Life Stitch

Mondays usually end with a life drawing class, my favorite session of the week at the moment. Usually we get to experiment with different media from ink and granite to charcoal and chalk.

However today’s session was different, instead of this we used an embroidery hoop and thread.

First we began by drawing out our model, choosing to focus on any part of her that we wished to. I chose her torso as I really enjoyed drawing this.

I wanted to add color to my embroidery, but by using different colors than the ones in front of me. I turned her pink dressing gown into yellow ink, marking the areas I would stitch on top of ,I then used coffee to try and portray the shadowed area of her form.

I found this exercise therapeutic, a sense of calm washed over me as I worked. I really loved it.

I had a good understanding of how my model was sitting, and this comes across clearly in my use of lines.

I found the dressing gown hard to do as it was difficult to get the proportions right.

Once again I struggled with the hands so I decided to leave them out.. I hope to practice hands more over the Christmas break.

I really loved the effect the ink background had on my final piece and think the mixture of the two media’s works really well together

I found myself focusing more on the lines looking at shadows and highlights second. I decided to leave out the idea of different textures but would love to look at this on my next piece such as how to depict the difference between skin texture and clothing whilst using the same colour.