Portait in Fabric: Almost Done!

DAD AND JACK:

This photo shows the background I chose. First I had chosen just the dark blue (at the bottom) but I realized the  figure was just floating in space. When I looked at the original photo, I saw the ground/sky line---EXACTLY what was missing in my picture!  So, I found in my stash a nice mottled light blue "sky", and used the dark fabric for the ground.  I loved the angle of the ground in the photo, so I tried to emulate that in my picture.

 

 Here is my picture with the boarder on.  Using my color wheel, I found the triadic complementary colors for my red/orange (sepia) hues were red violet and teal. I seem to have an affinity for these three colors---I've discovered several projects from workshops where I used this exact same combination!

Anyway, I found this nice batik with all three shades in it, which I like very much.  Also notice that I let the dog's tail come outside the frame.  It really helps bring the whole figure forward, I think. I'm not used to adding the border before I've even finished the picture, but it was necessary in this case so I could finish up the stitching on the tail. I really like doing it this way.

Here is a close-up of the face.  I was not happy with something about the face as it was. I realized I didn't have the shadow on the forehead or along side the nose quite right before.  Here you can see I added a bit of fabric on the right side of the forehead and narrowed the shadow on the face so there is better definition of the cheekbone (it's evident on the original photograph.)

I guess I could spend another week fiddling with little things---I've torn out other stitching, added more here and there---but this must be finished up today!  This isn't perfect, but then neither am I!

I will post later about the back of the quilt.  I'm doing a couple of special things there, too!