My sister's gorgeous rug

In August, when I was visiting my sister Tiffany, she wanted to try her hand at a big portrait of her daughter Madison.  When I was creating the palette dyeing process and developing my own colors, my sister was also creating her own palette and testing the process with me.  So she has a complete palette of her own 67 colors in 8 values each.  So she had everything she needed for her portrait project. 

As some of you know who have been following my blog, for the last year and a half I have been working with color in my hooking in order to create a simple procedure to hook gorgeous portraits.  I call the procedure VIP (VALUE INTENSE PALETTE) Hooking. 

My sister is the first person other than me to put my procedure to the test, and wow, the results are stunning!  All I did was share the five color hooking principles with her, and three months later, she was done with this fantastic over-sized portrait of Madison.  She brought the rug (Madison) to my house at Christmas and it knocked my socks off. It reminds me so much of the famous portrait of The Girl with A Pearl Earring by Vermeer.  Madison is captured by her mother in this hooked piece better than any photograph could.  She is a true Mona Lisa.  Tiffany hooked it in a #6.  It is about 2 feet by 2 feet, and bound with Canadian Show binding procedure.

Here is a picture of my sister and her daughter holding the rug in front of our tree. 

A first picture

Things are starting to look like something now, so here's a first picture of Alexander at Sauder.  I can now see that all my abstract hooking and palette dyeing has pushed me in the direction of Expression.  It is slightly more abstract than Impressionism, lending a less naturalistic color scheme to the subject. 

I also chose to eliminate straight line hooking, and move to pebbling as much area as I can.  I am still contouring the face by pebbling in the directions of the face contours, so that the face takes a shape. 

I am hooking this piece entirely by value (VIP Hooking), having marked my drawing from lightest to darkest areas and hooking the different colors in the ascribed values randomly into those areas.  I am using all eight values of eight different neutrals and rosy browns, one red, and three different blues and blue grays. 

Neutrals and rosy browns:Chesterfield 152; Faune Brown 114; Blush Red 113; Rosewood 138; Red Oak 144; Sea Shells 142; Applewood 147; Butterfield 122

Red: Ring 'O Rosie 161

Blues and Grays: Alexander Blue 109; Gossamer Gray 131; Shades of Dusk 123

Making progress on Alex in Pop Color

I have been working on Alex in Pop Color, although my hooking is a bit slower now that I am dealing with a torn up house.  I just finished the second face in the series of six that make up the center of the rug.  Each face is hooked with a different color plan.  The first one I hooked was done in the primary colors, red, yellow and blue.  The second face I did as a monochromatic study in purple (see photo below).  It demonstrates the importance of hooking by value instead of color.  Here is Alex's face, and it clearly is his face, but it is created by hooking particular values (lighter and darker wool in the same color) of purple (Jack Horner Plum #111) next to each other.  The lighter areas are prominent and the darker areas recede. 

Hooking by value

Some of you know that I am developing a hooking method that I call VIP hooking.  This stands for "value intense palette" hooking.  It is based on a concept in art used by painters that we really see things according to the lightness and darkness of the area painted.  The color itself doesn't really matter as much.  So I have been applying this to my rug hooking, working with four values: light, light-medium, dark-medium, and dark.  I separate my wools into these four groups and then I hook them in to my design accordingly. HERE IS A LINK to my webpage "What is VIP Rug Hooking" and also to "VIP Hooking Primer" where I explain this in more detail.  Both are under the pull down menu: "The Wool Palette."

Tonight I ran across a great website with lessons about painting with values.  What it has to say is totally applicable to rug hooking and I learned a lot going through the pages.  HERE IS THE LINK if you are interested. 

As for rugs and value.   Mediums are nice, but not alone.  They are better when hooked with other values.  If your rug isn't working, try a lighter value or a darker value near the mediums.  It will pop!

White Tiger Beauty is finished

I finished White Tiger Beauty last night and bound it today. I tried something different with the binding. I used wool strips 1 1/2 inches wide that I folded over the edge and bound off as normal. But after pressing the rug flat, I got the idea to frame it in, so I went back over the edge holding the steam iron about 1/4" above the wool. Then I rolled the wool in toward the rug. It created a 3D wool frame that looks neat.

White Tiger Beauty. 2010. 17" by 17". 4-cut. Original design. Designed, dyed and hooked by April DeConick. Red Jack Rugs Palette dyes: Rosy Cheeks 113,Sand Castle 114, Milk Weed 115, Stormy Sea 120, Antique Black, White; #7 & #8 values of Alexander Blue 109, English Lavender 110, Sugar Plum 111, Raspberry Wine 112; tints and tones of Raspberry Wine 112 and Sugar Plum 111; Textures Stormy Sea 120. Hooked using VIP method (Value Intense Palette).