Welcome to my made-over website!
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!
This is a view from the seawall in downtown Vancouver. I see the water and the rocks as reaching out to each other.
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.
Every summer should have some Horseshoe Bay in it. On this trip we spotted this lab and decided he was a salty sea dog. Many pics of inspiring scenery taken.
This image is not photoshopped. When I get down to the dregs of my silk paint, it sometimes comes out of the bottle as bubbles. I just thought this looked cool. It’s also fun to watch the change when you add another colour. Anyway, back to painting!
The street in question is Hornby Street in downtown Vancouver. The art would be the tree, but is also a reference to Vancouver Art Gallery in the background. I was struck by how gorgeous this and other trees around the gallery looked on a sunny day back in May.
After hand-painting the background, I used free motion machine embroidery to represent the mulched soil in the foreground. The tree trunk and branches are also worked in free motion with a little hand-sewing here and there. With the trailing twigs, I found the less I cared about how they should go, the better they looked.
As described in my previous post, I hand-painted a bunch of narrow ribbon strips for the leaves of the tree. Then I hand-stitched the greenery using ribbon instead of thread. Thankfully, silk is less fragile than it looks!
This picture changes depending on the light more than most. In the evenings under a spotlight, the sheen of the ribbon comes into play, hopefully to capture something of the sunlit glory of the tree as I saw it that day.
These are lengths of 3-mm wide ribbon I’ve been hand-painting different shades of green. I use the same paint as for my backgrounds.
Yes, ribbon work is ahead! Hopefully, in combination with free motion machine embroidery, the little bits of shiny ribbon that show will look like leaves catching the sun.
Crafthouse on Granville Island now offers some of my pictures for sale. What a gem of a place, not to be missed if you’re an island-going craft lover! Click on the picture and scroll down for a map and other info. On the same street as the big yellow Kids Market.
On the subject of artwork, I’m not idle. I’m working on something.
I may be some time : )
A quick note to say thank you for coming and voting at our Art Focus Spring Show! I share the Most Popular Artist Award with Anna Wagner, who also won for Best Picture. Very much appreciated!
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Just a subtle ad for our upcoming Art Focus Spring Show! Check out the ever-greater variety of artwork by our growing membership. I’ll be around somewhere stitching and enjoying a break from packing for my move to downtown Vancouver!
Whytecliff Marine Park is near Horseshoe Bay, BC, the same location that inspired my Pebble Beach picture.
I painted the background sky, mountains, and island, and hand-stitched the water. The rocks are mostly machine-stitched with tiny bits of hand sewing where I made minor changes.
The birds in the shallows are some kind of duck, but not regular ducks. I tried stitching them more “accurately” at first but they looked just awful, more like sea monsters than birds. Halfway through unpicking them they started looking bird-like after all, so I decided to leave them semi-impressionistic.
The camera doesn’t pick up that the most distant water is done in shiny thread that glints in the light. I used similar thread around the ducks to represent the splashes from their diving.
* Thought of the Day alert *
I’ve noticed there are a couple of significant moments that happen during the making of each of my pictures. One is when, sometimes scarily close to the end, you look at the back of the work – that terrible place where your threads cross over each other anyhow and all your loose ends hang out – and it looks better than the front. (I try not to look now).
But the other moment is when you have the strange feeling you’re holding a piece of actual landscape in your hand, rather than a piece of stitching, and the stitches you’re making are immediately transubstantiated into trees, or rocks, or whatever. A bit disorienting because in reality you’re working on a small scale. The sensation passes quickly because I’m too aware of my own mistakes, and/or busy making them; but rewarding all the same. It’s the same feeling I’m striving to create, however briefly, in those who view my artwork.
