April diptych

Done! Only a few days into May, not too bad me thinks.... Above is the inspiration from April 2009 journal sketches (see slide show on the side bar ->). I layered writings of poems about spring, but I do not remember which poem and I cannot read it due to all the layering. So I chose a new poem by Anna Akhmatova. It's a poem that references the month of April, I have found the translation here. Not a bad translation, but to me it's impossible to translate nuances of language. I cannot do better as I am not a poet by any stretch of imagination, I'll stick to art. I started by painting my canvas boards with yellow acrylic. Then I wrote the verse in red acrylic with a large paint brush. A wash of orange went on next, which I partially wiped away with a paper towel. Then I wrote the verse on pale yellow chiffon that I pinned to sheets of tear-away stabilizer. Here's a close up. I then put the pedal to the metal and free-hand machine embroidered the writing. Here's a close up of the embroidery. I then wrote the verse on the stabilizer larger and embroidered that. What was I thinking?? Next time I will use water soluble stabilizer and just wash it away, instead of spending hours picking at it... grrrrr..... Here's the chiffon on top of painted canvas boards.And here's the larger lettering on top of the chiffon. I added some parchment colored acrylic paint on top of it all later for some obscuring effects. This is a close up of the final diptych. And this the full view.