With this chapter, I attempted to do some drawings. I did them all in pencil first and I had to use an eraser. Then once I was reasonably satisfied, I inked them in and erased the pencil markings. I see in a couple of places that my erasures were not as well done as they should have been. Most of the pictures are from magazines. However, I did take a lot of photographs from my garden and I still have them for future references. I noticed ALL my page photographs are dark on the bottom and light on the top ….. I still have to figure out how I can improve on this. I take my photographs with a mini i Pad where I can easily use the focus function. There is a lot of light in the room from sky lights and large windows. So why the pictures come out dark at the bottoms …. maybe it is my shadow???
Shape and Form
Page 1
rounded and oval forms (the seed pod of the tulip sneaked onto the page – not quite a smooth round form!!)
Page 2
Thin and spiky
Page 3
Heart shapes, pleated shape and more ovals.
Page 4
Spikey!
Page 5
Tubular and trumpet shapes
Page 6
Crinkly edges.
Page 7
Pictures of a single rhododendron flower
Page 8
I didn’t include the stamen shadows. I believe when I did this I was quite confused by all the lines.
Page 9
Fabric – unbleached cotton
Stabilizer – Avalon Madeira tear away cotton soft white (Art 9436).
Thread – Gutermann polyester - black (colour #10)
I found this difficult to get the right proportions of each of the petals. One cannot erase and I did not rip out any of the stitches. Fun to do!!!
Page 10
More examples of photographs of flowers and subsequent drawings (tulip and a single geranium flower)
Page 11
My example of a Cefyn Burgess stitched piece. Cefyn Burgess has used basic line drawings for his stitched pieces. They are fluid in style with no shading. There is a freshness to his work.
Page 12
I picked some flowers from my garden. A great time of the year to do this chapter as there are so many examples to choose from the garden.
Page 13
My original drawing was of the 4 flowers …. I forgot to put in the leaf of the columbine. I also added the middle flower (a small allium) after I had stitched the piece. There was just too much space between the columbine and the California poppy. As an afterthought, I could have put the leaf in and maybe that would have solved my problem.
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Fabric – unbleached cotton
Stabilizer – Avalon tear away as above
Threads – Guttermann – polyester- black (colour # 10)
Adding the 5th flower in the middle didn’t really work. I tried!!! The space was too big to leave empty!!
I enjoyed this type of stitching!!!
Page 15
A second attempt of a simple line drawings of flowers a la Cefyn Burgess.
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The drawing!
Page 17
Fabric – unbleached cotton
Stabilizer – Avalon tear away as above (Note: I did not realize I was using the tear away until after I had finished stitching all these pieces!!) – an excellent stabilizer!!!
Thread – Guttermann – black polyester (colour # 10)
The stitching.
Page 18
My sample of Grinling Gibbons’ work. Grinling Gibbons was Dutch/British wood sculptor in the Baroque style. He sculpted full sized still life elements in lime wood as decorative garlands around fireplaces, doors, windows, etc. His work is found in many of the mansions in England. In my attempt at the drawing of my selected photograph, I did include some shading.
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This arrangement was my first attempt to capture Grinling Gibbons’ style. On retrospect, I felt that this was more like a Japanese Ichiban arrangement.
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This is my drawing of the above arrangement.
Page 21
I then decided to place all of the elements closer together.
Page 22
Fabric – unbleached cotton
Stabilizer – Avalon tear away as above.
Thread - Guttermann – polyester black (colour # 10)
I stitched the spokes of the maple leaves first to try and get everything in the right place. Then the flowers. the middle flower on the left is not in the right place … the other two flowers were a little bit better. I do like the idea of stitching around most of the elements of the piece twice. My shading of the bottom leaf is not very good.
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My selection of vases and a tea pot!!! This is not easy to do. I should have over lapped the various elements a bit more.
Page 24
Two examples of taking out some lines and deciding what should be positive/negative.
Page 25
The sample I chose to stitch.
Page 26
Fabric – black felt
Stabilizer – Avalon Madeira tear away cotton soft (Art 9436). I did draw the picture on the back and stitched the outline from the back.
Thread – Guttermann – polyester – white
Stitching – Granite stitch. I did find stitching a bit difficult to stay with the selected stitch. However, I did get lots of practice!! I also found out that is better to go up and down that to go cross wise!!! I often got into a muddle and went willy nilly!!!
One change I would have done was to move the handle into the center of the piece instead of the outside. Also to have the still life elements overlapping more.
In this chapter, I did practice my drawings. Still have to use an eraser to get the proportions in place. All lots of fun.
