Embroidered Collage

As I considered what to do with the painted sheet I realized that it looked something like a landscape with a red sky.  I had used cretan stitch to good effect in a previous landscape and thought it would work well here.  I only wanted to use one stitch, since, at least for now, putting in a restriction seems to give me better results.  Instead I varied the colors and thicknesses of the silk threads I used. 

I mostly chose thread colors based on the paint underneath, but deliberately tried to be a little off so the stitching would show up.  At the bottom I put in some extra browns to emphasize the earth of the landscape.  I also tried to use cooler and lighter colors farther away to get some of the atmospheric perspective that also makes the brain register landscape.  One of the reasons I chose that darker, thicker brown in the bottom left was to extend the value range. I didn't think this out logically step by step as I was stitching.  The concepts would drift to the top of my brain as I was selecting the next bit to add and I'd use them in a more improvisational manner.

I love this piece.  I look at it and think I couldn't have done less or more to it and that this is the kind of effect I was hoping for when I started embroidering watercolors.  Now if I could just figure out why that is, so I can extrapolate into future works...