I've been going through art withdrawal the last few days (once the constipating post-surgical narcotics left my body) and have been working on a piece for
Kathy McElroy's Orange book on a colors round robin we're in. Currently limited in the hand department, I decided to make a digital piece. I have a new cabinet card, which I've been wanting to play with; so, I scanned it. I worked at cleaning it up (bigger eyes, hint of skin tones, adding colors, etc.) and put in a sunset photo I'd taken on the drive back from Art & Soul, a flower from last year's trip to Hawaii and a champaign glass from last February's trip to Williamsburg. Then I had to write a few words to fit the picture.
After I printed my digital collage out on watercolor paper, it needed embellishment, but Kathy's piece's are all going to fit in a cigar box, so it had to be a flat embellishment. So, I decided to free-form stitch on the paper. Not a brilliant decision. I actually like the results, but it took a really (as in extremely, excessively, ridiculously) long time to thread my machine, change the foot and do the sewing with one hand and not very agile fingers sticking out of a cast on the other hand. After all that, I jazzed up the background sheet with color mists from
Outside The Margins .
So, here are the pictures of the the original cabinet card, the digital collage and a scan of the finished piece.