The Accidental Embroiderer

Digitising someone else’s art

I’ve become interested in what is generally called ‘naive art’ – at its best it has a clarity of composition and colour that is very appealing. Of course the quintessential naive art is children’s art, and recently I started digitising some drawings given to me by the young children of a friend, to make a present for their mother (thanks, Gordon and Elsie!). At first I thought it was going to be easy, but in fact it’s very difficult to capture the spontaneity and freedom of children’s drawings with such a ‘tight’ and sophisticated medium as computerised embroidery. So the final versions have to be seen as interpretations of the original, rather than just simple reproductions. And sometimes I just itched to change a few little things about them – for example, I really wanted to place the flowers in the second embroidery just a bit closer to each other, to make a more compact composition. But it wasn’t my job to change the drawings any more than I had to, and I expect the results would please a mother or a grandmother.

 

Whale_0001

The Whale – Elsie's version

 

Elsie

The Whale – my version

This charming whale was easy. I just made the body of appliqueed fabric, added a few scribbles of thread and the result is much like the original

Whale_0002

Gordon’s Mother’s Day Card

Gordon

My attempt – not so great

This finger painting, however, was really difficult to interpret. For one thing, there was no way I could easily reproduce the changes in colour density on the petals of the originals, and as an embroidery it doesn’t work. I tried varying the density of the stitching and also the texture of the edges to make it look more like the original, but in the end, finger-painting is finger-painting and embroidery is embroidery. I think maybe I’d better get back to digitising my own work

There’s a post-script to this story – our recent exhibition was visited by Gordon and Elsie, and I gave them “their" embroideries. Not only was their mother delighted with them, but several of her friends who also had young children are now asking me to do embroidered versions of their art. As one of them said “If it’s a drawing you just put it in a drawer and forget about it, but you can make a cushion or a bag out of an embroidery and use it all the time." So who knows – this might be a new career for me!

4 thoughts on “Digitising someone else’s art

  1. I agree with you
    It’s difficult to digitize children’drawing.
    I tried flowers but it’s not the same result
    Best regards

  2. I love how the blue/purple flower and the bees turned out. I think you did a better job than you give yourself credit for.
    I wonder if color shading might solve some of the issues you had with the finger painting? I know it would increase the color changes and be a lot more effort, though. I may only be thinking this way because I’ve been trying to collect colors that are just a few shades apart.
    That was a wonderful gift you gave both children and their mom!

  3. You did a fantastic job of reproducing and interpreting the children’s art into machine embroidery. Love your resulting designs. and they are so close to the original drawings.

  4. I know that children’s designs are so unique. You really have caught the essence of their work. It doesn’t have to be exact as your interpretation gives life and love to their work.
    Jane in Kansas

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