More on the Barn Owl

I’m on to the next layer of stitching now, changing the granularity of the colours, changing the balance of colour, trying to really see what my source is showing me.

I’m not quite sure where this refusal to do detailed planning drawings has come from, but for these Animal Vignettes I simply don’t. Partly, I think, because once the first layer is in you can’t see the details you want in the second layer, partly because I have become engrossed, if you like, in the challenge. When it works, it can work phenomenally well, and even when it doesn’t, as Hebe Cox puts it in her book about embroidery design, it has the virtue of spontaneity!

The owl is proving quite tricky. I’m not seeing the shapes and their relationships as well as I might, and I’m struggling to get the colours nicely combined.

However, I am also being reminded that in this way of tackling my stitching, I expect not to get it right first time. There are iterations, tacking from my stitching to my source and back again. Staring, stitching, trying to analyse the image, find the shadows, find the highlights. In fact, treating each fragment rather like a painting en plein air. Well, I’ve said before that if I fall into any artistic tradition, I’m an impressionist!

I’m not at all sure about this one. I think it’s done as far as I care to take it at the moment, and it’s certainly much better than it was. The fine layer of stitching – single strands of stranded cotton in a tangle of feather stitches and fly stitches – has made a considerable improvement on the breast, providing a contrast with the wing and some of the stitched shadows under the body. But I’m not sure that it’s right, I’m not at all sure that it’s finished, and I may very well find myself doing a new version of the owl later on, either because it’s too big for where I want it to sit in the final piece, or because I decide it’s got too much wrong with it and will draw the eye.

But then, this whole project is partly inspired by a fifteenth century masterpiece, and the anatomical exactitude of fifteenth century animal representations isn’t exactly perfect, so maybe my flaws of observation will contribute positively to the atmosphere?

The next Animal Vignette begins..

For the next animal vignette, I’ve changed fabric.

This is partly because it’s what I had to hand, and partly because I think it’s a better surface for my purposes in this case.

What it definitely doesn’t provide is a a good surface for the outlines that I promise you I’ve put on! This is going to be a more than usually improvisatory animal, even by my standards. It’s as well that I’m doing so much sketching at present, as that should be helping me to improve my observational skills.

I’ve skimmed through the book again (Elizabeth Goudge’s “Herb of Grace”, for those who’ve lost track of my plans and sources), and there is a barn owl who lives near the inn, and occasionally wafts through the scene on silent wings. I’d forgotten him, so I was glad to be reminded and have a go.

At this stage, I’m simply trying to put in the first shadows, and because I’ve got the rather heathered felt as the base fabric, I don’t mind if it shows through. It provides a sort of softening which I think will be very helpful.

Now that I’ve gone over the owl for the first time – just the legs and feet aren’t done – I can see places where I need to look harder and see more clearly. There are the markings on the wings to add, and a better sense of the legs being in front of the closed wings and tail, with shadows behind them.

But it’s a start, and since I have also now found my little notebook for Placidus Planning, I should soon be able to settle down to read again, this time with attention, looking for plants and animals I want to include. In my usual fashion, I will be bouncing between the story of the book, and the image that Elizabeth Goudge describes, and somewhere along the way it will acquire that twist that shows me the real root of my desire to stitch it.

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Final reminder! – I shall be giving a talk for the Embroiderers Guild on this evening (June 3) at 19.00!

I believe I’ve turned this image into a link to the Eventbrite page, and for anyone not in the right timezone, or otherwise occupied, the Guild makes recordings available for some time afterwards.