Exploring Stitch Painter

Promises, promises, promises...finally fulfilled! At least partially!

Since the opening of this blog about three (gulp!) years ago, I have been meaning to walk you through the process of importing an image into Stitch Painter, and turning it into a diagram for your needlepoint, or cross-stitch projects.

The day finally has arrived.

I know, I know, you're shocked.

To keep from overwhelming you (and me), we'll do it in installments. [grin!]...More...... First of all, how do you pick the right image? Unless you've the patience of a saint, whether or not you finish the project probably depends on this, so let's look at a few images, together.

One of the first images that pull at our hearts are those of family, but photographs can be very tricky. Lots of detail (wanted and unwanted) and lots of distractions.



Take this lovely snap of a casual and happy family moment (MH900422784, courtesy of the free images in Microsoft Clip Art, thank you, Microsoft). Why isn't it suited to become a needlepoint design?

The faces are visible, well lit and fairly close to the camera--some of the things to keep in mind--but they are too far apart from each other, and still too far from the viewer. There's lots of distracting background detail, too. A studio snap with a plain background already would be helpful (but might feel too posed), or you can just plan on erasing the background from the photo, before or after you import it. It just takes a little time, but it has to be kept in mind.

Using an image like this (MP48491, thanks, again, Microsoft!)...

...will help you avoid heartache. The background is plain, the faces are identifiable, close to the picture plane, and engaging. All are well lit and turned to the viewer. Finally, the background is quite plain, so even if you decided to needlepoint it "as is," it wouldn't give you extra grief.

So, start rummaging through your photos for a few that inspire you. The next time, we'll confront importing images into Stitch Painter.

Enjoy!

(P.S., the hand--courtesy of Microsoft MP900425546--is gigantic, is now in one of Rome's most important museums, and comes from an ancient Roman statue of the Emperor Constantine, who ruled in the first half of the 4th century A.D. I, ahem, added the string!)

Photoless Friday: Owen's next to last exhortation

Owen's next to the last bit of design advice:

PROPOSITION 36: The principles discoverable in the works of the past belong to us; not so the results. It is taking the end for the means.

Surprised?

I know I was....More......

Looking at the works commended in his Grammar of Ornament, which takes examples from countries all over the world and all across the ages, I wouldn't have expected this.

No mere copying-and-pasting design elements for our Owen, however. No historical pastiches, and they were plentiful during his day, no Neo-Gothic, no Neo-Renaissance, no Neo-Classicism, no Neo-Orientalism, no! no! no!

Then again, maybe I should have expected it.

It rings true to his exhortation about studying nature:

adopt the principles, abhore superficial copying.

If you think about it, it doesn't just cut one way.

Like a two-edged sword, for those loving modernism the implied exhortation is just as strong:

don't turn your nose up at works of the past just because they are "old"; they, too, should be studied in order to distill and profit from their accomplishments.

The farsightedness and continued usefulness of his advice continues to astound me.

Photoless Friday: Owen Jones countdown

Only a few more of Owen Jones' precious design principles still left to ponder.

PROPOSITION 35: Imitations, such as the graining of woods, and of the various coloured marbles, [are] allowable only, when the employment of the thing imitated would not have been inconsistent.

huh?...More......

It's easier to understand if you take out the double negative:

PROPOSITION 35: Imitations, such as the graining of woods, and of the various coloured marbles, [are] allowable only, when the employment of the thing imitated would have been consistent.

In other words, in Jones' opinion, artists and architects should use materials, or their imitations, only where they make logical sense.

Today, I think most artists and architects would be more eager to "push the envelope" than this might seem to encourage, but, for all his seemingly hard and fast rules, Jones encouraged keeping true to the principles, not the surface details, of nature.

If we want structure of any kind to seem sturdy, then the materials, or their representations, must seem able to support the "weight" in whatever form it is.

It also means that the contrary is true. If we want to encourage a sense of disorientation, or incapacity, or..., or..., or..., then the structure will be out of materials, or their representations, that do not seem to support the weight.

Klee's twittering machines just sprung to mind.

Photoless Friday (a handful of Owen Jones)

Photoless Friday...yeah! For the first time in quite awhile. I'm wanting to be done with this list, though, as interesting as it is and as helpful as it will be, of Owen Jones' design principles, and get to the designing together with you, so here are...More......

