After finishing O'jishi's brass teeth and outlining all of them (except the upper right incisor so you can see the difference between the black outlines and dark brown outlines) I moved on to his cheekbones. The interesting thing about this piece is that the two halves of the mask are not symmetrical. You see this particularly in the cheekbones and eyes which are slightly higher on one side than the other. Visually this works because most people don't have symmetrical faces either. My face has one eye slightly higher and larger than the other and my nose isn't perfectly straight. It's just how we are.
I choose to do roughly oval shapes that are divided evenly in the middle since the two areas are both 16 threads high. Therefore, it was easy to start roughly in the middle and make sure the top half stitch was over eight threads and that the bottom half was over the same number of threads. Then I worked from the middle to one side, then the other, making the thread height follow the painted shape. Then I did small straight stitches under O'jishi's nose over to the other cheekbone. ( I have not touched the ovals under the cheekbones yet. I thought oval Jessicas would work here but that did not look right so out they came. I have another idea I'll try tonight on this area.)
I used two plies of Gloriana's overdyed floss Lacquered Gold #045, which is a lovely gold shading to brass silk. The plies have to be laid to keep from twisting just like the background stitch had to be, but the lovely rust and brown and cream shading on the cheekbones shows through.
I was a bit worried that the dividing line would be too prominent but it looks good to me. I can see a twisted stitch on the left cheekbone that I didn't notice when stitching last night but I was very tired after shoveling the ice off half the driveway. Thank goodness the sun melted it off most of the rest!
Later on the left cheekbone has bumps that will have to be added on top of this stitching but that will wait until the end. Thankfully I have a color copy of the canvas so I'll know where they belong if the painted areas don't show up under the light coverage stitches.
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
