The devil is in the detail

Week 14

I has been hard to decide on which older women's faces to attempt.  The original castings show age so subtlety, yet you can see the age in their faces, especially when compared to the young face.

So once again I have tried a different technique. (Well it is a challenge)  To give a heavier appearance I have padded the face and added an extra chin, all signs of age.  I did all my stitching in silver thread and added a highlight of white to the eye and a little black to define the lips.

It is really hard to photograph this piece.  It looks flat when in fact it is raised and the silver thread looks white.  She can look quite different from another angle.

I am getting more control with the free motion stitching so that it encouraging.

Week 13

This weeks design goes with the week's number.  I looked at last weeks image so much I dreamed of this ghost image.  I just couldn't get it out of my mind.  So I have tried to put it onto the fabric.  I used a pencil wash and mauve and grey threads.  The quilting lines in my dream was a mauve light radiating from her.

Week 12

It's only 11:10pm and I've finished this weeks design!  Amazing.

This is the first of my female faces.  It is a young girl.  At first I thought there were lots of images of the same young girl but when I looked closely they were all different.  Which one to choose?  They all seemed to express something different.  These are 6 of the 20 something young girl type faces.

 

I tried drawing them, tracing them and after several attempts at sewing them, that ended up in the bin, finally picked up the camera and went back to the pagoda to take some more photos.  It was mid afternoon when I arrived and the angle of the sun seemed to reveal a whole new perspective.  The actual size of the faces is about equivalent to the palm of your hand, they are not big.  On the roof of the pagoda you don't really see them unless you look closely.

I printed a series of them out that I enlarged to fit an A4 page and this image stood out from the rest.

 

She had a calm, wistful look. I then put the image into photoshop to accentuate the highlights and change the colours.  I had decided on a moon theme for the female faces and I wanted it to look as though she was reflecting moonlight.  It was this altered image that I printed out onto fabric, cut out and placed against the moon background.

Earlier in my research I came across the work of the "Norbulingka Institute" and  I received a comment from Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo  . This led me to her website and I have tried to use the same simplicity and purity that she uses in her work in this image.

Week 11

So, here I am at the end of the male faces.  There are lots more but I have decided on 3 male and 3 female faces.

And, I have finally got those staring eyes right.

This challenge is proving to be a huge learning experience, especially these faces.  I am starting to get he hang of free motion machine stitching and in these faces am starting to get a more even stitch.  But working in fabric is so different from paint and pencil.  I started thinking that I would just copy the photographs but then found that the faces would take on a life of their own when put on fabric.  It is if they were saying "this is how I want to be seen this time."  Writers often say that their characters take on a life independent of them.  I feel the same thing with these faces. This is the face I started with.  He seems so much more present when transposed to fabric.

I find the collages used in the animation of Mohammad Reza Abedi in the The Cypress and the Crow really interesting so have tried to use some of that in this face. I have never used collage before but will use it more in the future.