I really enjoyed the painting I did on fabric recently, so I thought I'd do some more. I saw some butterflies yesterday and thought, well let's do one then.
I used a photocopy of a dover picture to start me off and free motioned the outlines through the paper onto one of my collages.
I didn't think to take photos until I was nearly finished picking the paper away. This is a technique that I have shown before, but really, I just sew the main lines of a picture through a paper laid over the fabric, basically tracing with a sewing machine. You can see above there are still bits of the photocopy on the left wing, and when the paper is picked out (which is quite easy so long as you only stitch the main lines) you only have your stitched lines. Some of the picked out paper is at the top right.
Here are just the lines of stitching left. I used a piece of voile over the collage, so the surface of the butterfly would be even for painting.
Here, you can see I am painting the black areas with acrylic paint. Don't worry, the paint and brush are sitting on some clear perspex, not on my work!
I have finished all the black here and it is a bit messy, but all my mistakes will soon be covered up.
Here, I have taken it back to the sewing machine and covered the black with stitching.
I painted it black, so I didn't have to do so much stitching to cover it.
then I went and painted all the white patches (Which are actually white in real life) with some metallic paints.
Finally, I cut away the voile and I also went and added a bit more stitch, too, but I don't seem to have a picture and since it took me over an hour to upload these because the internet is playing up (as it always does when it rains), you will have to wait until I finish the hand stitching on the background for that.
Serendipity also, that today's
design matters TV video (need to subscribe to watch, but really worth it) was also on butterflies, so I also did one of these in my sketchbook!
Hope you enjoyed the butterflies!
Happy Creating!
