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Gallery 2

The commission to make Shepherd's Cottage, Autumn, below, was for a birthday present for the sister of my client, so keeping it a surprise was crucial until the date passed!

     
Shepherd's Cottage, Autumn      

Garden Dawn, below, was made with machine and hand embroidery with silk threads on a silk velvet background - this took some effort to press out the "air bubbles" under it as I fixed it to the backing board. I am pleased with how striking the walnut-effect frame looks with the dark green velvet. 

Garden Dawn
Garden Dawn

Darkening Woodland. I've edited this picture that I originally made in September 2017 when I could see that the edges of some of the trees was looking a bit loose against the background fibres. I hadn't reworked any of my long-framed woodland series before so it was a bit daunting to take it out of its frame and fit it back again, never mind doing the actual stitching and other editing that I did on it. 

Darkening Woodland
Darkening Woodland  at June 2018

One of my commission pieces in the early Spring of 2018 was based on By the Woodland Path, which I first made in the middle of January this year. An exact copy is impossible, and I am glad of that for my artwork, so here is By the Woodland Path II:

 By the Woodland Path II
 By the Woodland Path II   commission piece, April 2018

I loved putting a fox in By the Woodland Edge so I decided to follow that up with a badger-themed picture, Broc Bank, with a different scale of picture, too. This one is 16" x 12", also in a black box frame, and uses one of the types of silk "fabric" that I have for my trees. 

Broc Bank
Broc Bank

By the Woodland Edge, below, is the first in the Woodland series that has wildlife depicted in it, and I will be doing more of this style to include badgers, deer, hare, and other foxes. It gives a different perspective to the picture and I was careful to not make the fox too large or it would give the wrong scale with the trees. I tried a different approach with the trees themselves by needle-felting shaded areas on to them, too, and I think this works. These pictures have been a very enjoyable experience to design and create, and now that I can make up my own version of the silk "fabric" that some of the trees are made with, I have more freedom of size, colour and texture to make the trees. In the picture below, the first and third tree from the left are my own home-made silk pieces. 

By the Woodland Edge
By the Woodland Edge

My February picture make is below, Reflection on the Deep. One of the things that I love about using different fibres, particularly sheeps wool, is that the wool from each breed of sheep has quite different properties. The Portland wool used in this picture, the mountain on the horizon, is fairly course and short, while the merino, the Blue-faced Leicester - and the bamboo fibres - here are longer and easier to spread out across the backing fabric, to construct the patterns in the sky and the wave tops on the sea. 

Reflection on the Deep
Reflection on the Deep

I also make up needle-felting kits, on sale at the Pop Up Shop in Castle Douglas, at £10 each. As a guide to size, the foam block in each of the packs is 6" x 5", with approximately 30g of wool and fibres. No two packs can be identical! 

Needle-felting kits Kit instructions
   

This year began with a small commission project in the second week of January, a birthday present for a friend of my client, of Belted Galloways in a summer landscape. My next picture, below, is another in the Woodland series that I am really enjoying creating, By the Woodland Path (see above for a commission piece based on this picture!). This, and several others completed at the end of 2017, are heading for an exhibition at the end of February, with one or two others that are still at the planning stage. Check out this page for further information on that once I have the full details in early February. 

By the Woodland Path
By the Woodland Path