HAND EMBROIDERY
The late summer of 2017 saw me embark on an ambitious project for which I did little preparation or planning for (something which is rather out of character for me as an artist). Following a trip to Europe in late 2016/early 2017 I found myself not having anything artistic to work on. Of course, during my travels, I kept a travel journal in which I would record my daily thoughts, trinkets I collected, and any small sketches I would create while travelling on trains. However, when I returned back to Australia I was yearning for a more invested and technically demanding project.
This coloured embroidery portrait of Brendon Urie (of the band Panic! At the Disco) was my first real foray into the world of embroidery. Previously, I had done small illustrations and phrases onto practice pieces of fabric and onto my denim jacket. I decided that I would jump into the deep end with this project after seeing some other artists I follow on Instagram also try their hand at embroidery.
I didn't anticipate that I would be so concerned with how perfect I wanted the horizontal stitches to be but in the end, I just went with it and the image you see to the left is the finished project! I have no real figure of how long it took but I believe I worked on it for at least 5 hours every day for around three weeks, with some days being more embroidery concentrated than others.
From Start to Finish.
I initially started with a sketch that was based off a reference photograph from a photoshoot that Brendon Urie did a couple years ago. From here I traced my sketch onto the canvas material then put it into the embroidery hoop. Throughout the embroidery process, I had to alter the sketch at almost every stage because it would slightly shift every time I stitched. This was all part of the challenge though and made it an enjoyable problem solving activity wrapped up into a creative project. As I mentioned earlier, this was my first real attempt at hand embroidery so I was working things out as I went!
My followers on social media were privy to some very limited sneak peaks of the embroidery piece before it was finished.