Wednesday, August 3, 2011

embroider me a face

Well, I sort of jumped the gun when I mentioned in my last post that I would not be attempting to embroider the face on Georgie ballerina until much, much later. Turns out after completing the arms and neck, due to the rather addictive nature of this type of embroidery, that it seemed rather natural to continue and embroider her face. I don't know if I am 100% happy with it- I think the eyes are OK, there is a hint of a nose, but the mouth was met with several disasters that would have made a plastic surgeon proud. First there was a trout pout, then she looked like a Bratz doll, then she was Bratz-doll + smiley-face, and now simply a smiley-face smile. I was trying to capture a level of innocence appropriate for a young ballerina on this embroidery. I am not entirely sure that the face 'works'- I think its cartoony in a slightly wrong way and looks out of kilter with the work that went into the dress and the body. I am tempted to fix t, but my common sense is telling me not to touch it for a long, long time...

Anyway... here's a bit of step-by step:

Adding the shading- you can see that I embroidered the cheeks and then added satin stitch shading in a darker flesh-tone. Here I am adding the lighter flesh tone.

With all the base shading added. I was slightly creeped out by this...

With eye, nose and a smile!

1 comment:

Ruby in the Dust said...

the face looks great! I know what you mean about not wanting to spoil all that hard work on the rest of the body with a mistake on the face; which is why I always make my dolls' faces first.