Quote by Thomas Alva Edison. Class by Val Webb, more info here.

Oh my but I am having fun.  Of course, it is also a ton of work to make a page like this one (it took all day), but if you had asked me when class began back in late November if I would be able to do this in just  a couple of months, I would have laughed!   But lookit!  I did it!   I can’t hardly believe it!  This lesson is what Val Webb (click here for her blog) calls “crazy quilt” lettering, with rolling lines and many colors and little bits of art insterspersed with the writing.   Fortunately, I’ve been a bit behind and have benefitted from Val’s constructive comments for others pieces before I got around to working on this.  I had the wit to send Val my “first draft” before I spent a ton of time painting only to discovered I should have done something different.

First draft of the Thomas Alva Edison quote with the lettering going all the way across the page.

Val commented that when you have a wide motif in the center as with the overalls, it is hard for the eye to jump across to continue reading.  She suggested re-working the design to read as if it were two pages in a book.  Brilliant!  Took time, but I got it done.  Here’s the series of photos shoing my progress:

Testing out colors, letter shapes, and so on. Since I live in Maine and the guys wear Carhartt overalls, I opted for the Carhartt color instead of old fashioned demin. As you can see, I originally intended to do the letters in yellow, green and blue.  I also tested out a color for the silvery metal at the bottom of the light bulb, and getting a yellow fade for the light bulb. 

Working away at the dining room table. I even managed to NOT blotch and drip or smudge! And I’m happy I was able to lift the color on the knees to make the fabric look faded and worn by work.

The yellow and green letters are done, so I decided to break for a late lunch. When I took the photo, I realized I had picked up the colors in the placemats I made, and decided I liked the idea of the warm plummy-red better than blue, so changed my color scheme. So glad I did!

And one more time, the photo from the top, repeated for comparison here:

Quote by Thomas Alva Edison. Class by Val Webb, more info here.

I like the way this turned out so much I am tempted to get a custom mat to fit into a standard sized frame and hang it in my studio!

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