machine strips and Chapter 4 Drawings from animal markings

Can't believe it's been so long since I last posted anything here. Things have been pretty busy and so the course work had to be put on hold. But I am back and hopefully able to stick at it more regularly from now on.
I started by making 3 stitched strips to get me back into the swing of things

1) Zebra markings on a single piece of fabric using varying length of zigzag stitch and free motion stitching.

 

2) Snake skin strip, this was free machining without taking the needle off at all, I feels looks more like pebbles than snake skin, but it was good to practise again.

 

3) Butterfly wing strip using straight stich and varying length zig zag stitch

 

 

 

Chapter 4 Drawings from animal markings

 

1) Butterfly wing with close up details. I will do the pencil ones again as they don't show up very well once scanned, the edges are quite lace like. I love the fact some of the markings look like hearts. using a mix of pencil and ink has created the best sketch result  

2) Sea Urchin again the pencil markings are not showing up enough on these sample so I will go over then with pen and add the images

 

I thought I would have a quick warm up session before continuing, so looking at the drawings from the module I made some quick drawings, using a uniball pen instead of a pencil gives better definition once scanned

 

 

Feathers

Top  left hand is felt pen lines looking at the whole photo. Top right uses shaped paper cut outs to mask areas which were worked over with charcoal. Bottom left is one of the cut outs. This method could be used for other markings too.

 Goldfish



 

 

There are lots of areas of this drawing that could be looked at for shapes and patterns.

 

Butterfly reworked





 

Sea urchin reworked in felt pen



 



close up of the Sea Urchin

Snakeskin



 

 

 

Game of Thrones

Alison Garner a Distant Stitch student shared a link on Facebook today Friday 31st January, this was originally posted by another Distant Stitch student Helen MacRichie. Game of Thrones Costumes. I have just started reading the books and also got series one for Christmas (I know I am way behind but better late than never). I knew the costumes were fantastic and fell in love with  Daenerys dress from Season 3. Designer Michele Clapton wanted a dragonscale like textured embroidery on the dress, i also thought it fitted in well with this module too, hopefully by posting it here it will continue to inspire me.

I love the textures that she has created and couldn't resist posting the images from the website Smartterist.com.

Module two Animal Magic collecting visual information

crocodile: strong, fierce,fear,leather,tough,beady eyed,silent, aggressive, rough, pointy,sharp,textured

Elephant: saggy,baggy,dry,wrinkled,plodder,big,,follower,noisy, rough,textured,weathered,memory,cracked,loose,mature

Giraffe: elegant,spindly,wide eyed, smooth,stretched,patterned

Leopard: graceful, silent, predator,sly,smooth,sleek,sharp,dangerous,fast,patterned

snake: slither,scales,smooth,poison,long,slim,rattle,sharp,bite,textured,coils,slither

Zebra: sleek,stripes,patterned

Cheetah: Sleek, uneven spots,fast,feline,smooth,patterned

Tiger: Fierce, roar,smooth,silent,feline,endangered,teeth, muscular,powerful,solitary, svelte,patterned

Good old Google and the National Geographic website, plenty of visuals for me to get started with this new module.

I decided to have a quick go at sketching small areas of the skins, I only had a pencil to hand but thought I would have a quick go any way. Here's the result.