...a handful of them all about separating foreground from background:

"PROPOSITION 29: When ornaments in a colour are on a ground of a contasting colour, the ornament should be separated from the ground by an edging of lighter colour; as a red flower on a green ground should have an edging of lighter red.

PROPOSITION 30: When ornaments in a colour are on a gold ground, the ornaments should be separated from the ground by an edging of a darker colour.

PROPOSITION 31: Gold ornaments on any coloured ground should be outlined with black.

PROPOSITION 32: Ornaments of any colour may be separated from grounds of any other colour by edgings of white, gold, or black.

PROPOSITION 33: Ornaments in any color, or in gold, may be used on white or black grounds, without outline or edging.

PROPOSITION 34: In 'self-tints,' tones, or shades of the same colour, a light tint on a dark ground may be used without outline; but a dark ornament on a light ground requires to be outlined with a still darker tint."

Enjoy!

Photoless Friday (28): What else? More Owen Jones!

Hi, there! It's photoless Friday, again, already! Yup! More great design advice from Owen Jones!

PROPOSITION 28: [color, cont.] Colours should never be allowed to impinge upon each other.

What do you think he meant by that?

When we're done contemplating his design advice, we'll examine it, and try out some examples.

Enjoy!

Photoless Friday (27): back to good ol' Owen Jones and his great design advice

More great design advice from Owen Jones...and the proposition numbers are back in sync with the Photoless Friday numbers...a small silly tidy thrill:

PROPOSITION 27: [color, cont.] Black grounds suffer when opposed to colours which give a luminous complementary.

Photoless Friday (25):...yup...Owen Jones on color!

More thought-provoking design advice from Owen Jones'"The Grammar of Ornament":

PROPOSITION 26: [color, cont.] Colours on white grounds appear darker; on black grounds lighter.

Ponder and enjoy!

Photoless Friday (24):...you guessed it...more Owen Jones on color

We're heading into the home stretch, really we are!

Here is the next design advice snippet from Owen Jones' "Grammar of Ornament":

PROPOSITION 25: [color, cont.] When two different colours are juxtaposed, they receive a double modification; first, as to their tone (the light colour appearing lighter, and the dark colour appearing darker); secondly, as to their hue, each will become tinged with the complementary colour of the other.

When we finish going through them all, and you've had time to think about each of them and "digest" them, we'll try some designing experiments together.

'Til the next Photoless Friday...Enjoy!

Photoless Friday (23): More...Owen Jones (surprise!)

More Owen Jones...surprise!

We're working our way through what I consider to be the more important snippets of great design advice found in his "Grammar of Ornament." (He should have asked me to edit this list before he published it, there's some repetition, only I would have had to have been born more than a hundred years earlier, and my parents hadn't met, yet.)

Today's snippet is:

PROPOSITION 24: [color, cont.] When two tones of the same colour are juxtaposed, the light colour will appear lighter, and the dark colour darker.

Photoless Friday (22): more...quess what?!...Owen Jones!

More color advice from Owen Jones (don't get frightened, we're back to the intelligible stuff):

PROPOSITION 22: [color, cont.] The various colours should be so blended that the objects coloured, when viewed at a distance, should present a neutralized bloom.

Photoless Friday (21): More Owen Jones (this one's a mouthful...hang in there!)

Workin' so hard, would so love to chat and "digest" together with you these great design hints from Owen Jones, but that will have to wait 'til the work load lightens up. For now, here's a whalloping big snatch of his complicated color advice...More......

The other indications about color are easier to understand. These snippets are hard on the brain, but we'd might as well get them out of the way, so we can continue our tour through his advice.

At the end, we'll try to make some sense of what he's told us, and try using it, ourselves, together.

Are your seatbelts fastened? Here goes...!

PROPOSITION 18: (Field’s Chromatic equivalents) The primaries of equal intensities will harmonise or neutralize each other, in the proportions of 3 yellow, 5 red, and 8 blue – integrally as 16. The secondaries in the proportions of 8 orange, 13 purple, 11 green – integrally as 32. The tertiaries, citrine (compound of orange and green), 19; russet (orange and purple), 21; olive (green and purple), 24; -- integrally as 64. It follows that, -- each secondary being a compound of two primaries is neutralized by the remaining primary in the same proportions: thus, 8 of orange by 8 of blue, 11 green by 5 of red, 13 of purple by 3 of yellow. Each tertiary being a binary compound of two secondaries, is neutralized by the remaining secondary: as, 24 of olive by 8 of orange, 21 of russet by 11 of green, 19 of citrine by 13 of purple.

