I've uploaded some progress pictures of the St Martin's panel to Flickr. The above picture shows the current state of things. I've finished the color fill stitching and I'm working on the outlining.
The next thing that I have to think about is painting on the faces. Lady Sabine Berard has generously posted some pictures from the Cloisters at the NY Met. In them, she has a great close up of a painted face from a piece that came out of the same convent: picture. In this particular piece the face is done in "encroaching Gobelin stitch" and painted on, but on the St Martin's panel they just used a regular brick stitch as the foundation.
Unfortunately, I haven't read much on what kind of paint was used for the face. From scribe's guild I know that gouache paint is a good modern equivalent for scroll work, but I'm not sure for painting on embroidery. I'm still looking for sources though, so if anybody knows anything, I would be most grateful.
3 comments:
This is turning out really beautiful! Other than goache, which is so easily water soluble, there is ink and also tempera paint. Tempera would not be as water soluble but would adherence be an issue? I don't know.
I agree, this is coming along nicely. What are the shapes in the corners of the piece? Are they wood planes?
@Kathy - Thanks! Yeah, I have a hard time believing that gauche would survive long without flaking off or smudging with too much moisture. I haven't worked any in Tempura, but it does seem to be a candidate. I'm going to try to translate some more documentation and see if I can find any hints.
@Gaston - Thanks :) They are half fleur-de-lis. You can see the outline a little more clearly in this poast: http://helenestuff.blogspot.com/2010/08/ive-actually-started-my-panel.html
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