Introducing Luna

Luna, from Leigh Designs' Ladies of the Night Series

I should subtitle this "Jane Loses Her Mind".

Yes, my next project is Luna, from the Leigh Deigns vampire series called Ladies of the Night.  A friend of mine, upon seeing the canvas, said she was Sophisticated Halloween, elegant and erie.

Here's the whole series.
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Grp513x.html

She's also big.  Luna is 16 inches high and 8 wide, on 18 count NP canvas.  That will enable me to do a lot of detail but there's a ton of background!  She's on 20x12 stretcher bars so I am definitely going to use my K's metal floor stand when stitching her.

Luna also has a lot of black-on-black detail.  You can see here that she has long black hair, a long black gown, a long black cloak and blackbirds surrounding her.  We've all seen how hard it is to see the detail of complex black stitches on Stars.  I am going to have to be extra creative to be able to stitch these areas in such a way that they don't all blend together in one big black blob.

Fortunately, there are some great areas that aren't basically black.  I love the cluster of fairly modern tombstones at the right corner.  This for me dates the cemetery as early 20th Century.  I wonder what Luna is doing here.  Is she visiting family?  Gloating over the grave of an enemy?  Just scouting territory for her next Halloween party and tut tutting at the shoddy maintenance?  What do you think?

I also love the atmosphere of this canvas. Look carefully at the background.  It's a custom color called Storm Cloud, which is gray with charcoal splattered dots here and there.  I think of fog and mist when I look at it.  I think it is going to be great fun to add atmosphere in the background.


As is my usual practice, I've made color and black and white copies of this canvas for reference purposes.  I'll certainly need them to help me stitch weeds at the base of the cracked tombstone and these may come in handy other places.  I make copies before I put the piece on stretcher bars, and I take lots of reference photos of various areas, too.  You can't see some detail in photos (I didn't realize Luna had an oval amethyst ring until I saw her in person) but scans and xerox copies capture everything.

The next step is to think about the canvas and who Luna is, start testing stitches, and analyze the canvas itself to figure out what I want to emphasize and how.

I should reveal that Luna was sent to me by Leigh to stitch as a model and to do a stitch guide which I'll sell.  I know there is a lot of interest in the series and hopefully some of the problems I wrestle with will give you ideas on how to stitch your own Lady of the Night.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow