Embroidered Collage

 I used the butterfly stamp to develop a background for some other swaps.  I laid down a set of blue butterflies diagonally on heavy watercolor paper and then laid down a set of purple ones diagonally across them.  When I cut it up into smaller rectangles you won't be able to see the butterflies, just the patterning.

 Next I did a wash with a blue liquid acrylic.  I adhered some bits of a light blue mulberry paper and let it dry.  Then I added drops of different darker colors and dabbed at them with paper towels, using those to both break up the drop and to spread the color in an uneven pattern to other parts of the paper.  I thought it turned out interesting and complex, as planned.

I received tube watercolor paints for Christmas, a small Winsor and Newton Cotman set.  The tubes are so TINY compare to what I'm used to with acrylics.  So I had to play with them. 

It really is a different experience from the pans and the crayons.  Somehow mixing colors is more natural when squeezing out little dabs of paint than when using pans.  I also tried some lifting out of paint, both with brush and paper towel, which are where some of the lighter areas came from.  I thought the resulting 9x12 sheet was really pretty neat, but ended up cutting it down to two 5x7 sheets to achieve better compositions.

  My favorite part of watercolor is the way it flows, so I wanted to make use of that effect in adding color to the sketches, but not the same for all of them. 

For the butterfly wing I wanted the color to spread wildly, so I worked primarily wet in wet from my pan watercolors.  I used the pans again, but with less water on the first sketch to get a more overlapping effect.

In contrast, I colored within the lines on the purple butterfly using watercolor crayons to make it easier to keep the flow to a minimum.  It seemed an appropriate approach to the more stylized design.  However, the end results on the purple and the rust butterflies were closer in appearance than I had expected.

Next step is, of course, stitching.

I started with lines on the first set of sketches, so I thought I'd also try the other way and start with color, building up shapes instead.  That would give me a different set of options when I reached the stitching stage, since there wouldn't already be prominent lines in the image.  I did get the effect I wanted on the two paintings that I tried, but they're so faint.  I need to build up the color intensity further somehow before I consider adding linework or stitching.

  For my simplified version I started with a limited color scheme in watercolor crayons.  I loved the flowing effects that I got this time.  I'm not sure why, but some of the crayon colors seem to flow more than others when wetted.

For stitching I chose a whipped backstitch.  I started out with just backstitch but it didn't look right, so I used the same thread to smooth out the lines by whipping.  I kept it even simpler by just using floss and floche - a matte thread the same thickness of two strands of floss.

I think the composition on the atcs is a little weak, but I'm really happy with how the 5x7 turned out.  I think that the little pink circle focal point really makes the piece somehow.  The problem is that from even a little distance or at a smaller scale most of the stitching disappears when viewing the artwork.  The subtle effect could be useful in certain situations, but is not what I'll usually be going for.  I want the embroidery to show!

I made my first attempt at expanding the banded abstracts of the strata I'd been working with on a small scale into stitched works.  The watercolor part turned out great, but I didn't like the stitching as much.

I used watercolor crayons on a 9x12 sheet and really played with pushing the color around when I added water, so developed some interesting effects.  I hadn't been able to get wash effects using crayons before.  I just needed more water and time.  The result is shown to the left.

Then I cut the piece up to create backgrounds for a handful of art cards and a 5x7 picture.  I didn't have a plan for stitching for any of them. I just pulled out some silk threads that I had available and improvised.  I primarily thought about extending color into other areas using stitch.

While the results aren't bad, I think I needed a little more planning.  On the 5"x7" piece, the random stitch selection pulled the piece apart.  And I just wasn't able to control the needlelace stitch - in yellow off the red buttonhole stitch.  It ended up being a loose mess.  The patterns on the art cards are interesting, but not the best compositions I could have chosen.

Overall, I was pleased with my experiment, but decided to narrow down my options for my next trial to try to achieve a little more unity in the finished work.

The watercolor paints from the pan shaded nicely in my last set of ACEOs so I wanted to try doing just that on the blank paper, instead of over a previous picture.  I painted twice, then added details with Pitt pens to make the cards at the bottom of the entry.

My first iteration of painting I mostly worked directly from the pans.  I had originally been intending to work only in the cool colors, but started experimenting with adding in some of the complementary warms instead.  All of the purple is mixed in some fashion, as there is no purple in my pans.  Much of it was done on the paper, adding a drop of red to still wet blue, for example, but some was mixed on the paletter area before application.

These were very interesting, but they really seemed to be just backgrounds, so I knew I wanted to do more.  I decided to push my exploration a bit further and see what happened if I painted on top of them.  I knew that water was supposed to pull the pigment on the paper back up, at least to some degree and I wanted to see what would happen.

Mostly I tried to add more value contrast.  I was able to see for myself how it was important to reserve the light areas, because trying to add yellow or white did nothing for the value, although it tinted the color already there a bit.  I could also tell that the paint on the paper was mixing into the newly applied paint to some extent.  For a few cards I tried to add details - deliberately using only a little water and just the tip of the brush to draw lines.

The card in the middle left spot actually had some of those lines on it and I hated it.  So it washed over it again.  This time I could REALLY see how I was able to break up those lines and push them around.  But I also came a lot closer to making mud and completely losing any color variations.  It also gave me a chance to see how easy it was to make colors darker by additional layers of paint.

So now I had some more distinctive shadings of color, but most of them didn't look like completed works of art to me, so I decided to try something else.  I pulled out the Pitt colored india ink pens that I had purchased a couple months ago.  The brush tip application method and semi-transparency of some of the colors complemented the watercolor look effortlessly, but with more control.  I primarily enhanced the boundaries of areas in order to add interest.

I decided to keep one of the cards, but here are the eight that will eventually be listed on etsy.  I find I enjoy the feel of the pigment on the paper, or at least this paper.  It just soaks in and it's almost like the paint is part of the paper, which is a very different tactile experience than I've had with acrylics.