I've actually made great progress on Squiggee's Japanese portraits. The ladies have all their white skin stitched in the photo above with basketweave stitch executed in DMC cotton perle #8. I had a ball of it I picked up somewhere on sale (along with a ball of ecru and one of black) and decided it would render the white skin of the women in smoother stitches than a white floss. I am happy with how it turned out.
If you look carefully at the faces, you see that the features are outlined in dark gray (4 plies of DMC cotton floss in 318) using mostly half cross stitch. I stitched the gray outlines first, then the skin, and finally the gray features like the noses, making sure not to drag a line of dark gray from one stop to another which might show behind the white.
My first thought was to change the skin color of the women to a pale pink and use a slightly darker pink for these outlines. I often use silk in these situations as the sheen makes the faces more real. I consulted the designer Gail Hendrix, who told me switching colors would throw off the muted color scheme, although she thought I could get away with darker/lighter shades of the colors. So I left the faces and arms dead white and now that the faces and arms are stitched, the white is growing on me once I put aside my pre-conceptions that I needed to make this piece realistic, which it is not. This piece was designed with Japanese artistic sensibilities in mind.
Before I end this, I should mention a few things about stitching with white cotton perle. I stuck to short lengths and tried to remember to keep my needle perpendicular to the NP canvas when I stitched so as not to abrade the cotton perle much. In my experience it looses its shine if you run a length through the canvas too many times. I also discovered it was really important to wash my hands each time I stitched with white thread. The cotton perle easily absorbed the tiniest amount of dirt on my fingers which of course shows as a smudged spot on the canvas.
Before I forget, I have not stitched the red mouths yet. Right now I'm debating whether to leave the area unstitched or not.
Next time I'll talk about choosing a background stitch and thread. Until then, remember that Pink isn't always Pretty! LOL
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
2 comments:
I think I would stitch the lips, but not in a bright red, but a more subdued one.
I have some thread a perfect match to the crimson. However, toning down the red is like not making the skin dead white--it circumvents the original intent of the design to match Japanese art. So I guess I'll stick with the red. I'm trying to stay within the design spirit here. But that's not to say that it wouldn't look good. I'm just committed to not changing the colors to suit my Western aesthetic sense.
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