Tag: Animal Vignettes
Pooh-Bah, done for now
When I looked harder at the photograph, there was a gleam of blue on the model’s tongue, so I’ve added that. I’ve also tried to increase the contrast with the main body of the animal by creating the impression of shorter fur over the head and muzzle.
Yes, I think that’s working.
Then I worked over the whole animal again. The challenge with Pooh-Bah in particular has been the depth and fluffiness of the fur. I’m not convinced that I’ve made sense of it entirely, and at this point he seemed a little bland, rather than the sober and stately animal of the book. Well, I know how to deal with that – emphasize the darks and the lights, bring some some contrast and shape to the scene.
I think he’s done now. He’s been rather a battle, especially when you consider that there’s a good chance only his head will be on show. But I don’t know that yet, and who knows, I may come up with the final tweak that makes me entirely happy with him.
The Wood Mouse
Since I want oak trees in both Placidus and The Golden Fleece, we took the opportunity over the summer to take a friend on an excursion to Sherwood Forest. Our friend likes going for walks, and I wanted to sketch oaks, it seemed a reasonable blending of interests.
And I did do a couple of sketches, and a watercolour sketch as well, but what I hadn’t expected was to see some rather bold and busy mice, scuttling about their lawful occasions with only the occasional wary eye on the big clumpy humans wandering around. So, definitely, there will be a wood mouse of some description in Placidus.
My photos all show a brown furry blob, so I went rummaging online for some suitable mice, and finally settled on a nice profile view that will make more sense when all you see is a nose and an ear. I started with single strands of stranded cotton, and then realised that, oddly, it wasn’t giving me the right sense of the fur, so I moved on to variegated silk perle. This is a bundle of thread I’ve had for years, and don’t use as much as I expected to. But when it’s the right thing to use, it’s very right!
The big beady eye went in first, as you see in the first picture, and then I just worked backwards and forwards, staring at my source photo, stitching a little, starting again, trying to paint with my needle. It’s not needlepainting in the classic sense, being neither as planned nor as careful, but it is very much bringing the way I paint into the way I stitch.
And there’s a thing I would never have said, thought, or attempted, before the “Dreams of Amarna”!
Ears, shadows, highlight on the eye, slightly blue shadow underneath. I’ve left the tail as a stub until I know where my little mousey will end up and whether the tail will need to show!
Pooh-Bah Makes Progress
I’m still struggling to make sense of the deep, fluffy furball that is a Chow. You can see me trying very hard here to make the layers tangle and intertwine, breaking up the colour of each stitch so as to create the overall effect I’m looking for. He must be getting quite dizzy as I turn the frame this way and that, around and about.
The stitches around his head are much shorter, and maybe still too parallel. The eye isn’t quite beady enough, and I want a slight hint of blue on nose and tongue. The tail needs more “loft”, and isn’t quite the right shape.
The layer of cream is helping, I think, to create the sense of changing tone and colour, “lifting” it in places, offering contrast in others. I’m not concerned about him floating in mid-air, because when I finally come to assemble the piece, he may be peering out from behind a bush, with only head and tail on show!
There are more stitches to add…
Pooh-Bah – a closer look
I thought it might be interesting to have a closer look at the way I am trying to bring Pooh-Bah and his ridiculously deep and fluffy fur to life (honestly, I think if I tried to find the body of the dog through the fur I’d lose my arm to the elbow!). It’s very much being invented on the spot, and although the approximate idea is the same, each animal is taking it differently.
So here you see, probably, stage three or four.
I’ve done the eye and the muzzle and lower jaw, quite densely. I tried to find some of the shadows of the ear and under the chin, and the highlights around his ruff.
And from that point it was really a case of “scribbling” my first layer of stitches in very sloppily worked Cretan Stitch. No, that’s unfair. At this stage I’m not trying to be very precise in my stitch placement, so “scribbling” is a reasonable approximation. But I’m trying to balance that sense of a layer of colour with leaving enough space for the next layers and the sense of the depth of fur. I’m not being precise, but “sloppy” isn’t quite right either!
