Choreography with Irene Roderick

I am taking a class this month – Choreography with Irene Roderick. The goal of Choreography is to develop my artistic voice. This ties in so nicely with my watercolor and other art explorations I have been doing. We meet each week, do show and tell, including critiques, and listen to a lecture from Irene. I am LOVING IT!

I’ve been doing a lot of drawing lately. I have a little journal, and I keep drawing these stylized trees. Over and over, I draw the same thing. I’m finding endlessly fascinating. I’ve rediscovered Zentangle, and have incorporated that, too. My favorite thing to do now is to sketch out a sunset, fill it in with loose watercolor, then add a tree silhouette on top. Then I do doodles in the little sections of sunset. It is like I’m making a patchwork quilt, complete with quilting.

*I painted this piece using a little watercolor kit from Beam Paints. They are First Nation people in Canada who make the paints by hand. It is lovely to work with handmade art supplies – it feels like using hand-dyed fabric. I think I have the Spectrum 11 collection in a birch palette.

Inspiration

I went through my old photos to find a sunset with spectacular color. These are from my backyard, several homes ago. I love how the clouds make such weird patterns.

Planning

This is my painting guideline. I’m not trying to imitate the shapes I drew – it is more of a color inspiration and value study.

My fabric pull consists of a range of Kona solids. I now have a great stash of Kona, thanks to a membership in the color Collective last year. I didn’t make even a single one of the amazing patterns in the membership, but the fabric isn’t going to waste. The colors I’m using are all ones I’ve seen at sunset, but perhaps not all at the same time. Some of the colors I’m using are to provide a pop, the light peach, brown, and some brighter blues in particular should add interest to the design.

Construction

This is where I’m at as my second week of class begins. I started at the top with the blues, but they got boring too quickly, so I decided to start in the middle and build up from the sunset.

Tonight I got a little distracted during my session and played with the scraps, making a small scale piece. (It is the little piece below the painting on the right.) I can’t decide if I will piece this in to the main quilt, or make a mini. I’m leaning towards a mini.

My plan is to finish piecing the background this week. I’m pretty sure I can get it done. This is going to be a big quilt. That’s good, though – I can put a real dent into my fabric stash. I hope to get to the tree appliqué next week. I’m not sure if I will try to cut it as one large piece, or layer branches on the same way I draw them.

Thoughts

I still haven’t finished the last quilt I started in a class with Irene. Dancing with the Wall was fun – I need to find that top and get it moving forward.

I’ve really been enjoying this art adventure I’ve been having. When I started exploring watercolor and drawing, I thought I might fool around with it until I got bored, then go back to quilting. Instead, I’m incorporating things I’m learning from watercolor into my quilts. I feel like I’m just working more and more skills into my repertoire, and my quilts are getting better for it.

Do you find yourself exploring other art forms? Do your different practices inform each other, or do you keep them separated?

If you are interested in Irene’s techniques but not ready to commit to a class, you can pre-order her book on Amazon. Did you know that pre-ordering a book from your favorite author helps their work appear on the best-seller lists once they are published? I like to think of it as giving my friends a little boost. Irene will be offering her Choreography class again in March – You can find out more about her on her website.