Klimt Inspired

For the Thanksgiving holiday I decided to keep it simple and what could be more simple than looking at Gustav Klimt. While I do hear some scoffing in the background, and some comments on the complexity and richness of his artwork, such depth can be divided easily into simple concepts. In fact the main part of his work that I would like to explore are his fabrics.

In his most famous piece, now gracing the cover of the newest Danielle Steele novel I believe, the Kiss, Klimt surrounds his two central figures in a luxurious detailed fabric. He has painted this fabric, but what’s to say it doesn’t exist, especially after the artwork has been around so long. Using fabric in artwork is a unique phenomenon to Klimt. Detailed fabrics appear in less obvious ways as part of furniture, home design, and costume design.

Using fabrics within a painting simply converts it to Mixed Medium and adds a sense of texture that might not otherwise be achieved. In a digital environment, taking pictures of fabric and cloning the print into an existing space or wrapping it around a 3D object is the way to go. What better way to finish up that Victorian style armchair than to find the fabric that would best cover it and scan it in as a texture to wrap around the fabric portion of the 3D object.

This adds a greater sense of realism and saves some time on creating the intricate fabrics that may have existed and been used. Looking through fabric websites is a great way to explore what is available to use, as well as visiting the fabric store to look through the bolts of fabric to find a pattern that you like. You may even wish to buy a single yard to start a fabric scrapbook in order to call upon favorite fabrics for a variety of reasons.

Regardless of how you go about getting the fabric and getting it into the digital environment, once you have it there it’s time to use it. I suggest starting off easy as I did. I sketched out a rough picture on paper and then recreated it quickly in a draw program using thick lines to delineate my object. I even put each object on a separate layer to further identify single elements. In the first picture here you can see my original piece. There are nine Layers: Sky, Plains, Tree Trunk, Foliage 1, Foliage 2, Foliage 3, Sun Corona, Sun Core, and Leopard. I wanted to pin down the kind of fabric or color that I was looking for for each layer and so I filled in digital textures to approximate and that is the second picture you see.

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