Strong Roots - Impressionism

Instead of spending my day floating in the pool, I decided to work.  Ahh... yes, but on my own stuff -- the Journeys Thru Art 2012 project.  Recently we all decided to work at our own paces (rush) and attempt to get these done early.

The projects are miniquilts (blocks) for these six styles of art:  Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Art Deco, Impressionism, and Pop Art.

You remember my Fauvism square right?  If not click here.
And my Cubism... no?  Click here.

Well... Expressionism.  That one needs to be redone.  I wanted to do the entire square as thread painting... started, block shrunk up more than 1/2 inch and I'd only just started.  That was making it extremely difficult to keep at my 12" finished size.  So instead of trying to calculate exactly how much larger I'd need to start, it is easier (and quicker) to redo.  This time I'll use some paint and some thread play

Onward... Art Deco... bleck!  Not my favorite.  We'll skip that one and do it later.  Don't want to crush the creativity because I'm not happy with the style, we're on a deadline here people!

Impressionism.... B I N G O!  Easy peasy!

Now, for those that don't know about Impressionism here comes a brief (super short) art lesson compliments of Wikipedia (click here if you want to read the full version):
Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists. Their independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s, in spite of harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari.Impressionist painting characteristics include

• Relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes
• Open composition
• Emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities 
• Common, ordinary subject matter
• Inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience
• Unusual visual angles

Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting.  They constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted realistic scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as [1]  The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colour—not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary—to achieve an effect of intense colour vibration.

I choose to use a snippet technique for my block.  I felt this would accomplish the small, visible brush stroke criteria.  My tree is definitely ordinary subject matter, and all the rest, well, we won't worry about those... deadline, remember?

Here are my palettes blues for the sky, greens for grass, and browns for the tree:

And the day in pictures (minus the sticky glue/fusible fingers):

Strong Roots - Impressionism

So what do you think?  I know, it still needs to be quilted -- that's a breeze!  Stay tuned for more on my Journeys Thru Art 2012 projects!