New Portrait

Photo I used of Aubrey for this portrait. This has not been quilted and the teeth have more work to be done.

A friend gave me as a gift a DVD by Maria Elkins titled "Making Faces". Maria is an awesome fiber artist and her speciality is portraits. Her DVD is easy to understand and Maria makes it look easy. While I have made several portraits they have been time consuming. The portraits that I made had any where from seven to eight layers of fabric and I have been quite happy with the results. However they can take as much as a week working almost eight hours a day.

Maria's technique is quick, it is a great way to make a quick, good looking portrait that resembles the subject. Maria's technique uses four layers of fabric. While I did not time the process, I stop and start a lot, I would guess that you could make this, working hard, in half a day.

Following are lessons I learned while making this portrait:

1-My photo didn't have enough contrast. (The photo is manipulated in photo shop and I am a beginner. I think someone with more experience could have done a better job getting more contrast. Maria goes through all these moves one by one on the DVD and I think the more I work with it the better I will get.

2-The range of value in my four fabrics were to great.

I will use this technique again and again I'm sure and hopefully my portraits will become as good as Maria's.