Now look at Pooh-Bah at a somewhat later stage.
The next layer of stitches is in a lighter thread (Pooh-Bah is a creamier colour than the photo I have), and I’ve used much shorter stitches around his muzzle and his face, to suggest the shorter fur. As I move outwards, I’m trying to stitch into the layers below, tangling my stitches to help build the fluffiness.
You can see the same thing happening with the tail, here. There’s a sort of basic “scribble” layer, in this case in something more like Herringbone Stitch – although, if you think about it, it’s not hard to mutate Herringbone into Cretan! I used two strands of stranded cotton for the scribble layer, but I’m beginning to go over it in single strands. I’m hoping that when I come to the final layer, I will be able to tangle it into previous layers enough to camouflage the order of work.
Pooh-Bah coming together..
Pooh-Bah is going to be difficult. I’m trying to Trust The Process here, since I’ve come up with a technique that seems to work, but the Chow’s fur is so different to the fur and feathers I’ve done so far that I’m not at all sure it’s going to make sense.
Besides, the technique makes enormous demands on my observation and imagination, both at once. Observation, because I have to see the details in my source photo that make the animal believable. Imagination, rather trickier, because my stitching is not using tiny dots of ink on paper, but relatively large stitches on fabric.
What my relatively large stitches have to do is to combine to create the effect of much smaller dots of colour, to create something lively – and alive – and yet definitely stitched. So as I’m stitching, I’m trying to arrive at an interaction of stitches and shadows that works.
This is not, yet, achieved.
But at least now I think I have enough in place that I have markers that I can work between. I’ve not got the proportions or the underlying shading quite right yet, and I’ve not quite worked out how to get the sense of the deep, fluffy fur.
But I do think Pooh-Bah will eventually approve my efforts!
Starting Pooh-Bah the Chow
It’s been a while since I did any work on the Placidus panel, or more strictly, on the various elements thereof. It’s not for want of trying, but in my usual fashion, I became distracted by the Lotus Flower Coat. Now I’ve got that in the state where it’s awaiting assembly, I can return to my previous progress!
I am becoming aware that I have run out of “easy projects”. I need to start thinking about how I’m going to do the forest and the rocks, the stag, the man and his horse… At the moment, I’ve not the vaguest clue about that!
However, for Pooh-Bah the chow, I’m continuing as for the other animals I’ve done, with layers and layers of entangled stitching. I’m having to stitch myself painfully back into the right mindset to see what I need to see in my source material and then to bring it alive in my stitches. In this case, I’m scrambling in a light underlayer where I want the lighter coat, and I’m hoping that the final layer, in the direction of growth, will then look like the deep, fluffy fur of the animal.
There’s quite a lot more cream in place. More around the neck, short small stitches on the foreleg, trying to work myself back into my technique. It’s coming, I think. The foamy tail is looking suitably tangled here, and I’ve now added in a few dark stitches, the eye, ear, and start of the nose.
The Cat Smith, nearly but not quite there
So, where had I got to?
The first layers are in place, the underlayer of the tail included, so we have a genuine sense of the whole cat, sitting gazing seriously out at us. But you can see through the cat to the fabric beneath, and the board behind that, and I would rather the cat were solid, and properly marked.
More to do!
So the first thing to do was to thicken and extend Smith’s bib, place the mitten on his paw, and start adding more tangled layers of stitching to his fur.
So you can see that the fur is thicker now. I’m not entirely happy with the point of the bib as yet, but I felt when I’d got to this stage that the next stage should be to put in more of the dark markings, hoping that that would help the other elements of the fur to settle into place.
And I think it really has. The darker markings on fur and tail, the shadow between the two front legs and the shadow beneath the paws, all are helping to create a nice, solid, furry cat.