PROPOSITION 19: [color, cont.] The above supposes the colours to be used in their prismatic intensities, but each colour has a variety of tones when mixed with white, or of shades when mixed with grey or black. When a full colour is contrasted with another of a lower tone, the volume of the latter must be proportionally increased.

PROPOSITION 20: [color, cont.] Each colour has a variety of hues, obtained by admixture with other colors, in addition to white, gray, or black: thus we have of yellow, -- orange-yellow on the one side, and lemon yellow on the other; so of red, -- scarlet-red, and crimson-red; and of each varity of tone and shade. When a primary tinged with another primary is contrasted with a secondary, the secondary must have a hue of the third primary.

PROPOSITION 21: [color, cont.] In using the primary colours on moulded surfaces, we should place blue, which retires, on the concave surfaces; yellow, which advances, on the convex; and red, the intermediate colour, on the undersides; separating the colors by white on the vertical planes. When the proportions required by Proposition 18 cannot be obtained, we may procure the balance by a change in the colours themselves: thus, if the surfaces to be coloured should give too much yellow, we should make the red more crimson and the blue more purple, -- i.e., we should take the yellow out of them; so if the surfaces should give too much blue, we should make the yellow more orange and the red more scarlet.

Ouch! (The rest of his hints are more straight forward, like the first ones we have seen, so don't worry!)

Back atcha' later, enjoy!

Photoless Friday (19): still workin' on Owen Jones

Still working our way through Owen Jones' design advice:

PROPOSITION 17: The primary colours should be used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower.

Photoless Friday (17): guess what? (More Owen Jones!)

Can't beat the design advice of Owen Jones:

"PROPOSITION 14: Colour is used to assist in the development of form, and to distinguish objects or parts of objects one from another."

Verrrrrrry Venetian in origin, as opposed to the Florentine tradition emphasizing drawing. There's plenty of that in Owen's writing, too!

Photoless Friday (16): surprise, surprise, more Owen Jones

Here it is, Photoless Friday, already.

Time for more Owen Jones...More......

PROPOSITION 13: Flowers or other natural objects should not be used as ornaments, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the intended image to the mind, without destroying the unity of the object they are employed to decorate. Universally obeyed in the best periods of Art, equally violated when Art declines. [Jones’ cursive]

Huh?

Yeah, I know, his old-time language is sometimes a bit impenetrable.

Here, the meaning is simple: draw inspiration from nature, stylize (don't copy) it, and certainly don't make it into a merely decorative motif.

My spin? Try to adapt the idea to the medium and the project's end goals.

Photoless Friday (15): more Owen Jones

What wonderful design advice for harmonious fulfilling designs. Here's another nugget from Owen Jones' "Grammar of Ornament":

PROPOSITION 12: All junctions of curved lines with curved or of curved lines with straight should be tangential to each other. Natural law. Oriental practice in accordance with it. [Jones’ cursive]

Photoless Friday 14: More Owen Jones

"PROPOSITION 11: In surface decoration all lines should flow out of a parent stem. Every ornament, however distant, should be traced to its branch and root. Oriental practice." [The cursive is Jones’.]

Photoless Friday (11): A promise is a promise: Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament

I may not have the memory of an elephant, but my sense of guilt does. I had promised, when I first opened this blog, to finish reading Owen Jones' Grammar of Ornament, and share his wise and still fresh design principles, despite the fact that more than 150 years have passed since it was first published in 1856. Yes, 1856. What could he have said way back then that could still be so inspiring? You'll be pleasantly surprised....More......

Just think for a minute what someone born in London in 1809 saw and felt and experienced. A positive and negative whirlwind of cultural, political and economic developments, including the Grand Tour and the Industrial Revolution, which bring us right back to our architect Owen, who--and he wasn't alone--looked around him in England, and didn't like the buildings and things he saw, so he wrote up cures for the ills, and published them--a list of general principles, then examples drawn from art of all ages and places the world over--for the benefit of artists, architects, industrialists and the general public.

Putting his words into today's language, his self-declared goals were to explain and illustrate his idea of good architectural decoration, which he believed derived from following the general principles of design found in nature, not copying either it, or past styles, slavishly.

