ZORRO – Part 1
My entry for the 2019 “Quilted Comics & Sci-Fi” exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas was probably the biggest challenge of my entire textile art career. As someone who’s worked restoring archival newspaper comic strips, I was drawn to it not realizing the difficult task ahead.
The assignment was to choose a comic super hero or villain and create an art quilt. Naturally, I thought of my childhood favorite Tornado, Zorro’s horse. Zorro—not so much, but I LOVED that horse! I think the added difficulty for me, was that this did NOT come in meditation as most of my subjects do. I don’t create art on demand, nor do I do commissions, so it was new territory.
Creating a 45”x 60” art quilt that MAY or may NOT be chosen for the exhibit seemed crazy. In the art business this is called “speculation art,” meaning you only get paid if someone buys it. As an added side note —this is EXACTLY how it felt when working as a fabric designer. You can work unlimited hours, they may or may not reject the art… and you do NOT get paid if they don’t select it— period…but, I digress.
Luckily, “Z Marks the Spot,” was selected and I can happily say I need never enter a quilt into any shows for the sake of MAYBE being selected ever again.
The Marvel comics cover was created by Mario Capaldi during the 1990s. After enlarging it in Photoshop, I printed and traced it onto the canvas extending it an extra 3” all around.
Working like a painter from background to foreground, I began building the fabric collage by pinning the red scraps into place followed by the yellow moon. You can learn my step-by-step process by watching my fabric collage recorded demonstration.
Not everyone likes to use pins, my students often use a glue stick. When using pins, always toss any that appear bent. Bent pins lead to broken needles.
When choosing fabrics, I always vary the size of the prints. They range from stripes, big florals, tiny specs of flowers and swirling geometric shapes. I’m always looking for movement and only use high quality quilter’s cotton.
It’s a slow process and my larger textile illustrations can take months. I press the fabrics, snip, pin and repeat. Learn more on how to choose fabrics in my step-by-step blog.
Once I finished pinning all of the reds and yellows, I tacked them down stitching loosely with matching threads on the top and in the bobbin. This is explained in detail in my fabric collage recorded demonstration.
Next, I added the brown fabrics. Keeping all the pins facing in the same direction, allows me to slowly stitch and remove them while working my way across the fabric collage.
Just a note I’ve learned while working as the art director for the Library of American Comics…If you’ve ever examined comics, you’ll see that artists use blue in the highlights of their shadows. Take a look at Superman’s hair.
My intention was never to make it EXACTLY like Mario Capaldi’s cover, only to capture it as best I could. If you compare this to the original, you will find I chose to exaggerate the blue area of the hills.
To be continued…
