An Unexpected Surprise.

I'm in the process of weeding out quilts and other work that I don't feel is truly successful, and using it for other purposes (of which more in later posts).  I decided to paint over a number of pieces, including one of my stitched photographs, which I had never really thought of as successful, meaning to then cut them up.  But I was pleasantly surprised by the result of adding a simple wash of colour over the photograph.  Sadly, I can't find the original image (it must be somewhere, but I really can't find it...).  So here's the newly painted model...

You can see some of the original colour showing through the darker paint.  There wasn't enough contrast within the petal areas for my liking; adding paint has improved that quite a lot.  And it has shown up the stitch considerably.  It's a light metallic thread (I have no idea why I chose it... wish it had been darker, but don't feel that anything would be added by changing the colour of the thread.  That said, perhaps some darker painted lines...or crayon lines?).

Or I could turn it upside down...

Pass... I don't know.  I still don't think it's successful as an image as it is...but it might be interesting cropped. So I'll continue to play with it.  For now, though, I think I'll live with it a little, see if there are less drastic actions that can be taken, first.  I will, however, be trying this with other images.  Hand tinted photographs were common once upon a time... so why not hand painted stitched photographs?

The more I think about it, the more I think that I need to do something about that stitch, and the contrast... so watch this space; I'll share how I get on.