These sketches are some of the tonal ones I did a while back .  The first was a challenge, to be done with 4 tones, white, light grey, deeper grey and black.  No matter how HARD I scrubbed the black pencil I couldn’t get a smooth shading.  More practise needed.
It’s hard to tell as the background is on a white page but ..my camera work was/is bad.

The child and koala were from an art magazine, the seats were at the doctor’s waiting room.. had to do something while waiting. and the doorway was drawn so I could use it as a pattern for a fabric page to swap.

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Though it took longer to re-do the top two white sections than I expected, it was worth the effort to have the right white.

Only the antlers to go now.  There are holes to be created, which is something I’ve never tried..  :-0

The head so far. As I muddled the white threads the 2 sections need to be re-done.  The colour is more cream than white and really shows up against the pure white of the rest of the work.

Not such a disaster as it may seem as I only need to remove the top layer, not the padded sections.  That will be tomorrow’s aim.

The back of the head was Padded Satin stitched, with a grid of Straight stitches which were then Couched down with single Straight stitches, not crossed. The grid is only 1/16″ apart each way.

I drew, with a 2B pencil, the nectarine tree branches when they had a mass of

Nectarine tree with flower

flower/fruit buds showing.
The tree has many more branches but this amount was good for me.  No leaves as yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second step was the opening flowers in the right side picture….LOL even less branches. Watercolour pencils for this one and the next too.

 

 

 

 

 

The third photo shows leaves also flowers deeper in colour, preparing to close for the fruit to emerge.
At the moment the tree is covered with more, larger leaves and heaps of fruit at the early stage.   I’ll have to draw that soon.

I sometimes wonder if I should give up sketching and concentrate on taking decent photos LOL….  I apologize for their quality.

A sample of Granitos stitch.  A lot of designs can be made with this easy and raised stitch –  leaves, flowers, wheat, even lamb ears are but a few.
I used a finer but similar thread than perle 8 on the Aida and managed 5 threads in the pair of holes.  Sunday Stitch School can be found at Queenie’s Needlework

I’m up to my neck in the project LOL.   I noticed at the chest section, the triangles looked a bit like a star shape and ..aaahh, also noticed I’d used the wrong colour thread for the two larger triangles.  As I like it, I will leave it as is.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have the head finished too.

 

All the blue tracing will disappear as soon as I touch a hot iron to those parts.

Another sketch originally from Arthur Wainright that I did my best with.

Mostly it’s after I have completed a work that I see errors but that’s part of the learning and sometimes is fun too.  I took the liberty of altering some parts, like the doorway which was indistinct.

Only a little more added to the body of the reindeeer.  The tail, French knots around the semi circle and the band with triangles. I obviously moved the tracing sheet as mine are not like the neat original design.   I don’t mind.
The wee patch to the left of the triangles is fill with Split Backstitch

Back stitch outlines in grey, white and gold DMC.

The stitching though slow is filling quickly too.

Holly leaves and berries have been added to the Rump section. I almost completed the leaves yesterday and thought my eyes were deceiving me as I could see two tones in the white stitching.

Checking the thread on my bobbin I found there were indeed faults, so I undid all the hours of stitching, back to the padded part and began again today.  As I have no correct white to replace it- until I shop again- I decided to use the same white as the legs.
I have yet to add dots between the leaves and semi circle .
Double running stitch was used to create an edge for the padding and not seen.  Other stitches were  Satin and Backstitch.

This set of girls was from a sketch by Arthur Rackham.
My first try at this is on the left side and I was not happy with it, so the next day I tried again with the 2nd left – a bit better;  and again the third day for the next sketch.   My DH thought it was the same girl, progressively ageing.

Still not pleased I tried the fourth 2 days later and to my surprise I not only felt better about the picture but I used my memory only with no Alice anywhere nearby.  The legs are a bit thin and the sleeve long but that’s fine with me.  No. 4 was drawn on an old envelope that had part of my shopping list written down…hence the biro on her face.  I used a black Micron No.1 pen over the pencil sketches.

 

I should have added this original version earlier..