David Hockney

It's been a busy year so far with the cruise and the Quilt Show and I have got a little behind in posting what I've been up to with the Waverley Art Quilters. In March this year we studied David Hockney.

David Hockney is considered to be one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and is known for his brightly coloured paintings.

He was born in Bradford, England on the 9th July 1937 and is still alive. He is very protective of the copyright of his paintings and if you go to his website by clicking the link on his name- David Hockney you will find that you have to agree not to copy his work in anyway. We had to be very careful when we were planning what we would do.

His paintings are beautiful and I love the bright colours, I wouldn't dare put any of the photos on my blog but if you go to Google Images you will see many of his paintings.

David Hockney studied at the Royal College of Art in London and after graduating in 1962 he moved to Los Angeles. He is famous for his swimming Pool paintings and is considered a pop artist although he doesn't like the term.

I borrowed a book from the library but the work I was drawn to was his later work that was not in the book.

I chose a photo I had taken on one of my morning walks but decided to reproduce it in the bright colours that David Hockney uses.

I cropped the photo in Photoshop and printed it out on an A3 printer and then traced the pattern. I fused the pieces with Vliesofix.

I decided not to do any surface stitching and basted the three layers together ready for quilting.

I didn't like the shape of the path and so I added some more shrubs on the side to make it not so wide.

I liked it a bit better and I love the blue trees and I looked at it for a couple of months until I realised what was bothering me. The horizon line is in the centre of the quilt and that is a no-no in pictorial art design.

I put the photo of the quilt into Photoshop and cropped off the bottom and liked it a lot better.

That is one of the good things about belonging to this group, I get a chance to experiment on a small scale and the only way to truly learn and improve is to actually do the work.

I have to take more care in the initial designing stage to make sure I don't fall for the same trap in the future.

Bye for now,
Linda