I use mid-process photos as an invaluable tool to help me work my way through most new pieces. Photos give me a chance to evaluate what I’ve already done and, also, looking back over my progress at any given point generates ideas for next steps. It’s a means toward perspective via distance.

Making such a detailed initial sketch is not how I usually work.
But I’m currently in the midst of feeling my way toward something new and this kind of notation serves as a potential roadmap as I get my sea legs. A sketch is a means of working through possibilities (look closely to see plenty of erasures) and of recording specific ideas to keep in mind for later. In this instance, I was thinking especially in terms of value.

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Laying out the major elements with outlines of gouache sets my bearings. Next, I painted resist in specific areas (seen as barely visible yellowish lines around the leaf shapes and as hash marks surrounding the tube of paint in the lower right). My aim with this step is to create visual texture by preserving the white of the paper in a way that would be hard to do with paint alone.

Learning about color is never-ending. Choosing a limited palette simplifies and unifies.

Beginning layers of paint get things underway. Gouache’s opacity gives me elbow room to tweak colors and change my mind in a way that isn’t possible with watercolor. It’s quite liberating.

Value is such an integral part of color. Using my phone’s black & white mono filter helps me stay on track in terms of value.

Once the painting is done and the resist is removed, the stitching begins. This photo highlights that the work itself, together with intuition, dictates my direction far more strongly than any initial sketch. Rather than merely filling in the whole area on the left with needle weaving, as originally intended, I realized mid-way that the varying thread colors really made the pink ground pop – so why cover it? Plus, by not filling the area completely with stitches, that pause of pink serves as a bridge which highlights the “conversation” between the stitched area and the white marks on the red ground.

A stitched border extends the ideas found within the imagery, yet stands on its own. I’m attracted to the idea of wrapping common objects in pattern, texture and color to give them a sense of significance beyond their unassuming simplicity.

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This Hyperallergic article by Damien Davis is worth considering if you regularly pay application fees when submitting your work to exhibitions. If nothing else, it’s food for thought.