Some of his comments ring literally through the centuries, if not millennia, in occidental art: harmony and appropriateness of design, proportion and color; in good art, nothing can be added, or taken away, and leave the design equally good, or even improve it; study nature, then idealize it, and so on and so forth.

Good start, but not so very helpful until the components are defined, so, on this Photoless Friday, let's jump over these generics, and get straight to my first summary of his thoughts I personally find helpful for designing, and I hope that they'll be helpful for you, too.

This one comes from his Proposition n. 6: Beauty of form is produced by lines growing out one from the other in gradual undulations.

Jones' comment on ancient Greek art takes it one helpful step further: the three great laws which we find everywhere in nature—radiation from the parent stem, proportionate distribution of the areas, and the tangential curvature of the lines—are always obeyed.

Photoless Friday (04): Mid-term report and ruminations about art

A mid-term report and some ruminations about art...More......

Mid-term report: my current needlepoint point project is going as slowly as molasses uphill in January. Life is getting in the way, and probably will continue to do so for at least a couple of months. Plus, needlepoint is pretty slow going, even in the best of times. Please be patient, and I'll continue creating diagrams for you in the meantime.

Now, for some ruminations about art.

If you read this blog (all three of you!), you'll already agree with me when I say that needlepoint (and cross-stitch and sewing and knitting and...) is an art form.

Art critics and art historians are finally recognizing these forms as equally important as traditional painting, sculpture and print-making. It's not easy...not even for me, as an art historian, who needlepoints. Why they didn't before opens up a whole other can o' worms (depreciation of "women's work," for starters, when women did not have the opportunities to learn and to practice that men had, so it was a double bind situation, and so on and so forth).

I don't want to dwell on the negative aspects.

Rather, I want to present a positive step towards recognizing these media as equally valid art forms. Though for knitting, the "Dritto Rovescio" ("Front Back") exhibit at the Triennale gallery in Milan a few years back was a big step forward. The site's in Italian, but no problem, the pictures are universal: http://www.do-knit-yourself.com/DrittoRovescio.html

I also want to point you to my Photoless Friday ruminations on art on my "My Milan (Italy)" blog, in the hope that they might be interesting to you, too: http://mymilanitaly.blogspot.com/2010/11/photoless-friday-04-i-dont-know.html

What are you working on?

The Devil is in the details...of designing (again)

Ever wondered why the (good) readymade needlepoint designs are so darn expensive? I did (and do), but one starts to understand why, when one carefully executes designs. Leaving aside for the moment other costs,...More......such as paying royalties to the museum or artist holding image rights, physical production & storage & shipping, personnel, PR & advertising, a bit of good old-fashioned profit and who knows what else, the design and proofing process is a lot more exacting and painstaking and time-consuming than you may have thought.

Take a look at my diagrams: at the top is the plain canvas, in the middle a design, at the bottom a simulated needlepoint of the colored "O" of the design. Note how, in the design, the "O" looks completely closed, yet, in the simulated needlepoint, there are gaps.

Remember I mentioned earlier to pay attention to materials and technique? This is an excellent example: the thickness and thinness of the lines (much more visible in real stitching), as well as the gaps, are produced by the bottom left to upper right direction of my right handed stitching (the gaps are on the opposite side for lefties).

When these thickness variations and gaps are not desirable, it takes eye-straining care and great concentration to hunt for these areas in the design, and, even then, some pop up during execution (hence, for commercial purposes, samples have to be worked). To get rid of these variances and gaps, extra stitches have to be added where you may not want them.

On the other hand, these variations in thickness and gaps also can be part of your original design. Keep them in mind, too, when using Cross Stitch patterns for needlepoint.

(Originally posted June 14, 2010, this message was skipped during Google’s retroactive indexing phase, which means that not only was it not available in internet, but also that the page was not available for the in-site search feature, so the message is being reposted to remedy these two problems. Thank you for your understanding.)

Point-of-view

Still looking for a way to enliven your design that catches your attention? Another way is to use an unusual point-of-view, such as the straight-down view I adopted for my strawberry pie glass coaster (to see “Is there life after cushions? (2),” June 24, 2010: http://arsacupicturaestellae.blogspot.com/2010/06/is-there-life-after-cushions-02.html).