The Art Of Moy Mackay

From inspiration and design to the finished vibrant picture, learn to become the felt artist you've dreamed of becoming through this third book by bestselling author and renowned felt-maker, Moy Mackay. The brand new, opulent book by bestselling author and renowned felt-maker, Moy Mackay. This book shows you how to find inspiration - and hone it - for your own felt painting creations, gradually helping you to develop personal and original ideas. For the first time, delve into the catalogue of Moy's beautiful, colourful sketchbooks and photographs and learn about her own design process and influences, through which your own artistic abilities can be ignited and explored. In addition, Moy takes you through every step of the felt-making process, including the materials and tools you need, the process itself (which is easier than you'd imagine), and how to put together four fabulous felt paintings of varying subjects - all of which Moy has devised to give you the basic knowledge for eventually designing your own felt creations. There is also guidance on stitching - both hand- and machine-stitching - as well as how to use colour and introduce texture in the form of different fibres and threads. There are numerous examples of Moy's work throughout the book, inspired by the dramatic scenery of the Scottish Borders where she lives and works, providing further inspiration for your own gorgeous felt paintings.

Packed with colour and style, this gorgeous and inspiring new book from Scottish artist Moy Mackay delves deep into the world of felt painting. The book includes an introduction to Moy's use of colour and texture, as well as a useful section detailing what inspires her and how she forms these initial ideas into a composition. There are 4 easy-to-follow but inspiring step-by-step projects, along with extensive galleries of Moy's vibrant work. Unlike the broad range of her previous book, the focus here is flowers - in still life, in the landscape and as botanical portraits - and the book includes an in-depth techniques section on creating a range of different flower and leaf shapes, so that the reader can go on to produce their own unique masterpieces. "e;Moy's passionate use of colour and the deep texture created by felting are what draw me to her work. I also like the way that she concentrates on her surroundings for her subject matter - her work is very free."e;-Kaffe Fassett

Feltmaking is a popular medium for craftsmen, but few have explored its potential as an art form. This new book demonstrates the exciting scope of pictorial feltmaking and explains how to create felt pictures with the depth and atmosphere usually associated with a graphite drawing or a watercolour painting. Written by a leading felt artist, it shows how to work freely with the wool as if it were paint or a piece of charcoal. Covers essential feltmaking skills for the beginner, as well as techniques and inspiration for the more experienced feltmaker, with advice on how drawing and painting skills, such as perspective composition and the use of colour, can be applied to felt pictures. Illustrated with stunning pictures of finished works, as well as practical demonstrations, it also includes a guide to the presentation and framing of work.

Sheila Smith’s popular book – in paperback for the first time – covers dry-felting techniques using hand-held needles and the embellisher machines. These mess-free techniques open up a range of felt ideas for textile artists. The book includes the use of commercial ready-made needle-punch felt for fashion and design work. And of course, it provides a range of decorative stitching and dyeing methods that can be used to embellish the felt. Colourfully illustrated with inspirational textiles, plus clear step-by-step instructions, the book covers: Laying the Foundations: Use a variety of fibres and fabrics to create exciting cloths that are both beautiful and versatile. These can be layered further – experiment with Bondaweb, Pelmet Vilene and Lutradur – or developed into bags, book covers and other stunning items. Building Texture: Use fast and simple techniques to create impressive effects with the needle punch, from incorporating tucks, folds and tubes to three- dimensional bowls and vessels. Colour and Dyeing: Step-by-step instructions on rapid and space dyeing make it easy to create and assemble beautiful colours to use in your own work. An overview of all the equipment and materials needed, plus an appendix explaining traditional wet-felting techniques. Sheila Smith is an experienced feltmaker who teaches in the UK and around the world, most recentlhy in Australia and New Zealand. Former Chair of the International Feltmakers' Association, she writes regularly for textile and embroidery magazines, including World of Embroidery, Beautiful Stitches, Sewing World and Workbox. She is the author of Felt to Stitch.

Crafters are embracing felting as one of the most exciting and versatile techniques around--and textile artist Lizzie Houghton offers 30 stunning projects that truly stand out from the crowd. Her thorough, fully-illustrated tutorial in the basics will open the craft up to anyone: it includes everything from laying out the fabric and network felting to three-dimensional forms. Beginners then have the skills they need to create subtle variances in color; carry out bold, playful experiments; and work with traditional fibers as well as velvets, silks, and embroidery. The scarves, wraps, pillows, throws, and other felted designs all feature nature-inspired shades, from the fiery hues of chili and poppy and rust to the earthy tones of fern and moss.

Colour, Art and Empire explores the entanglements of visual culture, enchanted technologies, waste, revolution, resistance and otherness. The materiality of colour offers a critical and timely force-field for approaching afresh debates on colonialism. This book analyses the formation of colour and politics as qualitative overspill. Colour can be viewed both as central and supplemental to early photography, the totem, alchemy, tantra and mysticism. From the eighteenth-century Austrian Empress Maria Theresa to Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi, to 1970s Bollywood, colour makes us adjust our take on the politics of the human sensorium as defamiliarising and disorienting. The four chapters conjecture how European, Indian and Papua New Guinean artists, writers, scientists, activists, anthropologists or their subjects sought to negotiate the highly problematic stasis of colour in the repainting of modernity. Specifically, the thesis of this book traces Europeans' admiration and emulation of what they termed 'Indian colour' to its gradual denigration and the emergence of a 'space of exception'. This space of exception pitted industrial colours against the colonial desire for a massive workforce whose slave-like exploitation ignited riots against the production of pigments - most notably indigo. Feared or derided, the figure of the vernacular dyer constituted a force capable of dismantling the imperial machinations of colour. Colour thus wreaks havoc with Western expectations of biological determinism, objectivity and eugenics. Beyond the cracks of such discursive practice, colour becomes a sentient and nomadic retort to be pitted against a perceived colonial hegemony. The ideological reinvention of colour as a resource for independence struggles make it fundamental to multivalent genealogies of artistic and political action and their relevance to the present.