I had read the theme while in limited wifi, only seeing the original note and not the detail of "what I am afraid off" so I took it on a different journey. The word FEAR instantly put me in mind of a painting I seen while at TAFE a few years back. This painting truly made me think, this is how someone who was very frightened would look. I thought it was a Van Gogh but in fact it is painted by Edvard Munch - other artists copied it and gave their own twists. I wanted to try and "paint" it with threads and fabric. Below is the original inspiration.
I layered blue cotton fabric, white muslin then the orange fabric for the sky, with the plan to slash through the top to layers to give me the blue, which in the painting seems to be behind the orange and white. Then I hand embroidered the orange paint strokes followed by free motion white detail to lighten the orange as suggested in the painting.
I played with "texture magic" on the blue chiffon, to give movement to the water. It worked brilliantly except I hadn't allowed for the white background showing through the chiffon but I loved the effect so, with more patience than I usually process I unpicked the backing and found the creases and folds the shrinking of the chiffon had caused, stayed and gave me exactly the movement I wanted.
More playing with free motion sketching using browns and blues. Looking closely at the orginal design I was amazed at how much brown is used in it. Next came blue hand embroidery followed by the addition of the bridge.
Once I was happy with the background, it was time to figure out how to give it my twist plus a person on the bridge showing fear. Using a photo of my crazy grown up son acting frightened. I traced basic details with a black texter then using a light box transferred that to fabric. Next came much fun with the sewing machine and cream thread to get the shape and brown thread to fill in the detail. I wasn't sure how I was going to colour it all in as I wanted to keep it in the same brownish tones of the inspiration. Low and behold in my cupboard of gadgets and tools was a set of water colour pencils. I spent a day colouring and playing.
This is the end result
Thank you for this inspiring challenge. I had so much fun playing with new and old techniques.
