Hello, I’m back. As I mentioned in my last entry, I’ve been picking up frames from the local thrift stores and using them as inspiration for pieces of art. One of the frames I picked up was a small black and gold frame. This frame has a shiny, polished appearance, so I wanted to do a moth for it, particularly the White Spring Moth, which has these white translucent wings that almost look like they’re sparkling. In particular, I wanted to do a fabric collage, making the moth out of a translucent white fabric and laying it atop a background of gold-glittered black fabric. Almost like it’s floating in space. 

I ran into a bunch of hurdles with this one and almost gave up at one point. Drawing on fabric, much less on partially translucent fabric, isn’t something I am used to doing! First, I tried to draw the moth using just graphite, but I found I couldn’t get my shades dark enough. I ended up using a combination of gray, black, and yellow colored pencils and pastel pencils to get a fuller range of value. Also, to keep the moth from looking too translucent, I glued it on top of a second blank white fabric. Then I made some shadows on the black background using a black pastel pencil, to help make the wings pop a bit more.

This is the result:

“Space Moth”
Fabric, graphite, colored pencils, pastel pencils
6 x 4 inches

And this is a more casual shot of it just sitting on my table:

I definitely want to do more fabric collages. I’d especially love to do one in a bigger size. Maybe I can find a large, ornate-looking gold or silver frame and do a whole fabric scene or a large fabric portrait of an animal. Who knows! 

That’s all I’ve got for now.