Louise Smith

A view from Oak Bay, British Columbia. 5.25 x 7.75 inches. The sky, mountains and distant shore are hand painted. The water and foreground rocky spit are hand embroidered. The sailing boat is made of Tyvek and thread, and the few gulls sitting on the rocks are Tyvek as well.

Some photos of earlier stages:

You’ll see I did some underpainting of the rocks and water. I used that underpainting as a guide to shape and colour as I embroidered the rocks. Don’t mind my practice blobs around the sides. I hadn’t finished painting the clouds when I took this photo.

Here I’ve started to do some stitching of the water and part of the rock. I then darkened up the sky a little when I saw how bold the foreground was going to look.

I’ve embroidered more of the rock by now. There are still some empty patches in the water. After filling those areas, I stitched my seagulls onto the rock (I cut a narrow strip from my trusty old FedEx envelope and used it like thread). I added the boat last of all, also made of tiny pieces of Tyvek. I glued some blue thread lint to one of the sails for some shading, and left the other bare to catch the light.

Thread on hand-painted silk, 5.5 x 2 inches.

The hoop above shows the whole painted background from which my tall skinny shape was cropped. I mixed up a green and a blue (Pebeo Setasilk paints) and poured them on one immediately after the other. Then dripped on some medium, which appears white (it dilutes the colour away).

I sometimes turn the hoop this way and that while the paint is drying in an attempt to achieve a pleasing effect, but it’s mostly a matter of luck. This time the finished result happens to remind me of the Windows XP default background. Then I hang it to dry and clean up my green and blue kitchen counter.

Here I’ve planned out my composition with a paper frame to show my intended crop, and paper pieces for the dandelion clock and departing fluff. I didn’t record my progress from here to the final picture, but I followed the same methods I’ve used before.

3 x 3.25 inches. Hand stitching on hand-painted silk.

These are some of Vancouver’s North Shore Mountains. I painted the sky, then underpainted the mountains and hand-stitched over them. The snow is sewn from thin strips of a FedEx envelope (Tyvek).

My favourite fibre to use for distant fir trees is serger thread, but I only have it in one shade at the moment. It covers the ground quickly with that little bit of bulk yet transparency that suggests trees.

Some photos of the climb:

Finally the summit. With thumb for scale

5.75 x 8.25 inches. This is a view from Maui’s Napili Kai towards the island of Moloka’i in the distance. I liked the way the manicured grass and civilized fence led me “into the wild” of the brush, rocks and ocean.

The sky, distant island and ocean are hand-painted on silk. Except for the fence, the rest is hand-embroidered, including the palm tree, surf, rocks, bushes and grass. I did underpaint the grassy areas so that I didn’t have to cover every last millimetre of silk with thread. You can see this better on the close-up below.

The fence is made of pieces of ribbon cut to size and coloured with Pentel pastel dye sticks. The larger pieces are attached with thread and the smaller ones using tiny amounts of acid-free sticky dots.

A close-up of the palm fronds. I included some shiny threads. When the sun hits palm fronds, they look almost metallic.

And grasses. With green underpainting, otherwise it would take me the rest of my life.

An earlier in-progress shot.

Starting to outline the palm tree.

Testing placement of fence posts. I preferred a lighter colour so ended up going over them with white pastel dye stick.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip to Hawai’i!

Aloha nui loa!

Aloha!

A little Hawaiian scene I’ve been working on. The finished area will be about 4.5 inches x 3 and a bit inches.

I’m still fine-tuning the painted background. I dipped the end of a toothpick in paint and used that to draw the shape of the mountains, to try to get it something close to accurate. Even my brushes are not that fine.

You’ll see I’ve already stitched some of the foreground threads, which helps me determine how strong I need to go on the background colours.

The rough underpainting in the foreground will end up mostly obscured by thread. I’ll also unpick those bits of thread I used to mark the horizon line and corners. It will all be hand-stitched and will take a while, but that means all the more of these evening-and-weekend “trips to Hawaii” for me.