, color photo until all the pieces were finished. The participants were Nancy M., Kay D, Phyllis C, Me, Ann T., Carol C. Thanks for all of your hard work!


This is Phyllis at the show and this is Phyllis' picture, standing in front of the quilt. Her piece is number three. She used inks and paints along with some applique.


My piece is the one next to, and after hers or fourth from the left. I used saved, used paper towels and did like a collage of them to make the flowers and the leaves. I had to put my sewing machine on suede to get it to sew through the thickness. I also used tissue paper and paints and acrylic inks.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Prayers for the people of Haiti

I have been so heartbroken from the reports coming out of Haiti. The insurmountable obstacle that these people face as they attempt to rescue and help those still trapped in fallen debris is shocking. Where are the emergency people, ambulances, heavy equipment to help? There isn't any, just neighbors helping neighbors. People dying everywhere because they weren't rescued in time. I always picture myself , or my family, in that position since it could easily be us. Now our relief is stalled due to the airport damage and the countries lack of experience in coordinating such a huge effort, I can only imagine the frustration on that end of the disaster. With all the talk of our struggling economy and all the people here loosing their homes, people are still opening their hearts and sending money to relief centers, neighbors helping neighbors.

Its amazing how this will bring out the best and the worst in people. Now they are warning us to beware of relief scams, another unbelievable thing, when people take advantage of the tragedy of others. We need to be smart when donating to any organization. ABC News has a list of organizations, and that site also links to this list of responding organizations. Making a mark, an art blog site is sharing some different options for donating to the cause, like donating artwork for an online auction. The blog has a lot of information that I wanted to share with everyone. The blog shares links to the Red Cross, doctors without borders etc., well know organizations that are some of the first responders at the scene.

I hope you will join me as I donate what I can and then I will be praying, praying, praying and watching

Friday, January 15, 2010

Day Two of abstract design class with Katie Paquini


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Originally uploaded by ddhabicht




Day Two of abstract design class with Katie Pasquini
Today we got back our blown up versions of the tiny macro drawing we did the day before with our tiny view finders. My eyes feeling like sandpaper still struggled with all the drawing we did today, but I think today went much better. We moved into more of the designing aspect of art quilting and how to crop paintings to get many good possibilities for quilts. We went over many different aspects of how to approach getting a good design also. Many of the women were just loving the class and I know some were a bit surprised by it. I think that most of the women were excited in some of the possibilities for quilts that they produced painting! I think I would have liked to take something home, some small project, instead I have lots of cut up paintings, which I may or may not use. It made me think about watercolor paintings I have at the house that were unsuccessful, now I will cut them up and re look at them for quilts. I loved the frame that we cut in half and could slide up or down to adjust the size of our crop. Its an old trick I had totally forgotten about. I think that most of our time was spent helping people get comfortable with painting and creating. I am already there, so hoped for more design input. It was a ton of information and exercises to do in two days. One of the women in class was so excited about her design that during lunch she went down and bought all the fabric to make it! That's what a class is supposed to do, inspire us. I do love her work, I appreciate her strict work ethic and the amazingly beautiful quilts she produces, its a testimony to her methods. I learn something new and exciting in every class I take and I did take some new ideas away with me from this class too. I think the possibilities for some very unique quilt options my be in my bag of cut up paintings. Thanks Marilyn for reminding me that sometimes we just need time to digest the information and make it our own before we can put it to use! Thanks Katie! She even signed my books.

After two intense days a few of us signed up for the pincushion class! It was from 7pm to 10pm! I don't know what I was thinking, probably that a fun class would be a perfect finish to all that design. I forgot the fact that we might just be plum tired! We ran over to the hotel to shove a hamburger in our faces before running back to make our class. Oh did I mention that we ran through the quilt show, tried to quickly shop, see the quilts we had entered before eating? We made it to class right at 7 and saw that it was a very full class. We all found our seats and were pleasantly surprised by what the next three hours held. The class was called Pin cushion Party, and it was! Debbie Busby, the owner of the wooden spool in Oregon taught the class and had made up the cutest bags of already cut and in some cases sewn pincushions for us to sew. We received thread, buttons, felt, wool, stuffing, bags, etc, etc. The gifts kept coming and she did a drawing for a free pattern. Although it was a bit expensive I loved it. I think because it was fun, it was easy, it was doable in the three hours and we all left with 5, yes 5, pincushions. I finished 3 of them there, started the fourth and took home number 5. Plus we got all the patterns to make more. Thanks Debbie for making it a great evening, and my eyes could handle this!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Design wall


