Louise Smith

I just got back from visiting family in the UK.  I took many photos including this one of pink daisies in my Mam and Dad’s back garden. (Being from the northeast of England I have a Mam rather than a Mum or Mom, and a back garden not a backyard : ))

I’ve been experimenting with layering painted silk scraps on a painted silk background. More on that in a no doubt much later post.  It seems like a better way to capture petals or leaves that are either large-scale or, like these ones, translucent.

This one could be quite fiddly.   I love the sense of movement though (the flowers were blowing in the wind a lot and it was difficult to get an unblurred shot).  I may attempt a very simplified version…some day.  I have a couple of other projects to finish first and am plenty busy in my non-art life at the moment!

I hope to see you at this event!  This magnificent festival features artist sales, live jazz, roving performers, a children’s area, ongoing artist demonstrations, guided nature walks, an outdoor café/barbecue, and environmental art installations.

If you like art, music, food, fun family stuff, nature, or all of the above, there’s something here for you!   Art Focus will be out in force as well as other local artists both inside Minnekhada Lodge and outdoors, under tents in case of any summer showers…

…but hoping for weather like this!

I like this map which is bigger and also shows trails and locations of scenic viewpoints around the nearby marshes.

And here are some great photos of the Lodge itself (scroll down a bit when the webpage comes up).

I hope you keep sunglasses by your computer!  Here’s a larger version if you’re feeling brave.

After painting everything an incredibly bright shade of blue, I did machine sewing of leaves in the background. I thought I was going to be able to keep machine sewing the whole thing. (I often have silly thoughts like this about my pictures). Predictably some areas started looking a bit too casual, so I unpicked a little bit and completed the work by hand.

Quite a commitment as you then have to bring the rest of it up to the same level of detail. But I think hand sewing is a better choice to capture quirks that I’m not skilled enough to convey with the machine, like the thinning of a branch as it goes along.

I almost left a needle in the patient on this one!  I searched my table until I knew the only place it could be was in the picture.  There it was, hanging out of the back!  Saved for the next operation.

Just finished this one today.  A larger version can be seen here.  It’s based on a photo I took in Whytecliff Park near Horseshoe Bay, BC, a few months ago.  As I remember I had been wearing unsuitable sandals (not knowing we would end up at a pebble beach) and was frustrated as the best compositions all seemed to involve my clambering over big piles of rocks to get photos of em : )

The water is painted silk (turns out it’s really easy to get a watery effect with silk paint!) and the foam and rocks/pebbles are done in machine stitching.  I hand-stitched some little spray details including using some light-reflecting “invisible thread” to try to capture the wetness of the rocks and, er, water.  It is indeed invisible on this photo though and pretty subtle even when looking at the original piece.

It’s a challenge to keep those rocks looking jumbled enough and not allow straight lines to sneak in!   I definitely see more waterscapes in my future as this was fun to do.

Well, there had been a woeful lack of puns in recent posts so I thought I’d address that.

A wonderful trip to Montreal was had…I could describe it as a quest for exotic eastern Canadian thread which just happened to coincide with viewing a certain high-speed car race, but don’t think anyone would believe me : ) (I did pop into a Fabricville though).

Montreal is quite the work of art. The old buildings are full of fascinating variations in brickwork and ridiculously ornate doors, and the more modern buildings seem to have been built with appearance in mind just as much as utility, with uncompromising use of colour to set a mood in certain locations. There seems to be a rule that nothing is allowed to be ordinary, which I love.

A meal we particularly enjoyed was at Gibby’s, fabulous from start to finish. As you know I’m just a freak for details…the big things have to be done right, but if they also take care of unique details they will be remembered forever.

Things I’ll remember forever about Gibby’s:

They have their own Gibby’s brand of sugar packets. This restaurant is not a chain. Their own little printed sugar packets! It’s a large restaurant, but still. As you can probably tell, I just can’t get over this.

They bring chocolates with the bill that are embossed with their own iron gates logo.

When you ask for black coffee they bring it, and they don’t bring milk. This quite rare and special thing shows they really pay attention to the individual instead of just loading up a standard tray of coffee/tea fixings.

The photo above is just a reference snapshot taken in passing of what looks like an art gallery/store, typical in its uniqueness of the hundreds of storefronts in old Montreal.

A larger version of the now completed Waiting on the Wind can be seen here.  The colours are much truer in this photo taken by my husband on his fancy camera with separate flash.

I loved creating this one and have plans to do other dandelion clocks in different stages of disintegration.  But not right now as I have made myself sick of the sight of them : )

I’ve been working on this one over the last week or two (long enough that by now on windy days the seeds are blowing everywhere, including of the particular dandelion I photographed for reference).

That’s my needle tucked in at the bottom by the way, and a bit of camera shadow for extra professionalism : )  This is about a 9-inch diameter hoop to give you some idea of scale.

I used scissors to mince up some thread in the colours I wanted then used acid-free glue to stick the resultant lint to the silk.  Then I’ve been making knots in thread, ruffling up these “seeds” with an emery board to give them the right sort of soft fuzzy look, and gluing or stitching them down.  I have some more of this to do especially around the edges.

I have to say, there were a lot of failed attempts at painting a more interesting background before I went for a simple fade from darker to lighter green.  Anyone want any strange-looking green-painted silk hankies?

This is my newest picture.  A larger version can be seen here.  The tree trunks and a few background details are painted and the foliage at the top and bottom is all free motion machine embroidered.

It’s based on a scene from this hiking trail which doesn’t seem to have a name, which starts just to the north of the sports field off Panorama Drive in Port Moody.  Quite dark and shady in there but with just enough sun coming through on a sunny day to make things interesting.  It got muddy after a while so we quit!  But not before getting a few photos of the sort of lace-like greenery that your average free motion machine embroiderer dreams of.

I just finished this piece called Distant Lights.  A larger version  can be seen here.   This has been one of my favourite pieces to make, I really got lost in it.

I want to give some info that the camera misses.  The “distant lights” are worked in metallic thread so that they twinkle at you when you are looking at the original piece, even though in the photo they just come out as light brown smudges.  Also, some of the tree branches are worked in shiny thread so they appear to catch the light differently as you look at the picture.  Maybe it would be better to have a short video clip panning over the painting.  I feel a youtube post coming on!

The model  for this tree stands in front of Port Moody train station and the rest of the composition is out of my head.

Below is a close-up of the tree branches.  I admit, I went to town on the detail here a bit!  I took a regular piece of thread and split it up into two or three fibres, as fine as it would go, and stitched the fibres down by hand in roughly branchy patterns.  And crazy that I am, I loved every minute of it.

I took some reference photos of wisteria today.  Usually I aim for photos with a basic composition I can use, without them necessarily looking any good by themselves just as photos.  I don’t pay much attention to lighting for example.  Sometimes an interesting shot comes about as a by-product though.

I don’t think I can use my sewing-on-painted-silk technique with the wisteria one.  The foreground element would be the wooden beams and the wisteria blossoms  hanging behind are so faded and misty-looking they probably should be painted.  It would be difficult to reproduce the wood with its smooth, weathered texture using thread.  Overall I think the results would be odd, although I’m not ruling it out altogether!

And another of Whytecliff Park near Horseshoe Bay, BC, that’s just a little complex for me to attempt in stitching.

I’d rather see them posted on my blog than forgotten in my computer files, and who knows, maybe one day I’ll work them up into something!