#wisconsinvisualartists

Since downsizing and moving to the cabin full time in the fall, I have fantasized about a new art studio "she shed". It was finally delivered last night and I have been busy prepping it all day. For this blog, I am sharing a few pictures of the new space and some of the cool pieces I found to go into it.

Art Studio Being Placed in Final Position I picked up a few pieces over the spring while waiting for the studio to be delivered. The first, and the coolest, is an antique mail sorter from a post office in a local small town. It makes a great statement piece for all of my wool. I found other mail sorters on pinterest but never storing wool, hopefully I start a trend!

Antique Mail Sorter Storing Wool in Art Studio The next piece is an old blueprint cabinet. I store all of my felt sheets, matboards, packing materials, and wood slabs in this cabinet.

Blueprint cabinet The final piece was created from a combination of the top of a monster oak desk that I did a paint pour on and an Ikea gate leg table as the base. Here is a link to the youtube video I used to learn how to do the paint pour if you are interested in doing your own. I also have a small desk in the corner that I can use for making website updates and taking the occasional Webex meeting.

Resin Pour On Old Oak Desk Top So, I have to suffer all day with a view of the lake while I felt. And the view from within the studio is pretty darn good too! Nala and Pumba agree as well :) This is probably the cleanest it will ever be!! Would love to see other's creative spaces!

View from my table

We have been doing a lot of home remodeling so sorry it's been a while between posts - I wanted to take you through some of the steps of making my first buffalo. There was a leftover slice of walnut from another piece that had a circle on it. I thought it looked like an eye so decided to make a buffalo. To start, I blended wool to match the walnut and built out the nose.

Building out the buffalo head Eyes are a bit of an obsession of mine. Here is a picture of one complete and one just in the wool marble stage. You can see how much adding white for reflection and black lining around the lid makes them look realistic.

Adding eye details makes all the difference Once I placed the eyes, I started to add more browns and grays to the fur to blend with the wood color and created wet felted spikes along the top. The spikes are lightly wired to help them hold their shape.

Adding eyes, spikes and color blending At this point, I added ears and horns, did a bit more color blending, and tried to decide if he was done. I snapped a pic and sent it to my mother. We both agreed something more was necessary.

Trying to decide if the buffalo is done I tried beefing up his chin hair first. Then I added strips along the side.

Almost there The volume of him was better but something was still missing. I added in some dreadlocks. This added some depth and tied in the spikes across the top. We had a winner!

Adding dreadlocks is the ticket! The finished piece went up on Etsy last week and is getting some attention. My Mom and I decided to name him Anton. Somehow, this guy has my Dad's eyes. Dad did grow up in Buffalo City so maybe it was destiny. Anton is my first buffalo but I doubt he will be my last!

I decided to create a felt barn owl out of the scrap piece that I had from my lion. It was already cut in the shape that I needed, so the first step was staining it with a golden oak stain and adding poly to bring out the coppery undertones of the wood. I always finish the wood before I start felting so that I can color match my wool.

Stained and polyurethaned slab ready to go Next comes building up the head and body with core wool and a bit of wire armature. This takes a while. You need to felt it pretty solid and dry fit it into the wood as you go. I tend to sculpt with the core wool as I go, adding and dry fitting. In this case, my core wool was gray. This was only because I have a crap ton of it and not for an artistic reason!

Head and Body Build out From there, I build out feathers that match the wood. I included a picture of all of the different colors that go into a single feather. This is my favorite part of any wood and wool project. It may be why I am drawn to creating owls too. This is the second felt barn owl I have created. They are masters at camouflage! 

6 different wool color variations in a single feather

felting feathers that match the wood The final steps are layout and gluing (where felt meets wood) and then spot checking for additional ways to highlight the spalting in the wood.

Barn Owl getting finished Once I hung this sweet girl on the wall, I realized that her mate was nearby. These two remind me so much of my parents, who embody their personalized mugs (Grumpy and Happy), that I think I will name them Grandpa and Grandma. Hopefully we can convince someone to buy them together - their namesake just celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary so lots of good luck will come with them!

Today I am going to walk you through creating a wood and felt lion head. I have posted on creating lions before but this is by far the most on the ball I have been with taking pictures throughout the process. It seems that highland cows and lions are my best sellers. People seem to gravitate to pieces with lots of hair! I had a beautiful piece of figured hard maple that I planned to use for the lion's head. The bottom will end up making a great owl!

To start off, I blended the wool to match the wood tone and built up the cheeks and nose. Then, I added in eyes and started to add in some fine lines to match the the lines of wood.

When it came time to create the mane, my first plan was to create one from different shades of brown alpaca and mohair. This was the dry fit. I thought it was too busy.

