my web

As far as final peace goes, this is where I stand.

Not sure if I like it. Will look again on Friday.

threading people

I have been experimenting with sewing into the victims portraits, thinking about how a serial killer who was scared of women would see women. Here are the sketchbook ones.

I think that the top one was most successful, as it is oddly inhuman. I decided to se into more portraits like that.

I like them, so decided to incorporate them into my web.

I think these have been quite successful all in all.

Painting

I am sorry, I have been caught up recently, so I am going to have to catch up a bit with posts. Since I last posted, I have been thinking, how would a woman fearing killer view women? With this in mind I did some portraits of the victims based on their photographs, warping their image in an attempt to make them creepy. Here are the pictures.

All but the last one is based on the victims. The last one is based on a magazine photo. 

I chose the red as it is the theam of my work right now, being passion and blood. It also represents on the lips makeup and falsehood. I admit I was heavily inspired by Stanistar Frenkiels demonic image 'Delphi Steps' where he portrays prostitutes in a demonic manner. 

I chose to paint with my fingers to make it more immediate and textural. A happy accident was made. As I did the images outside, they got soil in them, leading to even more earthy, grim images.

I am quite pleased with the results, but unsure if they tye into my current work.

£5

In 1977, the Yorkshire Ripper was nearly caught by a £5 note.

A newly minted note that had been left on a victim had only been distributed in one company, so the police interviewed the employees. Peter Sutcliffe, an employee, was interviewed, but overlooked.

I set about trying to recreate the note in stitch. I first did it with free machine embroidery.

This took me 6 hours. I then scanned this into a computer the prodded it into a form that could be input into a machine.

I then put this information into an automatic embroidery machine.

After 68 minutes I got this.

Here they are together.

I really enjoyed making these. My one is neater and easier to read. I imagine I could clean up the machine image better and get a neater image, but I think I wouldn't be able to gt the delicateness of my hand embroidered one. Not sure which one I will use in my final peice, I will produce couple more.

Thats all for now.

the face

I decided to make a needlepoint lace image of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. I envisaged it taking me a week, but it was more like 2 and a bit, working through break and lunch times too.

Here is its progression from quite late on.

I am most pleased with the outcome. There has been a bit of a distortion, so it is now as similar to Sutcliffe as one of his photofits. But I am proud. I am not going to do anything so time consuming again this project, as I only have 5 weeks left, and I would loose a lot of time that way. 

The red it quite eye catching. I originally wanted to do the whole thing in red, with a different stitch for the paler parts of the image, bit unfortunately that didn't work well, as you couldn't see the edges and had to re do the middle in off white thread. Now it is more of a functional net to hold the red in place.

I am so happy though.

maps

I seem have managed to return to map inspiration. I was thinking about where Sutcliffe killed and harrased his victims. I ended up making it on the wall, but I decided to make it a more abstract shape by not using a map behind and just seeing how the shape looked.

I quite like the simplicity. 

I decided to make it more sketchy by dying the string myself.

I dyed the string myself. Here they are.

I like the patches of the string. There is a big contrast to factory dyed stuff.

Thats all really. I will update on how thats going.

Experimentation.

On Monday I was a little ill, so only got this thing done.

I decided to try running stitch to creat a drawing from life of my friend. I this I wad partially successful as I appear to have accidentally turned her into a cartoon. I must work on my accuracy.

The next thing I did was hand embroider onto felt, thinking about what I could use as wadding for more Kantha.

The colours arn't great, and the stitches are loose as it is hard to sew onto felt without it falling apart in your hands. I like the idea though. I would like to experiment with it.

If I could give the stitches more meaning it wold be good.

Weave

Today I did weaving, but firstly I finished a sampler.

My main problem with this is that I am incapable of a straight line unfortunately. Apart from that it reminds me of lines after doing something wrong. I like the chain stitch despite it going very wrong here. Thorn stitch is another one I may work into things.

I then did some weaving.

The embroidery thread is successful, as is the loose fabric. The canvas and twine are less successful. The string is soso.

Finally I made this. Its just something. I have not formed opinions yet.

Thankyou.

Hiding

Another experiment about hiding in plain sight using a technique I used during transparency. 

Mabry I should paint over the string to hide it better? I don't think it is desperately relevant. I like the image though.

Kantha

We learnt about Kantha, a type of quilting today. I did a quilted face of Sam Garvin from a mug shot from 1925. He was a gang leader in Sheffield.

I like the delicate running stitch. I think that I could use this to explore motives by hiding things between layers.

Embroidery

Sorry I have not posted in a while, I have been doing time consuming stuff.

I did a cross stitch drawing of Peter Sutcliffe. 

The different sides interest me. I chose to do a very mug shot or photo fit like picture. The underside is more expressive and looked angrier.

The use of cross stitch almost physically says no. I like it.I think the wool works well as it is more textural than embroidery thread. People just keep wanting to pick it up.

Book binding

Slightly off topic, but we had a book binding workshop, and for various reasons, I only finished my book today. This is what I made.

I didn't, make the covers quite big enough and the pages are a little irregular, not to mention the face it has precisely nothing to do with my project. I am proud of it though. I think it is quite cute, and I am happy to show it off to the world.

Threads

Sorry for the long wait, I have, in my infinite wisdom, ended up doing very time consuming stuff. This dose't seem like such a good idea to me so early on in the project. I didn't expect it to take me so long. Anyway I will stop being cryptic and show you.

This is lots of threads attached though a drawing of Peter Sutcliffe, or the Yorkshire Ripper. All the different threads look like veins. I was thinking of all the different parts that make up the wish to murder,the different little motivations that tie into one big motivation.

Here is what my space looks like now, as some people came very close to decapitateing themselves on my peice.