Louise Smith

5.75 x 6.25 inches, hand embroidery on hand-painted silk.  A view from the ferry between the mainland and Vancouver Island.  This one took a while…there was an apartment move since the last blog post, if that’s any excuse!

The photo below shows an earlier stage of the artwork.  I’ve used some thread, which I later remove, to mark the edges of the picture and also to give me a straight horizon line.  This picture goes almost to the edge of my hoop, so it was important for me to see clearly where exactly on-stage and offstage begin.  Especially because I like to try out my colours in the wings.

I leave the thread in place while I paint the sky, because it physically stops my brush from blundering into the horizon line and messing up the white “touch of light” area.

I underpainted the whole water area, then stitched on top of it in lighter-coloured thread (Sulky machine embroidery thread, which I usually split into half-thickness or less depending on how distant the waves).  The photo below shows where I probably stopped underpainting.  Then I unpicked my edge thread and ironed the whole picture to seal the paint before starting to stitch.  However, I did paint the sky some more after the sewing was completed.  It often happens that the stitching ends up looking more intense than I expected and the background needs to be built up a bit more to match.  Then I re-ironed just the sky area.

More water is on its way, in no great hurry of course!

5 x 7 inches, a view of the North Shore from Burrard Inlet.  The sky and mountains are hand-painted.  I also did some underpainting of the water, trees and sandbars.  Then I glued on thread lint and did some stitching for the line of trees on the left, and all the water and sandbars are hand-stitched.

The mini-lighthouse is a Frankenstein’s monster mix of thread, hand-painted ribbon and Tyvek.  When I first glued on the little strip of Tyvek representing the whitest part of the lighthouse, it looked too bright and “stuck on” (even though it is).  So I poked it with a needle all over, which made it look slightly distressed, dimmed the brightness and made it look much more like it belongs.  I may or may not have discovered this by accident during a moment of frustration.

I also found it best to sew the stilts of the lighthouse with lots of horizontal stitches.  A few long diagonal stitches might seem like the best way, but I found it looked too detached from the background.  In fact the stilts have barnacles attached, so I think the irregularity of horizontal stitches helps suggest that variation in colour and thickness and makes it look more real.

I’m excited to be part of this show! You can see 50 Shades of Grey (below) as well as many other colours at the always beautiful Silk Purse Arts Centre.

A brief progress report.  I’ve painted more of the sky and made the colours stronger almost everywhere else…still not quite done yet.  I’m going to use thread lint for the stand of trees on the left and stitching for all the water and sandbars.  This is in my 9-inch hoop in case you’re wondering about scale.  I know some of the lines that should be straight are a bit wobbly but this will be corrected when I stretch the silk ready for framing.  There’s still a mini-lighthouse to be added as a focal point too.

Just a couple of things I’m working on at the moment.  First a view of the North Shore from Burrard Inlet.   Don’t mind my trying out my paint colours on all sides.  Lots more painting to do, some more interesting clouds, and a mini-lighthouse on stilts to be added in the foreground.

Below, the beginnings of a school of herring.  I started by pouring on blue paint, then while it was still wet I poured on white silk paint (also known as medium) and let it run down, making white stripes.  As the paint dries it continues to blend so you get an effect of light penetrating the water from above.  Now it’s a case of “just add fish.”

4.875 x 7 inches, hand stitching and free motion machine embroidery on hand-painted silk. A view from the seawall near English Bay in Vancouver.

I took a few photos of the work in progress. Below, here’s the sky all painted, with some dark green underpainting of the distant trees. Underpainting is to prevent any unpainted white silk from showing between stitches, and also to give me a rough idea of where to stitch in the first place. I’ve already begun embroidering some of the trees here…not enough patience to wait till the water was painted! And I’ve started to underpaint some gray-brown for the rocks. Before I start sewing on any area, I make sure to seal the paint using an iron.

On the picture below, the water is more painted. I left bare patches where the white surf was going to be. I’ve also started some free motion machine embroidery of the rocks. However, some time after this picture was taken, my sewing machine broke. I mean, froze up completely. I wasn’t able to fix it myself and I’m reluctant to get it repaired by a professional or buy a new one since I mostly do hand embroidery these days anyway, so I decided to complete the picture by hand.

It took ages and I’m not eager to repeat the experience, but I’m glad it’s done now. I had to take care when stitching around the rock pools, not to let those dark threads run behind the water where they would show through. Some of the rocks are sewn by couching one thread into place with another, and some just have random overlapping stitches. The nearer the rocks, the thicker the threads I used and the more often I threaded a needle with two colors at once.

I embroidered the surf with white thread, and left this till last so I could make it appear to splash up onto the rocks a bit.

Hopefully it’s not quite as long until my next post!

3.75 x 4.625 inches.  Hand embroidery on hand-painted silk.

I painted the background, and underpainted the water.  You can see from the in-progress picture below that I also painted some of the left-hand edge of the spare silk a medium blue.  I used some strands of that deeper blue for the hull of the distant sailing boat because I didn’t have any regular thread that was fine enough.

Early on in making this picture, I accidentally put a blob of “land” paint in the water.  Uh-oh!  I thought about inventing some more rocky outcrops to hide it, but instead I flipped the whole composition from left to right.  That way, the blob became part of the land on the left and even I can’t find it any more.

3.5 x 5 inches.  One of my dandscapes.

The background came about by chance.  I poured on gray-green silk paint and then ran some rivulets of the white medium over certain areas.  This erased the gray-green in stripes, but the silk was still so wet that it blended nicely into a nice effect of rays of light.

The stem is a piece of hand-painted ribbon (here’s how) and the rest is regular Gutermann sewing thread that I have teased into fluffiness and stuck down with acid-free glue.  I stitched the tiny seed pods with skinny pieces of hand-painted ribbon as well. There’s some hand-sewing in pinks and purples underneath the fluffy stuff.  I just wander the thread around in a rough circle; it doesn’t matter much because it will be only glimpsed through the fluff.

Framed:

Make a wish and blow!

6.5 x 5 inches, hand embroidery on hand-painted silk.

A view of Loch Fyne in mysterious and forbidding mood. The loch frequently has areas of perfect stillness while others are made slightly choppy by the wind (or underwater monsters). I hand-painted the sky and mountains, and also the narrow strip of still water. There’s some light underpainting underneath the embroidery as well, which shows through because the thread is semitransparent. Then lots of embroidery with my lovely Sulky threads in various shades, while keeping that strip of still water clear of thread, front and back.

Framed:

6.25 x 4.75 inches, hand embroidery on hand-painted silk.  This lighthouse is on a small island off the coast of British Columbia and the very faint purple mountains in the distance are the mainland.

The white part of the lighthouse is a scrap of Tyvek.  I have trouble capturing the shimmer of the threads on camera but may try again once it’s in the frame.  And here it is:

More scenes coming at my usual slow pace!