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Carol Naylor

~ Contemporary textiles, making, exploring and communicating ideas

Carol Naylor

Tag Archives: red

Spanish and Italian Reds

02 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by carolnaylortextiles in Commissions, Drawings, galleries, Inspirations, Italy, Spain, stitched textiles, Textile Art

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Art, drawing, embroidery, France, Italy, poppies, red, Spain, stitch, thread

I’m not talking wine here for those who know me well (!) but this is a follow up to my last post, where I looked at using the colour red in my work. Below you will see a number of contrasting pieces where different red tones and threads have been used either as one of the main colours or as highlights within the compositions. I always use first hand experience, even if its just a fleeting glimpse of something that can inspire a series of works. The first embroidery is called “Sol y Sombra” which translates as sun and shade. The image comes from the landscape of central Spain near Santo Domingo de Silos. The light  was pouring through the valley, with golden wheatfields, terracotta earth, and blue shadows reflecting the mountains, catching my eye. After drawing on  site, when back home, I stripped out the vegetation so that I could concentrate on the land’s surface, and the act of stitching took over.

I am always interested in hearing what readers think so your comments are welcomed.

Sol y Sombra cropped

This next piece is called “Winter’s Song”, memories of cool light and chillier weather and the changes wrought by these conditions on the landscape.

C Naylor Winters Song

I showed this next piece in my post entitled ” From Drawings to a Stitched Landscape” where you can see how I developed the piece, but its so very red it needs to be seen again here! The cascading fields were seen against a backdrop of wheatfields and distant blue hills, Spain at its hottest and best, rich with colour and the sounds of insects.

looking-towards-clunia-final

From the fiery reds of Spain now to the rolling Tuscan hills peppered with poppies. I use a crimson rather than a scarlet thread in this series as I feel it echoes the landscape more softly. I called this “Tuscan Serenade”. I never tire of playing with ideas that take me back in my mind to Italy, with its cypresses, hills and late springtime poppies that permeate the fields.

Tuscan Serenade

Finally the following embroidery was a small commission for a French family who requested a red landscape. I took the reds from Spain and mountain ranges from France, and really enjoyed the challenge of adding richer scarlet colours combied with metallic copper and gold threads. Its about 20cm square.

Bouton 1_edited-1

The Colour Red-poppies and memories 1

06 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by carolnaylortextiles in Drawings, Exhibitions, galleries, Inspirations, Processes, Textile Art

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Tags

Art, embroidery, France, poppies, red, south downs, stitch, thread

I find red one of the most difficult colours to work with, and tend to add it into a piece of work to provide richness, splashes of colours, and to represent flowers such as poppies without trying to “copy” a flower. In this post you will see some of the landscape that has inspired me, and I explain some more stitch techniques. Sizes given are always for the actual embroidery and dont include mounts, or framing.

This poppy field in France was the start of what became a gentle obsession, looking for glimpses of scarlet amongst the corn, grasses and wheat in France, England and Italy. This post looks at French and English imagery

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I made a series of works where I used photos to jog my memory, and then drew directly onto my base canvas having put the photos away. The following piece is one that I felt worked well. I used cable stitch from the reverse side for much of the work (explained in my last post, From Drawings to a Stitched Landscape) and then put a heavy red woollen Burmilana/lana no 12 in the bobbin, loosened the bobbin case screw horribly(!) tightened my top thread, a normal no 30, and stitching on  the correct side of the canvas the top thread whipped the red thread through. If you try this be prepared to scream and shout a lot as threads do sometimes break! Its called “Glimpses of Scarlet and Gold” 21 x 28cm approx and was based on fields on France.

glimpses-of-scarlet-for-website

In the first smaller piece the red contrasts with the softer colours of cornfields as this is from my local landscape, The South Downs 14cm x 18cm approx embroidery size. The second one is smaller still, 10cm x 13cm, and is called “Poppies Ablaze”. Here I went back to cable stitch couching the heavy red from the back, then turning to the front and wandering across the red freely with greens and golds to get a feel of intensity broken by line

downland-poppies-cropped

poppies-ablaze-cropped

In my next post I’ll look at reds used in other landscapes from Italy and Spain and a private commission where “red” was requested!

 

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