Once I decided to go a different way, I needed to do some different tests. I wanted to go more natural lion mane color this time so laid out three options. I decided a mix of the top and left was the winner.

I did like the bark lining from the wood peaking out as the edge of the mane so I kept a dark brown undercoat in the mane. Horse hair whiskers finished off the look. This is the completed wood and felt lion.

Exactly one day after getting back from vacation, I received a request for a wool watercolor pug commission. My workshop was not unpacked and I thought I was out of felt for my watercolor backgrounds so I set expectations for a longer than normal timeline for finishing. Well, I set them appropriately for everybody but me! Immediately, I went up and dug around and found one last piece of felt so I could get started. I start all of my watercolors by outlining my design first. In this case, I used the cream color of the pug and also started lightly filling in. This way, I can make sure that my eyes and ears line up and are similarly sized. I also have a small build up of nose on here. It is difficult to see but it is the start of a three dimensional nose.

Outline From there, I built up the eyes, ears, nose and cheeks. I always print out a photo of the commission subject and compare as I go to make sure that I get all of the nuances. Sorry that I do not have more in process shots but I went into frenzy mode and completed this quickly.

Comparison photo to painting Normally, I don't do much to the felt background but the buyer requested a Starry Night influenced background in this case. I also needed to decide on the matboard color. The buyer requested a neutral and I wanted to pull from a color in the painting. The options were subtly different between cream or tan.

We are now officially moved to our lake home in Chetek and I have yet to unpack my workshop so I am going to feature a cow and a goat that I made a few weeks back. Cow The highland cow started as a happy accident. My friend Sarah at Black Sheep Fiber Goods had a Mediterranean blue art yarn that I fell in love with. She accidentally shipped me more yardage than I had ordered so I decided to make a statement with it. I sold my last highland cow and always like to keep one in inventory so my first blue cow came to be. Here is an in progress photo. This is prior to any trimming and before mounting. I promise there is a cow under there! The horns are made from sari silk waste that also had flecks of blue in it. It ties the blue hair in nicely.

Marlais was trimmed for glimpses of his face underneath and mounted to some black barn board. The name Marlais means blue in Welsh. I know he is a Scottish cow with a Welsh name but figured it was all on the same island so close enough!

Marlais Goat While at my last show, I kept getting requests for goats. My daughter stumbled on this picture and it became my inspiration.

I just received some long alpaca fibers that I thought were perfect. Seems odd to make a goat with alpaca but it worked! Here is one in progress shot as I worked through building up the head.

The final product has detailing in the face, ears (that I realized I forgot after I thought I was done), and all of the wool around the neck and shoulders. It wasn't until the very end when I was creating the listing that I researched and figured out he was actually not a goat but an Old Norwegian Sheep ram. Oops. His name is Ares regardless.

Valais sheep are some of most adorable animals on the planet so I decided to create a small valais lamb head portrait. I did not take any shots of the work in progress so this is going to be a short blog post.

I had a wet felted background that I had never used so I started with that and then needle felted the head structure so there was some dimension. I then added both white and black teeswater locks and mounted the head inside a 5x7in black frame.

A very cute little guy! However, I couldn't get over those little black knees so I decided to create the corresponding lamb butt. I again used the same background material and a 5x7 black frame. This time the frame was mounted vertically.

The combined result makes me smile. For those local to the Milwaukee area, you can see this little valais lamb in person next week (Aug 12-13) at the Morning Glory Art Show in the Deer District.

I have a show coming up in Wausau in September and thought that a pheasant would be a good addition to my collection for that show. Found this great pitted piece of wood that I I had my husband cut into the shape of a pheasant body.

Sorry I didn't create a lot of in process shots. I was in the zone and this project came together quickly. The tail feathers and bottom feathers were wet felted and wired and the head was needle felted. Upon first assembly, I realized that the body needed to be filled in more.

I blended wool to match the wood coloring and found small beads that mimicked the pits in the wood.

Sat with this guy for a couple of days and decided that the neck needed more texture to look more like a pheasant's feathers. I decided to build the neck up a bit and like the result much better.

Close up of the neck - I think I will name him Dimples

Lion

Once I finished the pheasant, I had a cutoff piece that looked like a lion's paw print. I felted in the missing parts to complete the print.

The paw print inspired me to make a second lion. My first lion (blog here) was sold at the Barrington art fair earlier this year. I have a couple of shots of the head in process that I can share.

This time I decided to create a mane with long locks.

And Flowers, Oh My

I also completed a branch weaving that I really love. Again, no in process shots - sorry. This one started with a metal heart that I used upside down as a flower bud. I then wet felted 2 additional flowers that had similar coloring. The weaving is inside a branch that is long and skinny so I wove it as a bouquet.