Shining Through
Saturday, August 27th, 2022
6.25 x 5.875 inches. Hand embroidery on hand painted silk. Looking towards Fairview across False Creek from David Lam Park in Vancouver, BC. The building on the far left is Broadway City Hall.
A few close-ups, taken in different lighting:
And some photos I took along the way:
There’s a lot of underpainting in this one. I used thread to sketch an outline of the buildings, as the thread helps stop the paint running where it shouldn’t. Then unpicked the thread once I was happy with the look of the buildings.
Above, I’ve underpainted the water and started to play with metallic thread on some of the buildings.
Lots more texture appearing by now. I will have decided I was finished with the background painting and used an iron to seal the silk paint. I’ve hand painted small bits of silk a few shades of darker brown and appliqued them to the tree trunk to represent peeling bark. For the drooping twigs I split thread into the finest strands I could, arranged them on the picture, and secured them to the silk background with tiny threads here and there. This was my favourite part and probably the reason I decided to do this picture. It feels like it’s painting itself. One of the last things I did was attach a few tiny bits of orange and purple painted silk to represent the most tenacious leaves.