Failed Mountains to Sea – an object lesson in haste…
I have made two attempts at interpreting the Mountains to the Sea theme illustrated a couple of posts back, and both have failed:
On the left the mixed threads give a rich colour mixture – which loses all focus in the middle section and just leaves a confused impression. The flat cartoon-like quality on the right also fails in the centre section, both because of wrong colours being used and bad drawing of curves.
A further problem lies in the three shells being involved in an Escher-type optical illusion, in which the yellow shell areas are very ambiguous – are they outside or inside curves? – this ambiguity works (I think) in the original coloured drawing, but fails here.
Also the colours for the recession of the mountains need correction.
I may try this again without benefit of Escher, and with only two, not three, shells.
Yes, it’s all a learning experience!
Thanks Vera. I must learn to listen more to others’ views – several people have (to my surprise) now commented favourably about the second one, even tho to my mind it was not as colour-rich. I have noticed in browsing tapestries on line that many really striking ones work excellently just because they do not use mixed threads, or use them sparingly..
February 12, 2013 at 8:28 AM
Honestly, I like the second one very much. I only have one slight problem with it and that is the shape in the middle, which seems to go from the shell straight to the top of the mountain, – but then again, artistic freedom? 🙂 It’s good to be able to compare and I agree it’s all learning, the second work is a definite improvement!! – I like it!
February 11, 2013 at 10:10 PM
ok, so maybe I can do a bit of salvage work on one of them…
February 4, 2013 at 5:27 PM
I can’t believe you’ve done two already! And I think you are being a bit hard on yourself – I quite like the second one, especially.
I have started one (with another totally different design in mind, don’t know why I am doing that) and am just getting to the middle where I think I also may have problems. Yes, it is all learning.
February 4, 2013 at 3:51 PM