#phrygian

First of all, some detail on decisions! As soon as I saw this prompt I was all in, and I definitely wanted something abstract, and the idea of Corrasion wearing down the mountains while Phyrigian desperately tried to keep them together wouldn't leave me alone. What's the point of showing a situationship between two abstract concepts without getting a little abstract with it yourself? I also wanted to show the way that the political ideologies between the two clash and intersect.

My intial idea had the water being far more dynamic and less stylised, but I didn't have a tapestry frame large enough, so I pared things back. The design/cartoon I ended up with was this, which is much more manageable with my equiptment and skill level:

I really wanted to give the idea that they were influencing each other though (for better or worse!) so I wanted to have their colours affecting the other. It was easy enough to decide to add some blue into the mountain colour mix at the base, but I couldn't figure out how to do trailing wires into the water - I didn't want them to be solid gold, and I didn't really have enough space to do them looping etc. I ended up using pick and pick with a blue and a blue-gold colour mix to give the impression of the wires being inside the water

The loops around the mountains were the one thing that stayed throughout the entire drafting process (I love the idea of Phyrigian being large and spread out!) but if I was re-doing this piece I'd make it easier on myself by doing larger loops and doing them line by line (I did the mountains first and it was hard to line everything up as I beat down)

The final part of this was the sky - I really wanted the colours to be reminicent of the Twilight Mirage, and so I ended up on a green-purple mix. My initial plan also had planets in the background, but I changed this as I wanted to evoke both partizan and the stellar combuster with the red sun.

The sun was the hardest and also the most fun part of it - more complex hatching and colour mixing than I've done, but I got far more confident in my skills as I went.

Tapestry talk: I did it in discrete sections, with three colours: red only, a red and sky mix, and the sky colour only. The first section was hatching between the sky and the red-sky mix. Then a section of just the mix. Then a section of hatching between the red and the red-sky mix, and then finally just the red.

I really wanted it to look like diffused light and I think it paid off!

To anyone who got this far thank you!! I had so much fun doing this, and I will definitely be doing a tapestry again next year, when hopefully I have a larger frame and better skills to get even more detailed!!

alt color