This week’s stitch challenge was presented by Emily Tull – I’ve come across her work before because she does amazingly expressive threadpaintings! I must be honest here: I found the challenge too challenging, haha!

What I mean is that Emily showed a very energetic eye as the example piece and I just couldn’t get myself to follow her directions. My hand refused, I am sorry to say! Her eye had a ton of character in its simplistic sketchy style. My eye took a more formal path, as apparently I am quite reserved in my expression (by the way, I had added “expression” to the list of practice, alongside “process”). I really had intended on following exactly, to stretch my box and get out of my comfort zone. Instead, I was a little baby about it and relied on my favorite stitching (stem stitch). I did take her advice for the “loose” straight stitches to make up the eyelashes, though.

In my hand, I wasn’t that impressed with my own work, but once I stepped away from it, I saw how realistic it actually is! I was stressing over adding pink to the mix – which I did because I had thought the linen would have been off-white enough for the white highlights to show but they didn’t; the pink was my attempt to bring them out a little more. Also, my reference photo didn’t give me a lot of eyelashes to go on (it’s my own eye, so they are half-invisible anyway being half blonde, and I should have known better but I don’t do makeup).

Maybe I should call this one “Meyeself” as it might be the very first thing at all related to a self-portrait I’ve tried with thread. The only other self-portrait I have made, that I can recall, anyway, is my little clay head. Curious, as I don’t think I ever blogged about my clay endeavors. Who knows where they all got off to! But here’s two: the blonde is of course the self-portrait 😉