Wet Felted Woodland - but is it by day or by moonlight?

Section of latest wide woodlands composition - wet felted

-By Annie-

Here is my latest wet felted woodland composition. It is very different to my original idea which was to create a cold and snowy winter scene, including a snowman! But it took a while from start to finish, the weather and season changed, and my work morphed from one idea to another, and I just let it emerge from short sessions of adding and taking away until I was happy with the finished layout. Some of my work is fast and furious, other work just gently smolders away until it is ready. Is this the same for you?

As with my previous woodland it doesn’t have a chosen season but interestingly I’ve been asked….is it a woodland in the daytime, or by moonlight? How interesting that we all see colours and stories differently, initially I thought I was portraying daylight, but now I’m not so sure!

Here are some close crops for better detail, the first two of the dry layout stage, the rest after felting:

 

My woodland pictures seem to be getting bigger each time, and taking longer, so I’m now tempted to shrink back down and try some smaller ones.

This one is approx 133cm x 42cm and is made mainly from Merino & Corriedale fibres plus some random unknown fibres that were hanging out in the fibre stash, along with prefelts, open weave fabrics, hand dyed scrim, and yarn (both commercial and handspun).

Here is the whole thing laid out ready for felting...

And here it is felted, but this time I cropped the photo, I like the way it gives it more of a feeling of expanse, what is going on past the edge of the picture?

I’ll dig out some photos of the work in progress for another post to show the start to finish - if I’ve taken enough photos to give a good enough idea.

As an aside, as well as making finished artworks I like to have little projects on the go that are easy to pick up and put down without needing too much time or creative energy, that I can work on in between other tasks. As I’m getting low on pre-felts, and my fibre scrap box was overflowing, I have started a little project to replenish the prefelts and use up the fibres.

I’ve been carding the scraps into batts to make into prefelts, but they look scrumptious just as they are, I could dive right into them! I’ve made some darker colourways to help with contrast in my pictures as I tend to go toward the bright colours so I do need something to offset them and make them pop. Here are the carded batts, the prefelt making will be an ongoing background task.

Yum!  This is my fibre equivalent of a sweetshop!