Autumn Crow color study
Here's what I came up with this afternoon while playing with colored pencils:
There's a bigger version in my gallery if you want to look at it closer. I was going to do the lines in different widths and stitches, but I've decided that lines are just too structured, so the background will have various stitches and beads in different colors randomly scattered. What you can't see from my scan (need to take a look at my scanner settings, too) is that the background is a very pretty, muted green. I've just finished painting my cloth with Lumiere Metallic Olive paint. It's a gorgeous color, an olive green mixed with gold. I'm really looking forward to stitching on this. I may rub some chalk pastel into the cloth in a couple of places to add a touch of orange-red and golden yellow, but I'm not sure about that.
Anyhow, now the big decision is what do do with my crow. I will decide whether or not to completely fill the small spaces between the leaves once I get to that point. I'll see how it looks with beads just around the edges and go from there. But the crow...I think black will be too harsh and heavy. I also don't want to completely fill in the crow, so he *will* have the green background showing through. He is an Autumn crow after all, so that's probably going to turn out just fine. I think some of the decision will come once the fabric is dry and I can hold some threads against it and see what will look good.