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Originally uploaded by ddhabicht

I am taking an artquilt class from Katie Pasquini. Today we worked on design with shapes and lines and in the abstract. I am not really an abstract artist so this took me way out of my box, a good thing, or should be according to my own mantra. I did find it a bit uncomfortable as we attempted to design and create within a set of guidelines set up by the teacher! LOL I have never had creative rules before, its always been a fairly casual environment with lots of chatting. In this class she doesn't want any talking during the designing process. You need to be focused and in your Right brain area, she doesn't even want us talking to ourselves, lest we disturb our neighbors. LOL that gave me stress in its self since I am a notorious self talker. She says its the left side of our brain trying to ruin the creative process or right side of the brain. She doesn't know that I am taking to myself as a cheerleader, often saying things like, oh that looks good! Oh put the blue over there, yeah thats good. So several times I had to shhh myself in class. The first exercise was design with shapes, this is a photo of the classes paintings displayed for all the see what they like and what they don't like. Then we did a series with line only, no shape. Then we worked on some macro type designs that she is enlarging and we should get back today. After not sleeping the night before, not eating all day and coming off of a week of solid painting for my fabic line I didn't find the painting fun. Most of the women in the class had not painted much so it was alot of basic instructions on putting water on the paint to get it soft to use etc. I think that everyone enjoyed the painting part, it was a good basic, beginner painting class and I think for a nonpainter it helped them ease into the process. Then one exercise was to blind fold us and listen to different musics and paint to the music. Hmmm, I was for sure this was a recipe for disaster since we had a plate full of acrylic paint, a sheet of paper in front of us and then a blindfold on. Yawn! What a waste of paint! I ended up with a ton left on my plate I had to throw away. It was rated an intermediate class but it is a basics class. I am hoping for more information into the design part today, we will see! Anyway, its probably my bad attitude from no sleep. As we were drawing those tiny drawings, and I mean tiny, 1 1/2" x 1 " squares my eyes kept trying to roll back in my head, screaming for me to stop. I had forgotten my OTT light so the flourescent flickering wasn't helping either. I am taking a sleeping pill tonight, going to bed at 9 and trying to start again in the morning,although this is being written at around 4am, my stress hour. My husband said, hey what happened to the sleeping pill? I guess when going to bed that early I need to take a whole sleeping pill. More photos later.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Getting Ready for Road

I am getting all of my supplies packed up and ready to go to Road to California. Its a big quilt show and I not only have some quilts hanging in the show but I am taking some classes. I am so excited to see all the quilts, its so inspiring and motivating to create! I found out tonight that although I didn't place, my friend Lauretta received a third place and money! Congrats Lauretta! How exciting, I will post a picture tomorrow from the show!

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Originally uploaded by ddhabicht

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Friends and gossip


Marta took Dawn and I too have high tea at the Huntington Gardens for our Christmas gift. We had such a great time there. While we were having tea I noticed these two women in deep conversations. They had wonderful expressions as they were completely focused on each other and their conversation. I want to do a painting of them and the table etc. I was doing some sketching and playing with the angle of her face and trying to figure out how her glasses are sitting on her nose etc.

When I look at this picture it immediately reminds me of our great afternoon together before Christmas.

I changed the picture on the top of my blog. Its time. I designed a fun logo for my blog and never painted it, I am going to finish and post it soon. So what do you think of the mushrooms, think it implies that something funny is going on while being creative??

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Jim's Preserves


As many of you know that follow my blog, my brother Jim did some canning this year and sent the preserves to us for our Christmas Gifts. The most beautiful package arrived and we all loved it. Well I wanted to do a pastel painting of it and decided to paint the photo I had taken and shared with you in the other post. Here is my pastel of "Jim's Preserves". After I posted it on Wet Canvas, Mario, from Pastel News asked if he could feature it on his blog, what an honor!

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Pastel demo- Pear on Glass


I am doing a demo for a painting group I belong to called Painting Friends. I decided to do a video for the actual painting part of the demo instead of writing all the information down. I realized I am terrible as a videographer but I muscled through it. I choose two pictures that had high contrast, it gave them a choice and allowed them to do the one that matched the pastels they had on hand. I had them get sand paper to play on, its cheap and easy. This is my the painting, on La Carte. Available for purchase





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