A new portrait

I’ve been needing a new portrait photo/head shot for a while now. My hair is more salt-and-pepper than black these days, and I wear glasses (graduated lenses) all the time now. And of course there are a lot more wrinkles. But let’s not dwell on that. Today I asked my daughter Julia, who got a new camera for Christmas, to shoot me. I have to say that I love what she took! She has also taken some lovely and artistic shots of her friends. We may have another photographer in the family!

For the one below, I cropped it to a square, and Photoshopped in the blue background. One friend commented that the mark on the background looked like I had one of those chains on my glasses. Nope, it was just a crack. I Photoshopped it out. I also adjusted the skin tones a bit to warm them up. This square one will work great for my Facebook profile photo. (What? You aren’t my Facebook friend yet? Please come find me here: https://www.facebook.com/SusanBrubakerKnapp)

Here’s another shot, more predictable, that I also liked a lot:

This is my old portrait (below), which was taken in December 2006 – seven years ago! Egads! – by my friend Patrick Schneider, who is a professional photographer:

I’d love to know what you think; leave a comment and tell me!

Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.

I was recently contacted by Allison Morris, who helped design a great graphic documenting the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. She had seen my 2011 post about King, and thought I’d be interested. Here is the graphic, which appears on  OnlineCollegeCourses.com




Today, I celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a few of my favorite quotes about King …

the pacifist:
“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” 

the dreamer:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” 

 

the optimist:

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” 

 

the social reformer:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 

 

the soul of a poet:

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”

Save the Thimble!

Have you heard that Monopoly is planning to retire one of its iconic game tokens? The current tokens are a car, a boot, a Scottie dog, a battleship, a tophat, an iron, a wheelbarrow, and the thimble. Help save the thimble! If you are on Facebook, you can vote (before Feb. 6) to save the thimble here: https://apps.facebook.com/saveyourtoken/

To help publicize this effort, I’ve designed a logo for International Quilt Association (I’m on the board). You can order a t-shirt or 100 other Save the Thimble products to help save the thimble and support International Quilt Association here: http://www.cafepress.com/dd/75759578

Get your Symposium registration forms now!

North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2013 is May 23-26 in Fayetteville, NC. Brochures and registration forms are now available on the Symposium website here. Some classes fill up fast, so if there’s a class you really want, make sure to put your registration form in the mail on Jan. 22 (registration forms are not accepted if postmarked before this date).
Here are the fabulous teachers who are offering classes this year:

Valerie Bothell http://www.valeriebothell.com/ 
Hollis Chatelain http://www.hollisart.com 
Augusta Cole http://www.augustacolequilting.com/ 
Aby Dolinger http://abyquilts.wordpress.com/ 

Susan Edmonson http://susanedmonsondesigns.com 
Nancy Eha http://www.beadcreative.com/ 
Kaye England  http://www.kayeengland.com/ 
Sandy Fitzpatrick http://www.hissyfitzdesigns.com/ 
Harriet Hargrave http://www.harriethargrave.com/index.html 
Susan Brubaker Knapp http://www.bluemoonriver.com/ 
Mary Lou McDonald http://www.baltimorequiltlady.com/ 
Judith Baker Montano http://www.judithbakermontano.com/ 
Sue Nickels http://www.sue-nickels.com/ 
Annette Ornelas   http://southwindquilts.com/ 
Linda Pool http://www.lindaslace.com/ 
Sharon Schamber http://www.sharonschamber.com/ 
Anita Grossman Solomon http://makeitsimpler.blogspot.com/ 
Jane Townswick  http://www.martingale-pub.com/store 
(Jane does not have a website, but this link brings you to her book publisher.)
Janice Vaine http://www.grahamcrackercollection.com/ 
Leni Levenson Wiener  http://www.leniwiener.com/ 
Amy Stewart Winsor http://winsorartquilts.com/

Don’t forget to register!

Register early to reserve your spot! You can get all the details on my website here.

Sketching with a friend

Sketching in Starbucks. (Photo by DeLane Rosenau)

NOTE: This is a recap of my post yesterday on The Sketchbook Challenge. Make a resolution to boost your creativity this year, and join us!

This month’s theme of Artist Dates meshes well with one of my New Year’s resolutions: getting together with friends more. (My other resolutions are sleeping more, drinking more wine, and making more art.) A few days ago, I e-mailed my good friend and fellow fiber artist DeLane Rosenau, and asked if she’d like to share a cup of tea with me while I sketched. I just love multi-tasking! We met up at a local Starbucks, and while DeLane sipped her tea, and we chatted, I sketched her cup:

 

It was very crowded in Starbucks, and I don’t think anyone (but DeLane) noticed me working away. I don't sketch in public very often, but it’s been my experience that people either ignore you, or they watch and are extremely interested, and usually impressed. There’s nothing much to fear, because you don’t know these people, and you probably will never see them again. 

This is DeLane with her tea and my sketchbook. One advantage to taking a friend on your Artist Date is that she or he is usually supportive about your work (as long as she/he is truly a friend!) and this can be very helpful if you are feeling at all shy or out of place sketching in public. 

