Figurative Felting

So, I am at the final stage of my surface design course - the individual project phase.  For this piece, I attempted to do a "life felting" (instead of "life drawing") for the very first time.  I used the following techniques from Fiona Duthie's course to complete the piece: exotic fibres, tape, nuno inclusions, flat prefelt and surface stitches.

This was an exciting project as I really had no idea how the final product would turn out.  It was also intellectually challenging because I had to employ the various felting techniques at different stages of the felting process which required that I act deliberately and plan ahead.  In the past, my work has typically used one or two surface design elements that were applied during the layout phase so this definitely was a departure from the usual.  I am excited about this new approach as it adds a layer of complexity to my work that has been missing.

This is another piece that I did which required a similar level of planning and deliberation.  In fact, I prepared a planning drawing for this one:

Overall, I am very happy that I enrolled in this felting surface design course with Fiona Duthie.  Working away at the lessons taught me many new techniques while the individual project forced me out of my comfort zone and into creating something more complex than most of my earlier work.  I definitely recommend this course (http://www.fionaduthie.com/workshops/surface-design-in-feltmaking-online-workshop/) to anyone wanting to up their felting "game."