Digitising someone else’s art – part 2

Our nearest neighbours up here are the artist Frances Crawford and her husband. Frances has an almost magical ability to paint light and I’ve always loved her work. (http://www.strathdonart.co.uk/page12.html)

Recently she’s become interested in Japanese wood-cut prints and I also admire what she does in that medium. The other day I said that some of her prints would also look good in embroidery, and after a little discussion we agreed to try a co-operative experiment: Frances would do a drawing, which she would interpret in a Japanese print and I would interpret in embroidery

This is Frances’ drawing:

Forest pond – the original drawing

This is the print she made from it:

Forest pond: the Japanese woodcut print

and here’s my embroidery:

Forest pond: the embroidery

I was very pleased with the way the embroidery turned out. Unfortunately the scan doesn’t capture the most interesting part. The pool was made from painted fabric appliqueed on, and then overstitched with concentric circles of metallic silver thread, which gives it a very subtle gleam where the light hits it. So in real life the forest pool looks suitably glittering and silvery, and is a good tribute to Frances’ mystical and light-bathed paintings.