Winter in the Northwest is gray. So, when Kirsty issued the Twelve X Twelve color challenge of gray — my mind went there. I had some photos that I had taken of my son and his wife at the Oregon Garden in winter.

I love the shape of the bare trees and the bleak landscape with the simple golden grasses. I turned the photos into sketches in Photoshop. The single tree became a themofax screen of a row of trees.

I first printed the larger photo on Jacquard’s Extravorganza, but the gray I got was not working. I was using a beautiful gray organza shibori for the background which I ended up painting a darker gray.

I used some of that with a full page self stick label to run it through the printer. I loved the color and the shibori lines added some interest to the photo. I printed the third photo as a smaller version to help balance the composition and to add some interest.

I did some simple running stiches with variegated perle cotton, and added some grasses in green and gold as a nod to the grasses in the original photos.

Here is a detail shot:

I learned a couple of things about this challenge. You can have fun with gray, and there are many shades of gray!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 6:29 am and is filed under 12X12 challenge, photo transfer, photography, screenprinting, thermofax. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.