Here we are nearing the end of May with everything warming up and my morning walks becoming more challenging because I can’t seem to get motivated enough to get out early enough to beat the heat. It is rapidly approaching the time of year in which I hibernate for months on end, reveling in the invention of air conditioning. So, how has my May gone, creatively speaking?
Let’s see. Illustration-wise I had a plan to create four full mermaid illustrations using a #mermay prompt list in Instagram and following the same plan I used for the iPad illustration I made and shared in last month’s blog entry. I would start it on a Sunday, work on it bit by bit through the week and hopefully finish it up within the week. And it worked! Well, it worked for two weeks and then I kind of dropped the ball. But, I do think it’s still a good way to approach creating a routine where where illustration/drawing practice is concerned. The combination of the scheduling detailed above and a challenge with a prompt from Instagram can, I think, really help to make my drawing practice more habitual and even though I’ve dropped the ball for the last two weeks, there’s no reason it can’t be picked right back up again. Here are the illustrations I came up with.
I’m really proud of this one. I began with the same basic idea as the sketch that I made last year that eventually became a sequined, stumpwork mermaid embroidery hoop art piece (see below), with the idea that this one might eventually become a model for another one of those. We’ll have to see about that, but the illustration itself, I really like. There are so many things I have yet to learn. I want to work more on shading and perspective and anatomy. But, oh how I love drawing swirly mermaid hair and I love the colors here.
This one, too, I’m very pleased with. I tried to create an actual scene, with motion and interaction between the characters—something that tells a story. I hope I did a decent job. I also went for thicker, darker linework, which I think gives it a more simplistic feel. And I think I’m getting better at drawing hands, so that’s nice.
Also, I had a new sticker made, which I haven’t done in quite a long time. I very much want to expand my sticker offerings, so I am making a commitment to set aside some money from each sale I get to invest in that as I come up with new designs. This one is made from my Airhead design (I showed you the hoop in last month’s blog entry and it has since sold).
And in embroidery news, for much of May I was working on my woven picot sunflower piece. This was/is a re-do of an older piece that sold (see below). I always wanted to give it another go, but with a second row of petals.
It had been a sufficiently long enough time that I forgot how tedious making woven picot flower petals was. But I have to say, my woven picot skills improved a lot over the first hoop.
You might look at that and wonder why it has no hoop. Well, here’s the thing. I had this totally brilliant idea that I was going to put some words on this piece, but the words would be hidden underneath the petals. So good! So brilliant! So, off to the internet I went in search of quotes about sunflowers. And I found the perfect quote: “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” It was attributed to Francis Hodgson Burnett and said to be in The Secret Garden. Not specifically about sunflowers, but it fit so perfectly! The message I was writing was hidden under the petals! It was secret! You had to look the right way to see it!
The only problem was—that quote is not from the book, it’s from the movie. Could I have still used it? Eh. Maybe. I didn’t really want to stitch a quote from a forgettable 1993 movie I had never seen, to be honest. And I had already begun the stitching and written the words where they needed to be using a Frixion erasable pen. I could have pulled the stitches and erased the pen marks and found a new quote, yes. However, I have made a decision to *only* ever use Frixion heat-erasable pens when I will be fully covering the marks with stitching. These pens absolutely erase with the application of heat (I use a hair dryer), but they aren’t reliable in keeping the marks invisible. I have some pieces in which the marks came back after a while and I simply didn’t want to risk it.
So I made the decision to cut the sunflower out. I have tentative plans for this cut-out sunflower. It might be that I simply create another hoop with the same or different background fabric and transplant it to its new home. Or maybe I’ll make it a little bit extra. I haven’t fully decided. We shall see.
I’m glad to be taking the disappointment and failure that came from relying on the internet for a quote like a doofus and hopefully I will be able to turn that failure into something even better.
If you made it this far, as always, thanks for coming along and here is the newest coupon code for my 10% off in my Etsy shop: IFYOULOOKTHERIGHTWAY
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