There are a few tweaks, I think, that need to be done, specifically something around the haunch and the tail, but I’m not quite sure what they are, so I need to settle down and stare at my source photo for long enough to load it into my head and find the last few stitches.
As I think about all this, I realise that, although this is very much a continuation of my usual practice of diving in and getting there eventually, the thing about the Animal Vignettes is that unpicking isn’t really possible, since the stitching is (deliberately) so tangled.
So until I get the necessary quiet to sit and stare, Smith is Nearly Finished.
The Cat, Smith, creeping onward
You may recall that when you last saw The Cat, Smith, he was more or less tail-less, a situation which accorded not at all with his dignity, and could not, he assured me, be permitted to continue for so much as a minute.
Alas for poor Smith, shortly after that there was an outbreak of chaos, and he had to sit there on his little stub of a tail for three whole weeks before I could put it right.
Still, here we are, at last, I’ve managed to get at least a first layer of stitching down all over Smith, including his tail.
As you can see here, I’m building up layers of stitches in single strands, trying to entangle the layers a bit, so that each layer modifies other layers, and I am beginning to try to separate out the front legs and hind paws.
The white of the cat’s bib reaches much further down than I had it originally, but of course, in the shadow it won’t be white. Finding the right shade to help with that is not entirely straightforward, it turns out.
At this point, though, I think he’s ready for me to start putting his dark markings on him. There will be some more of the various lighter browns to put in later, but I think I need to put the darks in to see whether I have got the rest of it right.
As always, now, I find that the way I work in stitch and the way I work in paint are beginning to blend together. In this case, the darks will help me find my anchors and mooring points across the design (yes, he’s small, but the smaller the design, the more important the waymarkers – trust me on this!) and that in turn will create a nice solidly, furry cat.
More on the cat, Smith
The Cat Smith, like all cats, has Standards. Whether I’ll attain comparable standards is still not certain!
I think the head is pretty much done, at least until final balancing, so now I have to move on to the body. This is the blocking-in stage, so I’m starting by looking at my image source. This particular cat looks lighter on the right hand side than the left, so I’m starting with a sort of underlayer of cretan stitches across the body.
Light fawn on the right, here, and grey on the left. What I am hoping is that after a couple of suitably tangled layers of cretan stitch, as I do the smaller markings, there will be a nicely furry effect. It’s really useful that I can see the cat through the gauze while I’m planning this!
I now realise, however, that I’ve forgotten to do poor Smith’s tail!
I also think that his white shirtfront isn’t quite big enough, but that gives me a chance to blur the edges a bit more, which will help with the furriness.
And I think the eyes need to be bigger, and maybe lighter. But, you know, the more I study my sources, the more it becomes possible to see what I need to do next.
Starting The Cat, Smith
There is, among the dramatis animalae (my thanks to Anne Louise Avery for coming up with the term!) of “The Herb of Grace”, a tabby of imposing mien, introduced by his staff as “The cat, Smith”. In my memory he gets the whole name and title in full on all occasions, so I decided to include a tabby cat looking gravely out at the viewer.
Working on gauze produces alarming effects, early on. I started with the eyes, this time. I can tweak them later, but I felt that if I had them in place it might make placement of everything else easier.
I might even be right. I think I’ve set the eyes too close, and maybe not made the ears broad enough, but he is gradually taking shape.
Everything about these animal vignettes is an exercise in learning to see, and discovering how much more there is to see on each pass. As I write this, some weeks after beginning to stitch The Cat, Smith, I find myself comparing my stitching with my source photo and spotting things I missed, or maybe mishandled, and wondering how much tweaking that gauze will take.
I don’t think the head is finished, but I felt it was time to move on to the body, all the same. I’m going to try to block everything in and then refine later, so here I’m starting with his shirt front, and as I continue I will pick what seems like either the predominant colour or the background colour, whichever seems easier, and work that.
Each layer worked into that layer will help to create colours and shadows and, I hope, the sense of air in the fur.