Once DeLane was properly caffeinated, we decided to move our Date to a local antiques mall; I pulled up a comfy chair and my sketchbook, and DeLane went shopping, swinging by every 20 minutes or so to see how the sketch was coming along.

As a former journalist, I have a definite attraction to old typewriters.  I love the sinuous lines of this Remington Quiet Riter.

Here I am working away amidst the antiques. Every so often someone would wander by and ask what I was doing, but mostly things were peaceful.

(Photo by DeLane Rosenau)

(Photo by DeLane Rosenau)

And here’s the finished sketch. If you count the keys, you’ll find there are way too many; chalk it up to a lack of planning or to artistic license.

I have been trying to keep my small Moleskine sketchbook and my Lamy Safari fountain pen (my latest love) in my purse all the time. That way, I can sketch whenever I have a few minutes to kill. In this sketchbook, I am also trying to force myself to always work in black permanent ink, instead of pencil. The sketches are not as perfect as I usually demand of myself when working with pencil and eraser, but I think they have a lot of charm because of their imperfections.

Please bid on “First Green”

“First Green” (detail)

My quilt "First Green" is being auctioned to benefit Alzheimer's research through Ami Simms’ Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. As of 9 a.m. today, it was only bid up to $80; can you do better that that to help find treatments … or a cure? This quilt is about 24" x 41", and is made with batiks and is covered with wonderful free-motion quilting. You have until 10 p.m. Central Standard Time Thursday, Jan. 10. Bid here: http://www.benefitbidding.com/listings/categories/index.cfm?category=965774286

“First Green” (detail)

“First Green” (detail)

I’m on the cover of “Genetics in Medicine”!

“Uncle Albert’s Reverie” is on the cover of the January 2013 issue of Genetics in Medicine, “the official journal of  the American College of Genetics and Genomics.” I gave them permission to rotate and crop the image of the piece as needed to work with their cover design. Here is the entire piece, which I started in a class with Judy Coates Perez several years ago.

“How did this happen?” you might ask. Well, an old friend of mine, Karyn Hede, from journalism graduate school (at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is News Editor for the publication. We’ve stayed in touch, and a few months ago she wrote to ask if I’d submit some photos of my work for consideration for use on the cover of the publication. It usually features abstract art, but she said she didn’t think they had ever featured a fiber artist before.

Karyn is a biology/chemistry major who studied genetics at the graduate level and earned a M.S. before getting her M.A. in journalism.

Christmas 2012 all around the house

A belated Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!  I love to decorate my house at Christmas; this year, I used a lot of beautiful things that belonged to my mother.

“And now we welcome the new year,
full of things that have never been.”
– RAINER MARIA RILKE –

Bonnie & Clyde

“Bonnie & Clyde” by Susan Brubaker Knapp (2012)

After International Quilt Festival in Houston this fall, Alex Anderson (of TheQuiltShow.com) contacted me to ask if I'd consider doing a commission piece for her. She’d seen my piece, “Maximum Cat Nap,” and wanted a portrait of her son-in-law’s cats, Bonnie and Clyde) to give him for Christmas. I said yes, and she sent me this photo of them. It was perfect; well lit, with lots of detail.

But the background was a bit dull, with a few distracting elements. Alex said she thought that one of her quilts would make a better background, and I agreed. This is her quilt, Chopsticks:

I started by painting in the black:

And then the eyes and some of the rusty brown, and the pink noses:

 Then the tan:

And then the background, Alex’s quilt. Here is the piece with the painting finished, before thread sketching. It is a bit light compared to the photo of the cats; I knew I had to leave it this way, since the thread would add a lot of texture and color:

Here are some detail shots of the thread sketched and quilted finished piece. Some of these photos were taken under different light sources, which is why some look cool and some warm.

I hope he likes it. I managed to get it to Alex by Christmas Eve, but just barely!

Here are questions to commonly asked questions about my wholecloth painted pieces:

What fabric do you use? Either Pimatex PFD (prepared for dyeing) by Robert Kaufman, or Dyer’s Muslin (MDYE) by P&B Fabrics.

How do you transfer the design? I start by tracing the main lines in the image from an 8x10" photo on tracing paper. I enlarge this traced drawing to the size I want in PhotoShop, import it into InDesign, then print it out in tiles on my computer and tape them together to get a full-sized pattern. (You can also take your traced drawing to an office supply place and have them blow it up.) I position this under the fabric and start painting. I can see the lines through the fabric, so they provide rough guidelines for me. 

What paints do you use? I like PROChemical & Dye’s ProFab Transparent Paint. If you  are interested in trying them out, you could start with this set. I will be offering kits of these paints on my website starting next year. 

What brushes do you use? I use brushes with very stiff, short bristles by Lowe-Cornell.  I will also be offering these brushes on my website starting next year. 

What thread do you use? For thread sketching, I always use Aurifil Cotton Mako 50 weight, which is a very fine cotton thread with a lot of sheen. I also used the 50 weight to quilt this piece; sometimes I use 40 weight or heavier.

Can you teach this to my quilting group? Yes! I have several wholecloth painting and thread sketching classes. You can read more about them here. I am booked up for 2013, and starting to book 2014 and 2015.