Flowers that are Romantic Thinkers

I have been playing at making faces, then made the faces into a few flowers. The faces seemed to have quite complex personalities and reminded me of 18th Century Romantic poets and heroines. So I have had a go at giving them suitable plant names.

Endurance

Sincerity

Circumspect

Chary

Fortitude

Heedful

Patience

Placidity

I don't think they are quite right because Heedful looks far to smug and Placidity is clearly completely bonkers.

Automaton of a Cat in Socks

A successful mechanism, I have managed to make this cat run in the most random way. He swings his legs while turning side to side as he spins around.

Sketch into Free Machine Embroidery experiment No.3 and 4

Experiment No.3 is and example of why you shouldn't do experiments with artwork that you don't really like. I took a random sketch thinking that I wouldn't be too precious with it.

Had a limp attempt at under painting before machining using some old watercolour paint. I didn't want the paint to overpower the drawing.

Free machine embroidered for a couple of hours and ended up with an image that was far too cartoon like. Now I have another large piece of fabric that I have no idea what to do with.

But I did learn enough to make me think I would try this again with a picture that I do like. I went back through an old sketch book and found this image and decided to use it for experiment No. 4

I haven't tried ironing it yet (too much like housework) but I am happier with the end result. I think the problem is that I can get a far more tonal line with a biro and I need to do preparatory drawings in fine line pen so that the line will fit closer to the stitched line. 

Automaton of a Girl with a Bug

I have just finished the mechanism for this Automaton of a girl with a bug. She only spins when the crank is turned and I still need to buy myself a book to expand my limited knowledge of how to make things move.

Ideally I would have liked her to squash the bug

Winter Poem Animation

I was catching up with the posts on the illustration blog Drawn and came across this amazing animation, animated and directed by Rok Predin.
                        
Winter Poem from Trunk Animation on Vimeo.

Sketch into Free Machine Embroidery experiment No.2

I have had another go at turning a quick sketch into a free machine embroidery, this time adding some colour. I took bits of this doodle.....

and the end result looks a bit laboured and too much like a bad drawing. To keep sane I am going to put this picture away for a few weeks and then have another look. At the moment I have a picture in my mind of how I wanted it to look, but I think I just need to be brave and machine into it more. The next experiment I am going to try is to under paint a sketch and then machine embroider on top.

Automaton that didn't work as intended

I had this idea to make an automaton of a dancing couple doing some kind of holding hands dance. Sadly when I added the movement they did a really awful wrestling hold and jammed up. So instead I have a good box base for a future automaton and a sculpture. I really need to get a book on mechanisms.