Embroidered Collage

I added additional rows of cretan stitches, as intended, altering the texture of the background.  I like the subtle effect.  I was playing around with the materials and decided to add the interesting natural gold paper.  The strip at the top just called to me, for some reason, and the third tree shape and small squares were added to provide balance.  I also enjoyed being able to add a touch of bright color by using a bright orangey-red thread to stitch the paper down.

What would I do differently?  I don't like the way the fabric to paint transition bisects the painting.  It's just so obvious.  I think I would find some way to make that transition more gradual, even just by curving the cut line of the fabric.  I think I made a mis-step with the focal point.  It's supposed to be the tree cluster, but there's this paler region right smack dab in the center that just keeps drawing my eye.  It's annoying me.  I didn't really think to look for that when I was developing the piece.  It's not from a compositional error, but an artifact of uneven paint distribution in just the wrong place.

What did I do well?  I captured the composition and textural changes I was going for, partially by planning and partially by improvisation.  The overall piece pleases me.  It was a good step forward.

"First Shades of Autumn" is now complete.  You can also see a larger image.  I started out with sketches and materials, painted a layer, added the major composition elements and then added the stitched details.  There are giclee prints available.  The original will be submitted to a juried show this weekend.

In the theme of continuing with variation, I used a pile of beads from my stash instead of buying new ones.  I attached one to each square using some variety of two crossing stitches, sometimes deliberately bending the line of the thread to the side on the other end of the bead.  They still needed something, so I went for that accent of a dark value and made small patterns of straight stitch  with a black metallic thread.  I used three or four different family concepts of how the straight stitches interacted with each other.  By family concept I mean how many stitches there were and whether they crossed and so forth. 

These are definitely going to be stitched onto my next layering after the autumn piece.  I keep pulling the 25 pieces out and arranging and rearranging them, trying to decide what kind of effect I'm after.  I know I don't want an evenly irregular look, like in this overall picture, but that's about the only firm decision I've made.

  I've been pretty distracted this week.  I started on a little bit of stitching on Tuesday while traveling and didn't get very far along in this week's challenge.  When I returned home I realized I needed to concentrate on completing Autumn, since there's a show I want to put it in on the 3rd.  I still love fly stitch and want to play more with it, but not right now.  If you didn't catch my more extensive sampler from Sharon's class, go back and take a peek.

I played with acrylic ink again.  This time I used the same acrylics I printed the ocean paper with to paint the full sheet of watercolor paper first, just sponging it on, blending and not blending, then adding some dry brushed cream for greater variation.  Since the water absorbency was now sealed away I had better results  when I added dots of ink and tilted the paper this way and that.    I kept adding more dots and doing more tilting until I was happy with the results.  The section shown above is about a third in height of the pieces being sent to swap.

30 done.  No more to go.  Yes!  And I have a half dozen sheets I kept for myself, as well.  For the other papers in this swap I printed fish patterns, recycled artwork, sponged over ridged paper, and dribbled and scraped on top of collaged blueprints.

I went back to what I posted when I joined this swap.  I did try out one of the techniques I'd been mulling over.  But mostly I opted for refinements and variations on previous attempts and didn't really step outside the box with this swap.  That just means I'll have to think about stretching myself further next time.  :)  I love my papers and am really looking forward to seeing the returns later in the Spring.

I added the basic fabric elements to this piece to set the composition, then put in just a little bit of cretan stitch at the mid-left to get the stitching started.  I honestly hadn't been expecting to add the darker and thicker row of stitches across the bottom, but it seemed like a good idea and the value contrast worked stunningly well.  I think the cretan stitch evokes the feeling of trees nicely, with it's up and down markings, but keeps a forest like continuity because of the sideways connections.  You'll be seeing more of it on this piece.  I cropped this photo to near the 12"x12" dimensions of the finished piece to give a bit of a different impression from the full view of the 18"x18" canvas I'm working on that I showed in the blog entries on painting and beginnings.

Time for another round of decorating paper.  This time I expanded on last year's efforts with printfoam, craft acrylics, and colored card-stock.  I made four printing plates, instead of two, just drawing with the wrong end of a paintbrush.

 

 

I used a pack of 12x12 cardstock in shades of blue, light green, and cream.  I bought craft acrylics in a couple shades of blue and a couple shades of cream.  I applied the paint to the printfoam printing plate with a wide foam sponge brush. It took a few tries to get the right amount on.  In a number of pages that first print is very blurred.  The second night I printed over the sheets again, generally, although not always, with a different pattern.

I liked my results and reserved a few of them for myself.  But I added another step to the pages I was contributing to the swap.  I used my Art Stix, the Prismacolor colored pencils in stick form, to add circles or waves or shading to each page.  Some still look oceanic and some just look interesting.  I'm very happy with them.  25 pages down and only 5 more to go.