Minimal embroidery – and images.

Another piece of Banksy inspired work – I've been thinking about phrases which include textile [-ish] words but which mean something else. Like ‘a tissue of lies’. Worked on silk gauze and backed with a piece of graffiti-ish painted paper. You can see that I slaved for hours over that one.

I have other ideas, so the muse may have been kick-started again. I have made myself go and do stuff in my Installation Art sketchbooks for Contemporary Textiles – which, surprise, surprise, has led to some ideas for embroidery. I have even tried some drawing but those you won’t see – this blog may include warts but there is a limit…

On to the images. I have mentioned Lunapic before – I think it was the first program I found when I started all this on that fateful insomniac night …

At first glance it looks quite old fashioned – especially after Flauntr – but sometimes I like old-fashioned. [Memories of Eartha Kitt singing ‘Old Fashioned Girl’ come into my head.]

I like Lunapic’s easy ‘Undo’ – and the way it stores your ‘Undos’ as thumbnails below the image so it is easy to click on one to regain your original.

There are a wide range of effects – even animations if you want – but only a few of them allow you to tune your image. So an effect like ‘Colouring Book’ which  works well for a passion flower …

may work less well for  a dahlia – and you can’t do anything about it.

 

 

 

 

But there are some nice effects – like ‘Lego’, which might work well in a counted thread technique -

 

 

 

 

and ‘Bars’ – especially if you played around with the colour by adding a different effect -

 

 

 

like ‘Colour Spotter’.

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘Custom Collage’ setting allows you to make a collage of several different effects – the yellow one is ‘Thermal’, but I can’t remember all the others …

 

 

And, although Lunapic will make a conventional motivational poster if you want one -  the ‘Obama’ effect [really] is much more interesting,

 

 

 

 

and you can use ‘Focal Black and White’ if you want something a bit more subtle.

 

 

 

 

 

I find Lunapic relatively easy to use, and it offers you a fairly wide range of effects, many of which I haven’t found elsewhere. The major drawback is that it doesn’t allow you to tune images much. Probably worth getting to know the effects you find interesting for occasional use.

It was something she said

Jackie commented that yesterday's tile looked like torn paper - and I thought - 'What if I tried tearing paper?' So a few failed experiments later... [I tried to make snowdrops but it just didn't work so I went back to something closer to the original tile.]

I stuck the stencil down with repositionable spray and rubbed Markal off the edges.

Then I washed it over with a 'Twinkling H2O' knock off which wasn't such a good idea as it reduced the contrast.

I think they look like little men, rather than the original plant forms. In fact they remind me of some specific little men in the Bayeux tapestry. I'm not going to say which ones but they do not appear quite the same in the Victorian reproduction in Reading - or so I've read. [I've just looked back at the original tiles and now they look like little Bayeux men to me too.]

Jackie also said nice things about how tidy my room looked. Of course she couldn't see the pile of junk I moved out of shot before I took each picture ...

On a completely different topic - our High St has suddenly sprouted all sorts of wonderful official graffiti.

I hoped it meant they were going to repair the historic but ankle twisting surface, but Wensleydale thinks it has more to do with underground services - not some obscure religious observance on the Tube, but things like gas, electricity, sewers etc. Apparently each service has different coloured pipes or cable - hence the different colours of spray paint.

It was difficult to get good photos because I couldn't get high enough up. Of course, everyone thought I was nuts and Wensleydale just stood patiently waiting pretending he wasn't with me. So no change there.