Friday, October 24, 2008

Pania....

I started an upholstery course a couple of weeks ago and my project is a one of 2 chairs I found on the side of the road. It's not really the best chair for an upholstery class, as it's more of a re-covering job than full upholstery, but that's just the way things turned out. I'm optimistic I'll be able to do a second chair anyway.

Anyway, with our imminent departure from Napier, I thought it might be nice to create something to remind me of our time here, and this chair is going to be it. I'm covering the chair in black denim, but using the soft grey 'inside' side. It's the same fabric I used to back my cushions, and I love it.

I decided a screen print of Pania would be perfect. Pania is a maiden in Maori mythology who lived in the sea off Napier and there is a statue of her down near the water. You should check out this wiki link for her lovely but tragic story.

My photoshop skills are EXTREMELY basic, but this morning I took a photo of Pania and have now created a 2 colour stencil to paper cut and screen print (stages shown below). I'm pretty pleased with myself! Of course, I still have to do some work to turn it into an actual stencil and am considering doing a headshot (as above) because just looking at that grass skirt makes my hand cramp!Best get started....

3 comments:

painted fish studio said...

dang, i've been using photoshop for years, and not sure if i could have created the great graphic that you did! it's pretty cool...

Jesse said...

This is going to be an awesome chair! Can't wait to see it finished.

Rabbit and the Duck said...

Your photoshop skills look pretty great to me! I don't think I could do that. I've just figured out how to make my photo backgrounds whiter which was the cause of much celebration here this week.