continued progress on 2 fronts...

While I’m designing the Marginalia piece, I’ve been sewing away on the Malleus Malaficarum:

There’s LOTS of sewing to do on this one! While the bad guys and their masks are only outlines in red and black (with the title in white,) the women are being fully stitched. The women represent reality, life, actual humans, while the whole witch nonsense had no substance. So the women get deeply hued strands of carefully mixed colors. The words running across the women (which are text copied from Malleus) are outlined in single strands of red thread. It looks (I hope) as if it’s been burned onto the women.

Meanwhile, now that I’ve got a successful Marginalia composition, I’ve been cleaning up all the teeny tiny details. On an image that’s 16” square at 300dpi, I’m frequently working with my brush tool at 2 pixels. Here’s the results:

The dragon wings are now an ethereal pink.

The banderole has a better fit into the dragon mouth and his wings are smoother. This is the dragon originally seen flying over a couple’s bed.

You can never have too many manicules…

Got a better focus on these marginalia critters on the edge of the book - the one all the other creatures are running out of….(below)

I asked my sister and brother-in-law to take a look at the current composition. Did they see anything wrong, anything that didn’t make sense? They both wondered how the malacomorphs fit into the marginalia.  So I added this label (above). Their comments made me realize that there was information I had included in the BLOG, but not in the art itself. As I sat at the computer this morning, it came to me - I could add the information just like Medieval scribes did: AS GLOSSES!  

Oh, this is fun!  Marginalia is the essence of horror vaccui (fear of empty spaces).  One of the reasons I’m particularly enjoying this piece is that I can add, and add more and just keep stuffing this thing and it’s still working!!! Keeping it muted has helped so much - I can subtlety add another (barely visible) manicule only a couple of shades darker that the parchment.

And yes, I’m saving previous versions, so if (when?) I realized that I’ve gone w-a-yyyyy overboard, I can just step back a few versions.

later: That’s it! Done! Finished!  Sent to Spoonflower. STOP NOW, Diane. Step away from the marginalia…..

…and finish sewing Malleus. I need some time to really focus on the stitching, so no new post next week. My apologies.

. Contact me at dianesavona@aol.com