Toni Buckby

Here be monsters….

I took the large drawing off the fabric and spent a lot of time just looking at it… cropping it and turning it into a flat design, I can’t help thinking it’s lost some of the energy of the original drawing – the shapes are still mesmerising but I want to add something more, I keep being haunted by monsters…

(and looking at far too many Hieronymus Bosch paintings)

I think it needs the monsters, so I added one in and it seems to have lifted the image – its difficult to picture how the overall embroidery will look, I haven’t decided whether to keep the patterns flat or fade them but I think using another style of blackwork (more like the stitched sketches of animal skulls) for the monsters (maybe even adding colour to the wings) will give the design focus.

I’m going to add some more creatures (it’s lonely and what IS it looking at??) but I also need to do a couple of stitched sketches to help me make decisions on the texture of the embroidery.