For my current needle felt piece, I changed up a couple things. First, I’m using a thinner pre-felt (the backing). The first set I ordered prior to the needle felt class is, frankly, a bit too thick. It makes a great finished piece because it feels nice and sturdy, but it’s much much harder on the needles. My rate of needle destruction has gone way way down. I mean, it was already getting better as I improved my technique (eg: punch in and out at exactly the same angle, don’t force it). But this eases the skill needed considerably.
Secondly, the thinner felt I ordered came in pieces roughly twice as large. I could cut it in half, but I decided to give it a go at a larger size. This would give me more room to explore the nuances of the rock face in the photograph I’d selected. It’s going to be several rows of peaks against the sky I took when we did our geo-tour of the North Face of Ben Nevis in Scotland. As with the others, I started by sketching out the large elements and selecting the colors I thought I would need:
No shock, a larger piece takes more time to complete. On my first session working on it I laid down the first layer of sky and the distant range of peaks:
On my next session, I started laying out some of the colors and rocks of the face we were walking under:
And after last night, I finally have a first layer across the whole piece, with a few areas more worked up than others:
Interestingly, I’ve found the process of snapping pictures and looking at them on my computer or even mobile phone very helpful. In particular, when I’ve zoomed them out to a significantly smaller size than the actual piece (and this piece is roughly the size of my monitor) I get a sense of where the colors and shapes are too exaggerated, or conversely don’t have enough contrast. So I was really happy to see the image above at a small size because it tells me that I’m on the right track. There is still a fair bit of work left to do, but I have the right overall forms in place. I just need to stay on track.
Voting
Have you voted yet? If not, do you have a plan for casting your vote?
If your answer to both the above is “no”, why not? In some states, early voting is over, but for others it ends today. Ballot drop boxes may still be available for absentee voting. VOTE411.org can help you get to your local resources to find polling places, hours, and in some cases, transportation options.
Remember – your vote is important. I’ll say it again: please please vote if you haven’t already. Help send a message at all levels of government about what you care about. And I hope your message includes that you are concerned for your fellow citizens under thread from Covid-19, that all people matter, no matter their color, gender, sexual orientation or where they are from, and that helping the vulnerable and those in need is a civic and moral duty. So let’s vote out the current administration, because they’ve shown over and over that those things do not matter to them. And let’s do so with large and decisive numbers of votes.