Faces of India - the Astrologer

There have been so many ups and downs with Rob as he has battled sepsis, covid and internal bleeding that without my stitching I think I would have gone crazy. This thread painting of the Indian astrologer has been worked on at odd time throughout the process. Getting home from the hospital at almost dark and feeling like all I wanted to do was curl up and go to bed. It hasn’t helped that it has also been very cold - but that is to be expected. The coldest weather always comes after the solstice.

My faces of India are real people that I met and photographed on my textile tour of Rajasthan. This astrologer told me I would live into my 90s. If my knees remain this sore from arthritis that is not necessarily such a great thing to know. But it was amazing how much of my life he could interpret from my palm and my birth date.

Faces of India 2 - The Indigo Worker

Getting to the end of this thread paint now. You can see where the hoop has been attached for me to work on the neck and clothes area

Last March when I went to India we visited Bagru where the dabu dying and indigo printing was a major activity. This man was part of washing the huge bundles of indigo dyed fabric They were in vats and got into the vats with the fabric so he had a blue cast to his skin and clothes. I have tried to emulate in this thread paint. The image below shows my preparation for the thread painting. I use a basic citrus cleaner transfer method and then mark out the areas I want to work on with polychroma pencils

I am hoping to get at least 6 faces stitched on eco dyed fabric for the Waitomo Society of Arts exhibition in September

Faces of India Series 1

This week I have made a start on my Faces of India series,- a direct outcome from my trip to India last year. Part of my original excitement of going to India came from experiencing photographs of Steve McCurry and the opportunity to collect my own photos for artistic exploration.

In September 2024 the Waitomo Society of Arts will hold its annual art exhibition. I have always put in some entries and this series would be a great opportunity for this year.

I have printed the original photo in larger format using the free imagy app and printing onto inkjet transparencies and then transferring those images onto my own eco dyed fabric.

The first one I selected is this man with the hat and moustache. Not finished yet but each of these thread paints take many hours of work. Often some areas are worked over two or three times to get the effect and colours I am wanting. Unlike paint you can combine threads but you cannot mix them to achieve a colour result. I do not use black or white thread as these have a deadening effect on the outcome. I tend to use dark green or dark violet to get depth. In this photo the shadows in the hat are dark lilac overstitched with a dark green, It has achieved the effect of a mottled shadow from the brim of the hat.

In the gallery above you can see an early photograph of the Man with Moustache in process. The fabric is stabilised and set up in a hope to try and eliminate puckering. I am putting a heap of stitches in a very small area and puckers can easily creep in. There are a few around his hat in the left hand image but these should be able to be smoothed out. The centre image is a close up showing the detail and number of colour change levels around the eyes and the right hand image is the back of the piece demonstrating how in “sculpting” the colours, the direction of stitches remains very important.

I tend to use a very small straight stitch and free motion embroidery, keeping the hoop moving in random directions at all times to avoid stitch “lines” except where I want to emphasise a line - like the brim of his hat. Some free machine thread painters use a zigzag stitch but I do not feel I have the same control with this as the straight stitch.

I still have the lower portion for this portrait to complete but I am relatively pleased with the expression on the face now.