Fudge factors for drawing art quilts

[Betty J.]

I have just finished a new design for my knight quilt (see member blog with picture). I thought it might be fun to tell you how I sometimes fudge my limited ability to draw. I often use coloring books, photographs and other pictures that I can trace pieces from and change them just a bit. It's important to remember if you use this to pay attention to the copyright issues.

-- Dover has wonderful coloring books, and often one's own photos may have a little item in it you can use to trace, and then there are photos from friends and family who wouldn't mind if you use them (remember to ask). For the knight, I used a horse in "Wonderful World of Horses" Dover coloring book and added the armour.

-- Then I did a lot of looking at pictures of knights and their horses to finish up the horse and the knight. I had to draw the knight from scratch, because I didn't find anything copyright free I could use, but I could at least get a good idea of what they should look like by lots of looking.

-- I had to keep improving the knight on the horse through repeated erasing and redrawing. There are still things about it I think don't look quite right, but some of that I can improve as I work out the appliques.

-- Then I drew in the background looking at photographs, but you can actually trace main elements of the photographs. I've done that.

-- Sometimes you can take an element from one coloring book picture and another element from another and put them together.

Now I recently bought a Wacom Intuos4 digital tablet and CorelPainter 11. Together, it is wonderful. It took me a lot of hours to learn how to do this, but I found I could trace pictures just like I had a piece of tracing paper. I could put all the different main elements on different layers and move them around until I got it right, then "drop" the layers together and clean up the places where they overlapped or weren't quite right with erasing and redrawing.

To print it out full sized, I moved it into Excel Spreadsheet, sized the picture the size I wanted, and printed it out. Excel automatically breaks it into pages (I found it helpful to be sure I had the page number on each sheet). Then you can cut off the margins and tape them together.

I wouldn't recommend using Excel for precision piecing, because there are small variations from the printing that don't always quite line up, but for the most part, it works well. I'm kind of excited about this method. I found I can "fix" things I don't like in the original drawing or photograph (like the mermaid, I moved her arm to a more natural look and drew a different tail, or take out the roads and telephone poles in a photograph for the background work).

Now I'm ready to start making the quilt.

[Norma H.]

Thanks for your description on how you work. It's very interesting. I have a question because here you write Corel Paint and I know you have earlier said, that the Intous came with CorelDraw. I have a very old version of CorelDraw, which is not running very well any longer and was happy to see that I might get it with a tablet, which I also have been thinking of for some time. Now, I just want to be sure which program it is.

[Norma H.]

I sure appreciate the info as I cannot draw a crooked line, let alone a beautiful mermaid or handsome knight. I have this picture in my head that I would love to translate into a quilt, but, since I can't draw didn't think it would happen. I have hope now and when I can afford a new toy will definitely look into this. Sandi

[Betty J.]

Thanks for your description on how you work. It's very interesting. I have a question because here you write Corel Paint and I know you have earlier said, that the Intous came with CorelDraw. I have a very old version of CorelDraw, which is not running very well any longer and was happy to see that I might get it with a tablet, which I also have been thinking of for some time. Now, I just want to be sure which program it is.

Sorry, I mis-wrote earlier. ops: It's CorelPainter 11 [note, I fixed it in my post above--should be painter, not paint]. You have to pay a little extra to get the tablet with that program, but it's a lot less than if you buy them separately. Also, the tablet came with a bundle of free software including Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corelpainter Sketchpad, Autodesk Sketchbook. Hope that helps.

[Betty J.]

I sure appreciate the info as I cannot draw a crooked line, let alone a beautiful mermaid or handsome knight. I have this picture in my head that I would love to translate into a quilt, but, since I can't draw didn't think it would happen. I have hope now and when I can afford a new toy will definitely look into this. Sandi

Sanann, You don't have to have a new toy to take advantage of the trace and correct/draw method. I used paper and pencil for several with just typing paper and a cheep mechanical pencil and a good eraser. Then I scanned or photographed my resulting drawing to get it into the digital format and moved it into Excel from there. The digital tablet helps a lot, but it can be done without. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[Norma H.]

Thanks for the information. Helps a lot to be sure of what we're talking about .

[Norma H.]

Thanks for sharing your process. You are getting really professional results!