Season’s Greetings (Version 2), (San Clemente pier, CA) copyright 2023 Douglas Stockdale –
Wishing you all a Happy Holiday and Season’s Greetings as we end 2023, regardless of how you may Celebrate the end of the year events.
Last week I had provided a sly clue as to what our Seasonal card might look like, implied by the abstract pattern on the verso (back) of this pigment print, which was created as I completed the hand-sewing of the pattern, above.
Although I state that this is the second version of this artwork, realistically it’s the third version. When I started to hand-sew a color pigment print of this seascape, the thread colors appeared to blend in with the background. Thus the hand-sewing did not have the intended high visual impact. If I am going to take the trouble to hand-sew a Holiday card, you have better be able to tell that I made the effort, so after doing the initial fence line, then rephotographing the results, I quickly moved on to a black and white print version of this seascape to hand-sew.
My clever idea was to make French knots, a process from my earlier artwork, to create the colored decorated balls on this tree. Let’s just say that my first attempt resulted in some wimpy (underwhelming) looking colored decoration balls. So I started to experiment with this first version in how to increase the size of the French knots and I think inadvertently found out that I can make double-knot that did increase the ‘balls’ size. And fortunately the results did appear more impressive.
Thus, I stated over again (version 2) with another black and white pigment print and my double French knot sewing process.
I think the the double-knot sewing results turned out pretty decent. These ‘balls’ are not exactly uniform, while appearing very presentable. Subsequently I rephotographed the hand-sewn print, finalized our Holiday card, printed out a bunch, trimmed the cards down to size and addressed these for family and friends. I had even thought of numbering each one on the reverse, but I did not want to create a potential distraction.
Another fun-fun (win-win) for the Holiday card as an excuse for me to try out and learn something new. Cool!
I hope you made every day an Earth Day in 2023. I sure tried to.
Doug
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Book development workshop:
Update: Developing a Creative Photo Book, on Zoom with SouthEast Center for Photography (SEC4P), January 20 & 21st and 27th, & 28th, 2024, from 10 AM – 1 PM, Eastern Standard Time (EST).
New: Book Making with Douglas Stockdale, on Zoom with Medium Photo, March 16-17 & 23-24th (4 sessions, two consecutive weekends), 2024, from 9am-12pm (Pacific Standard Time).
Artist book available:
The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, an artist book from Singular Images Press, 2022, $60.00 (CA sales tax for those residing in the USA) plus shipping expenses. Message me douglas.stockdale.artist@gmail.com
Singular Images 