Design Floor Friday - Playful Portraiture - Lyric Style

Welcome to another edition of Design Floor Friday!!  On a Monday?!  Sorry for the delay in releasing this post.  My computer was taking a vacation day this past Friday.  I tried to convince it to do a little work, but it was having none of it!

On second thought, perhaps this post should be called "Design TABLE Friday".  You can decide for yourself....

Today, I'm here to share bits and pieces of the class I took last weekend with Lyric Kinard.

The class was broken down into several sections:

We started with an art lesson...

... About the MATH behind drawing faces.  Very interesting!  I drew two:

One...

... And two:

We then moved on to the Cut and Paste portion of class.

This is my friend Deborah working on her cartoon partner:

Here I am, working on mine:

Cartoon Andrea:

Here is her Cartoon Joy:

Lyric worked on a cartoon character, too:

Progress on Cartoon Joy:

Look this way, please.  I'm finding it quite challenging to translate features to fabric totally freehand:

Oops!  I better fix those ears:

Deborah's completed Cartoon Partner:

Our table-mate's Cartoon Partner:

Cartoon Joy... Almost done:

These classmates stood while working:

This is our entire class:

One final addition:

SEW much fabric, so little time:

Next up, tracing one of the portraits Lyric brought for us:

She demonstrated her technique...

... By tracing the darkest parts first:

Her tracing was shared with the class:

Lyric talked about how she differentiates between the various sections of light, medium, and dark:

... And a right-side-up view of Lyric's tracing:

This is the photo she worked from:

Lyric circulated around to room to help with details:

Here is my (simplified) window tracing of Ella Fitzgerald:

Lunch may or may not have been next.  I was in much need of nourishment and can't really recall that portion of the day's flow.

Oh!  I thought you might like to see the bracelet that one of my classmates KNIT, after seeing one like it overseas:

After lunch, we gathered to see some of Lyric's work...

She talked about what was successful (or not) about the quilts:

The lime and turquoise Lyric taught her to use shades of one color:

I miss a shot of Lyric's Sister Stack (my name) quilt, but that one led to choosing closer shades between shadowing:

Here's a better angle...

... And a closer look:

Beaded detail of the next quilt:

What's the worst that could happen???

Lyric often asks that question of a quilt that's not working.  She painted the figure in her half-dark studio in the middle of the night:

Using one of her favorite photo apps, she created a line drawing from a photo of her daughter and had it enlarged at a copy store:

Spoonflower printed the image on fabric and Lyric painted it:

This is one of her completed Adobe Draw pattern quilts:

Our next task was choosing from these character for our Adobe Draw drawn pattern provided by Lyric:

This sample proves her point about shading with fabric that are close in value to provide smooth transitions:

A close-up of one of the patterns:

We talked about using the camera on your phone to test value:

Lyric brought a project to work alongside the class:

Another demonstration.  This time... Fusing and pattern transfer:

She shared an example from one of our pattern options:

I didn't get too far, as "Directionally Challenged Joy" came out to play during this portion of class.  :o((

No worries!!  I still learned a lot AND enjoyed myself immensely.  My shading was simplified (by Lyric) due to my desire to use only stash fabrics.

Class wrap-up session:

Thank you to my friend, Deborah, for inviting me to attend:

Thanks also, to Lyric!!  She was a delightful instructor:

I was having SEW much fun that I continued on my project the day after class.  Here is the progress I made:

It's really beginning to look like a face.  Backwards from the photo provided, but a face none the less.  As such, I would call that a VERY successful class!  Special thanks to Deborah for opening this class up to our Weekly Quilt Bee.

Until next time...
STRETCH your creativity!!!