BC locals might recognize this as the view of DeBoville Slough in Coquitlam  from Cedar Drive.

It’s quite nerve-wracking to paint reflections!  But you have to embrace it at some point if you want to depict British Columbia landscapes.

I painted the sky and the water first.  Then I did some of the machine sewing.  Then, alarmed at the oomph of the embroidery compared to the water, I went back and painted the water a stronger colour.

The furthest-away of the foreground grasses are hand-sewn, some in 1-ply thread.  Then I machine-sewed grassy strokes and loops across those in thicker thread, to make the closer grasses look closer.

This scene reminds me of the happy weekend I once spent doing the Minnekhada Art in the Park Festival, as you pass it on the way.

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Wow!  And this is just the poster.  Great work by Kali putting it together.  I’ll have a few miniatures in this show and will be there doing some sewing.  It’ll be so nice to see my Art Focus friends again!

This miniature is based on a view from a beach in Hawaii, but I guess it could be anywhere you like to imagine.   The sky, distant island (Kahoolawe), and blue-coloured water are hand-painted, and so is the sand at the bottom.

There’s machine stitching to create the look of the white water, and some lint from chopped-up wool glued to the very edge of the water.  It helps bulk up the wave and hopefully make it look like it’s just about to break over your toes.  Then a hand-stitched boat and some tiny stitches in shiny invisible thread to make glints on the water, which don’t show in this photo.

And I can’t mention Hawaii without recommending slack key guitarist Makana.  His music’s featured on the film The Descendants which I (wrongly) haven’t seen yet, or look for him on YouTube.

I squeezed out a line of gutta along the water edge.  When the gutta was dry I painted the sand below in quick strokes with a brush.  The gutta stops the sand colour bleeding into the part I want to be blue.

When using gutta there is always a slightly heavier deposit of colour right next to it.  The paint stops dead at the gutta and has nowhere else to go except back over on itself.  Luckily that’s exactly what I wanted in this picture, as there is naturally a slim shadow cast by the foam itself and the sand really does look darker there.

After painting the water I machine-sewed all crazy with white thread in the foreground to look like foam.   This is so forgiving, mistakes only make it better.  I also hand stitched some white wool in there at the thickest part for extra volume.

For the gull I used some white wool chopped up and glued down with tacky glue.  There are some stitches in there for his legs and wings, and I had to use tiny dots of pastel dye sticks (applied using the tip of a pin) to get the detail of the beak and eye.  For a long time little Kenny hovered between life and the dreaded fate of being unpicked and sewn over into foam, but he made it.  His shadow was the last thing I painted, and he was all “yay.”

Stuff grew on my dune!

I did some background sewing using the machine but most of the grasses were done by hand.  I also had to split threads a lot of times into a single ply, to be able to get those narrow points.

I’ve learned you can run an unthreaded machine needle over painted sand or rock areas to give them more texture. Also not a bad way to make distant footprints or tracks on sand or snow.  For even more impact, thread with a thickish thread, run over the areas you want, and then unpick.

This dune is in South Shields, north-east England, also excellent for curries, fish and chips, and ice cream.

It’s hand-sewn except for the seedhead.  For that, I did a rough background on the machine and then those pesky pointy bits were done by hand.

The bee was great fun to do.  I stitched him by hand and then used the sharp end of my needle (oh this sounds horrible now) to rough him up a bit.  Did some trimming with scissors around the edges, so his belly is still fat but the edges of him appear further away.  There’s some invisible thread on the wing that catches the light.

As a side note, in the course of this picture I’ve learned that in parts of China, because the bee population has been pesticided down, whole villages have to pollinate their crops by hand using paintbrushes.  Art imitating life in a way I hope we don’t have to get used to.

A behind-the-scenes look.  This is my 7″ diameter hoop.

And I promised myself I wouldn’t make any bee puns, so I’ll quit before I give in to temptation.

For many long and boring reasons, I decided to start from scratch with a template that lets me do the basics even with my limited knowledge.

I expect there’ll be more changes and developments.  Websites are never really “done.”  But I’m glad to have some simple features functioning and I’m free to pick up my needle again!

The water is painted on silk and then the pebbles/rocks are free motion machine embroidered.  There’s a little bit of hand-sewing of shiny or “invisible” threads that can only be seen in certain lighting and helps make the rocks look wet where they touch the water. Oh and a tiny bit of hand-sewing of foam on the water in the foreground.

I got myself a daylight lamp and I love it.  I’ve been struggling to get enough light in the right position to do artwork after sundown in what I’ll call my (ahem) “work zone” in our new apartment.   100W equivalent baby!   Only wish I’d gone for it sooner.