March 14, 2014

playing for a good cause

I had a bit of time this week to make some fun art. Fun because I haven't made something this small in a while and because it was in a completely different vein than any of my current work. But it had a good cause behind it too! I found out about it through Kristin and could not keep away. My daughters helped me choose my subject and here's how I went about it...

First a bit of research on the Northern Fur Seal in words and in pictures. And then I thought I'd make my art out the very plastic bags that are harming the species. I downloaded a few pix and played with them in Photoshop until I found a pleasing shape. I printed it out and used the old fashioned pencil and tracing paper make a few shapes.
a bit of tracing
Then I gathered plastic bags in various browns and blacks and grays as those are the colors of the seal fur and cut out a ton of little seals.
plastic seal shapes laying about
I decided to use Styrofoam-like packing material as my batting. And started gluing down the plastic pieces in somewhat random fashion.
grays and blacks were the first layer
browns on top
Then I quilted the heck out of it outlining a few shapes to identify the seals. A bit of brown acrylic paint for texture and here it is, hard to photograph without reflections.. Itty bitty measuring at 7"x7" only. Twas fun!
Northern Fur Seal ©Natalya Aikens 2014

4 comments:

Lisa said...

very cool!

Vicki Miller said...

A great piece about the seals and very meaningful to use plastic bags!

Sharon W. said...

Hmmmmm..... glue + plastic+ machine needle. What's your recipe for "disaster avoidance"?

Vivien Zepf said...

Looks very cool and has that "water shimmering on a seal's fur" look.