Betty Busby Blog: Torrey Pines

Several years ago, I had the great pleasure to visit the San Diego area for the opening reception of the Visions show. We made a day trip to Torrey Pines State Park, and I made a piece based on some photos I took from the back door of the visitor's center. The place is unique, in my experience, because you drive up to the top of a mountain overlooking the sea, yet are still surrounded by trees. They are unique to the area, but since I can't see what makes them so different, I just made some regular old pine needles :)

This is one of my pictures that I used as reference- of course, I changed things around substantially.

First I ripped off a hunk of silk and painted a sky

Then I put up a piece of newsprint- off of a 48" wide roll I bought a couple of years ago- a must have!
Since I hate drawing straight lines, the horizon line is folded in. A couple of reference photos are printed out and pinned to the right.

Here's the sketch, freehanded of course. Yes, this is all the drawing I usually do.

here you see my fabulous light table- recycled glass shower doors, sawhorses, shop light.
I have the newsprint sketch between 2 of the glass pieces, and will lay silk over the top to paint it. The light shining upward will let me see the guidelines of the sketch with out having to actually make marks on the silk.

painting in progress, it's intentionally very loose and flowy- I'll add details with paintstick and stitching.

my favorite stencil- ripped up paper. You can do almost anything with it.

surf lines and estuary stream.

I seamed the sky and the sea/land portion along the horizon line, and pre quilted the entire thing.

here is is, having boulders and hills tried on for size. The ones on the left are from another picture I took there that I printed onto fabric, chopped up and rearranged. It's further to the right than the view of the actual picture, but was so cool I had to include it.

this will all go back on the machine and get quilted.

Finally, we get to the pines.....first, the branches are stitched with dark thread, which extends beyond the "bark" area to give me more detail and structure for the needles.