Creating Serenade at Sunset

Serenade at Sunset is one of my more recent works.

In this post,  I’m going to share with you the various processes involved in creating this piece.  Because of my stitched drawings, it looks like I’ve completely abandoned the use of color, but that’s not the case at all.  “Serenade at Sunset” is a full-color piece of artwork.

It started off with a photograph of hands playing the guitar.

I showed you my initial sketch when I started drawing it. It then evolved as you will get to see in the following photos. During the process of creating “Serenade at Sunset”, I had a total of 3 guitars sitting in my studio for me to study while I created this piece.

The Creative Process

After sketching, I enlarged my photo to my final desired size and I traced the outlines as shown in these photographs below.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the selection of hand dyed fabrics I assembled together to work with on this project.

As always, I have a hard time starting a big project. So I look for something to get me started- something to get the wheels moving.  And this little tiny piece here – of the thumb strumming the guitar  – is what gave me my start on “Serenade at Sunset”.

I kept building the collage till I finally got it all together.  Then I wanted a background fabric but didn’t like any of the ones available in my stash so I dye painted several sunset fabrics (remember?) and chose one to use.

Here I am strumming my collaged guitar.

Then came the stitching (drawing with thread). I extensively drew with thread on this piece, creating a lot of textures.

Here are some detail shots of the final piece.  I’m working on a short video that highlights the entire process in a video format. I’ll post that as soon as it’s available.

I hope you enjoyed this work-in-progress overview. See you in the comments section.

Warmest Regards,