I decided to tackle O'jishi's mouth instead of working more on his eyes once the background was finished. I've told you about the jawline (which isn't finished, I need to be rested to do the compensation and it's too crazy here with Christmas prep) but I've concentrated on the mouth recently. This is a three part area (jaw, mouth and tongue, lips separating the two) and since the open mouth needs to be very smooth, I thought tent stitches would be perfect. So I've been carefully tent stitching with four plies (usually) throughout the area.
I've used seven threads and have blended some of them to get lighter shades in areas. My first step was to stitch the black outlines around his fangs and teeth. I used Thread Gather's Sheep's Silk (a silk/wool blend) in Ink Black #SPS 050 for this. Since this is a crewel type thread, I used a strand right out of the skein instead of plying this thread.
The dark brown areas are done with Gloriana's overdyed brown silk Coffee Bean #166. The pinkish brown areas are in Needle Necessities' overdyed cotton floss #125 (which is now available from ThreadWorX as Shades of Chocolate #1036). The darkest red is from Needlepoint Inc.'s Needlepoint Silk #Terra Cotta. The red shades (from bright tomato through medium other to dark tomato) are all Soie d'Alger silk (also medium to dark- Touterelle 2615, Feu #616, and Touterelle 2616). I mixed two plies of the NN #125 with two of the dark Needlepoint Inc. Silk Terra Cotta in some areas to get a medium shade of the darkest red. Since hand painted canvases vary, anyone who stitches this according to my plan will have to choose where to put and how to blend their own colors and work the largest areas in basketweave. Having smooth stitches (I see a flaw in the photo I'll have to fix, by the way) is very important here so keep your tension as steady as possible to make all the tent stitches fat little rice grains.
Once the mouth was done, I added a bit of bling by turning the canvas onto its side and adding random tent stitches to the mouth area with Petite Treasure Braid #PB07. This is a thin metallic in tomato red. I often use this technique to add sparkle to a Santa's red coat as I think Christmas ornaments need metallics to compete with the lights and other ornaments. It seemed to suit O'jishi whose mouth should have a little something extra to make it fit with the rest of the design.
Then it was time to give O'jishi some bite!
His teeth are painted in a bright gold, a more tarnished gold, and has silver highlights. In real life O'jishi masks have brass teeth, so I choose three shades of Kreinik in size 12 braid. The tarnished gold is Vintage Gold #002V, the bright gold is Cat's Eye #3202 and the silver highlights are in Sugar Cube #4005. (Note that Sugar Cube is one of the discontinued Naturals colors.) I worked vertical rows of stem stitch for each tooth, working normally from left to right and changing colors as the painted canvas changed.
I need to finish the bottom row of teeth, fix the snagged stitch on his bottom lip, and finish the jaw line before I move on. I am not sure when this will be complete, as this is an exceptionally busy week but I'll do my best to stitch every night until this is finished.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
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