Embroidered Collage

After a few refinements I completed this piece that I began by playing with paper.  First I extended some lines and drew some circles with watercolor crayons.  But I had made the dark blue circles far too intense so I had to color in some more with greys and light blues and do a wash of color to mute them down.  I couldn't decided at the time whether I liked that the effect melded the papers together more or disliked the that it muted down their individual characteristics.  Seeing the collage completed I am certain that I like the melding effect. 

Then I went looking through my beads.  I decided to add a little pizzazz by putting in the peach/pink beads on top of the raised turquoise paper but also wanted a focal bead of some variety.  I auditioned a few and picked this one because of the intense color.  The circles caused by a droplet falling into water seemed an appropriate next layer.  I considerd adding more backstitch in different colors or wrapping some of it, but decided that the simple lines worked best for the piece.

The Eleventh Door

Regarding the Movement of Water

I continued with two of the basic collages, obscuring and altering sections with acrylic paint in a deliberately loose and abstract fashion, then scraping some white over the completed pieces.  When they dried, I trimmed the 6x8 pieces down to 5x7 and added stitching.

I'm pleased with them, especially The Eleventh Door, but they're a little messy for my taste.  I think I want to be more deliberate when I paint the next pair.  I have no problems with the stitching though.  Using the stranded cotton floss works well as a simple mark and I'm happy with the motifs that I repeated.  I do think I could push the stitching further, even while keeping it flat, but I'm not quite sure how yet.

After I complete all ten of the 5x7 collages I will decide if I want to expand any of them further into 8x10s or even use one on a Footstep, or if I will list them all on Etsy.

These ATCs are only the beginning.  I bought a sheet of architectural collage images from ArtChix sized to fit into slides some time back because they intrigued me.  I knew I would probably use them in ATCs and thought about how they would fit with other elements.  Eventually I came up with idea of nesting these photographs into rectangles of greater abstraction.  The idea lingered until I decided that I definitely wanted to try doing some small works in a batch process/pseudo-series format.  I wanted to play with extrapolating pattern from the focal point of the realistic image.

I cut the ATC blanks, then adhered the sixteen slide images in what seemed to be an appropriate position.  I only used the gel medium on the back, in order to make it easier to draw on the surface later.  The next day I extended and echoed lines from the photographs into the rest of the card using markers.  Then, I applied colored pencils, both to fill in the shapes I'd drawn and to add additional information.

I spread the cards out when I was done and started separating them.  I knew I wanted ten of the cards to become part of 5x7 collages.  I bounced around thinking about whether the composition of an individual card was perfect as it was and whether or not I could see ways to extend the patterning into further abstraction.  I ended up discarding one card as not being very good and selected these five to put into my trade folder at www.atcards.com .  You'll be seeing the other ten soon.

These are the four atcs that I had managed to cut out of the one textured painting that I also cut swap paintings from.  I liked the red line effect that I used in the paintings and continued it here, but with less room for the composition, I felt they needed more to be complete.  So, I stitched in another red line and drew in another with colored pencil.  I still think they're a little odd, but like the repetition and will be sending them in for a swap.

I need better names for these 6" pieces and I have no idea what to name the other two either, once they are done.  But here's the eye candy part. :)  I'm pleased with the experiment so far. 

I had embedded bits of the metal sheet into heavy gel medium, which was what you saw in the first group picture.  After the gel had dried thoroughly - I gave it a couple of days - I worked blue and purple fluid acrylic paints into it, brushing across the ridges in some place and dabbing into lower areas with others.  Then I cut the metal sheet so it would fit against the textured area and in the sewable portion of the stretched canvas.  I stitched it on, but decided it wasn't complete, so added the beading, just enough to draw the eye in a little more.

I did very little to this painting.  I added small colored pencil lines in the red area to enliven the background a touch and then enhanced certain central blobs with backstitched lines.  Yet, even at this low level, the mark of the stitch is distinctly different than if I had drawn or painted the lines and including them did indeed add to the painting.  It doesn't need anymore.  Unfortunately I did have difficulty getting the best picture of it.  I think it will show to better effect if I can grab a photo in the sunlight.

All of the little squares have been stitched securely to the background in what will be their final arrangement.  Each is tacked down with a straight stitch at the four corners of the square.  I like how the composition evolved but it needs more.  It doesn't have that "complete" feel yet.  I'm thinking about adding stitching throughout the background in some manner.

My first attempt at altering the background involved  iridescent gold paint and shimmering green/red paint.  But the picture looked so pale and not at all like I'd imagined.  So I attacked it with watercolor crayons, gold and metallic gold, green and silver.  I used liquid acrylic medium to wet down and spread the colors.  I got a little more than I bargained for in terms of pigment, but it worked.

I tacked the background to the frame for easy stitching, then pinned the squares to the canvas in the arrangement I wanted them.  Since I used straight pins pointing up and down, this made working on the piece kind of interesting.  I was trying to avoid getting pricked!  I had to sit in a particular position sideways on the loveseat and support the frame with my knees.  One of these days I need one of those frame stands so I don't need to use body parts.  But it turned out well in the end.

If you missed the previous entries, this piece has been evolving from random little squares, to which I added stitching, created a background for them, and then tried out potential arrangements.