Camellia Leaves

Finished the calyces, and a few leaves, plus the stamens and centers of the camellias. I don't like the color of the stamens for the mottled camellia. It's too pink. I may or may not fix it - depends on how I feel about this piece when done, as it is difficult to take out.

Mottled Camellia Petal

After I sent in my MC Color pieces, I tried two attempts to stitching flowers with special light effects. The first was light diffused transparent flower petals (no picture). The next was a very pretty begonia that I found in my garden, and I wanted to try long and short stitching shading. I was not able to reproduce the paper-like texture of the petals, or the delicate progression from yellow to orange. So I have to shelve these for now.

I went back to my JE Phase VII Realistic Effect Camellia. I last worked on it was 9 months ago. I finished the mottled camellia petal, and my standards are deteriorating! I'm hoping to work up some enthusiasm for this piece, so I can get onto my next (and possibly last JE) piece - Antique Mirrors.

Second Piece Redone

As I was doing the write-ups for the pieces, I realized that they were both monochromatic! Yikes!! After I calmed down, I studied both pieces to see what I could do. One, I can't change the water; two, I can't change the stitched karst, three, it won't do any good to change the fisherman and the boat. That leaves the silk-gauzed distant hills. Initially I was going to change the colors of the hills in the mauve piece - but since this piece is a definite monochrome color scheme, it may be better (and easier to justify) changing the black-and-white piece.
Thus the hills are now green, and with the red raft being such a dramatic color, I think it falls in the realm of "non-traditional" color scheme, as I cannot give a name for it. Keeping my fingers cross for the judges to accept that..

Both Pieces Done

I am calling them done, even though they are not exactly the way I originally envisioned them. One of the most fascinating aspect of karsts formations are the gnarly trees, hanging on for dear life on the eroded substrate. Unfortunately I tried several approaches and couldn't get it right. So bare karsts it is! I also tried several ways to represent the shimmering water, but they didn't work out either.

What did work out was the bright red raft - looks really cool against the monochromatic scheme.

As opposed to the subdued raft, which looks subdued.

I found some leaf skeletons from the yard and brushed them with gel medium, and stitched them onto the left karst. I think they look fine.

I will review them tomorrow and hopefully they will still look ok. Now onto the research paper...

EGA MC Craftsman Second piece

The first piece is almost finished. I have figured out how to do the vegetation for the karst (I hope!) but I will wait till both pieces are done before proceeding. Same for the boat/raft.
Here's the first piece.

The second piece is started - color scheme is black and grey.
Now for the water (sigh!)

On another note - I had a hard drive crash and spent 2 days trying to recover. The latest backup I had was a month old; fortunately I keep a lot of my important stuff on OneNote in OneDrive.

Here's a public service comment:
1. Do backup!
2. Practise restoring from backup before it is actually required!!
After much gnashing of teeth and renting of old T-shirts, I finally came up with a process that worked - but it would have been a lot easier if I had actually tried out restoring files before today - instead of trusting the manual's instructions.
Right now the restoring is still chugging away, and probably will run overnight. And then I will have to reconfigure the drives, etc. I hope I haven't lost the preliminary paper I started for the MC Color submission, but I won't find out till I have everything restored.