Greetings, quilling enthusiasts! I’m excited to share a recent piece, a pod of three quilled contour line whales. This artwork was inspired by my fascination with contour line drawings.
The Obsession with Contour Line Drawings
At the time of creating this piece, I was captivated by contour line drawings. Their simplicity and elegance, using lines to capture the essence of subjects, truly intrigued me.
The Birth of the First Whale
The inspiration for this project sparked a few days earlier when I crafted my very first quilled whale. It was a moment of artistic experimentation, propelling me into the aquatic world and left me feeling like I wanted to have another go at it. The inspirational piece was of a whale in an ocean scene, and on his back was an island. The imagery kind of got lost in translation, but it was pretty when it was done.
A Unique Approach to Quilling
To create these humpback whales, I chose an unconventional quilling approach. Instead of the traditional method of rolling and shaping paper strips, I embraced an edge-gluing technique. This allowed me to mimic the effect of hand-drawn contour lines, capturing the grace and form of these majestic creatures.
Sadly, when I continued working on this piece, I made the decision to try to use contour lines to fill in the background water and it looked quite terrible. I ended up throwing the entire thing away because I didn’t feel as though it was salvageable. I wish now that I’d kept it because I think I could have removed the whales from that background and put them on a different one. But, hindsight is 20-20 and all we can do is learn from our mistakes.
Stacy
