Searchlight
3.75 x 6 inches. Hand stitching on hand-painted silk.
The background was created by stretching silk in a hoop and pouring paint straight onto it. I prepared two colours, a purple-blue and a bright light green. I saturated the whole surface with the purple-blue, then immediately held the hoop vertical and poured on the light green, letting it dribble from top to bottom. It does this in a random way which creates a northern lights effect with no effort from me.
Here I’ve placed scrap paper to help me decide which part of the background makes a more exciting composition.
#2 was the winner for me. The white ring you see around the edge is from the silk that goes unpainted while it’s bound inside the hoop. It has a lovely sheen as well. So I decided to incorporate that as an icy pond or area of snow – whatever you want it to be. I’ve re-hooped the silk to let that be part of the picture.
Below, I’ve underpainted in black the areas where I wanted trees. I use white thread to mark roughly where I think the boundaries of the picture will be. It also acts as a guide to help me keep the trees generally vertical while I sew.
The rest was a matter of hand-stitching in the same shade of black thread, thinned out to one strand for the distant trees and thickened, even doubled up, for the nearest.