Chapter 5: Colourful faces

 

Activity 5.5.1 Adding colour

	My self-portrait from the last chapter. I printed it on A4 paper, 160 g, to paint with soft pastels.
	I began with a light base colour and added the darker shades. At the end I put in the highlights on the nose, the lower lip and in the eyes. The lines of the copy are still visible at the mouth and the eyes. I did not blend the pastel marks, and when I wanted another shade of colour I added marks with another pastel stick.

For the darkest shades I used dark brown, purple and blue. For the background I first painted  the lilac-coloured layer which is still visible on the right of the face, and then added purple-grey strokes. I think the uncovered part of the first layer gives some depth to the drawing.

 

Extra activity: Variations of the completed picture using Picasa

I have been using Picasa for photo editing since I started the Embroidery Taster with Sian. It is always fun to see what effects can be achieved by combining the various possibilities of the program, although after a few alterations I tend to lose track of what exactly I have done in what sequence. Here are some of my altered pictures.

I like the above picture a lot, it has something witchy. Hair and background seem to blend into each other to a bark-like structure. Beside the original drawing, this gave an idea for the next activity.	Reduction to basic colours. It is amazing to see that the likeness does not depend on natural colours.
	I also like this version very much, it is very three-dimensional.
I also like to work with reduction of tones. This variation gave me the idea for the next activity, although I did not work directly from the picture.

 

Activity 5.5.2 Developing my portrait further

Just recently my passion for hand stitching has woken up after a long pause, so I was courageous and started to do a stitched version. I wanted to use non-realistic colours, hand stitching and appliquéd pieces of cloth. 

	The background is made from old bed sheets, dyed with tea and pieced to a size slightly larger than A4. I transferred the lines of the portrait on the cloth and stitched the outlines. First I covered the face with a pale green piece of nylon stocking. On this I sewed half-transparent pieces of silk for the shades.
The eyes were hand stitched and the mouth appliquéd and framed with back stitch.	I stitched with sewing threads and MEZ embroidery cotton.
The back side	Before I started stitching I backed the cloth with very thin cotton fabric, I think it is called cheese cloth. The back side is an interesting drawing in itself. I don’t think I could achieve this if I tried directly. You can still see the traces of the embroidery hoop.
Meet Ms. Frankenstitch! She does not look too happy.
e Having done the face - the drawing - the piece felt unfinished. So I added a background. I was very cross with myself for not having planned this from the beginning.	The background is a half-transparent silk print in a warmer colour to connect to the mouth, stitched in rows of running stitch. Left of the head there is another piece overlayed, here only the outlines are stitched. I cut away the stocking fabric from the face and neck, because the pale green did not go well with the background colour, the warmer tone of the tea-dyed cotton was much better. I also made a few alterations with the appliquéd pieces on the right cheek and the chin.

I think the appliqué method has worked well around the eyes and on the right cheek.  I would like very much to use this technique again, it is like playing with brushstrokes which can be pushed around. But then I will definitely spend more time chosing pieces of cloth.  And I like the effect of the dense stitching pushing forward the areas with less stitching.

 

 

Just to remind myself that I do not always look so depressed I add a photograph of my brother and me having fun during a walk a week ago.

I am very happy that now I can stop looking so intently at my own face.