People are tough

I am going to talk about hooking people. Some hookers have a great knack for this, many of them are fine shaders and I’m just so much in AWE of their artistry. I am a primitive style person, so I do not strive for the fine detail. I have tried to do the fine detail in faces, and end up spending HOURS and HOURS on one small section, as I”m never pleased with it, and keep ripping out what I do. Instead of people’s faces I end up with orangutans. A lesson in humility for sure.

So, not wanting to make an orangutan rug, when I hook people I try to stay away from a cartoonish look. Something I’ve tried, is to take a photograph, and with a photo editing program ( I do have photoshop but I do not have the patience to learn it. One of those things my Dad was in the process of teaching me before he passed away. So now I think it may be a type of mental block that I dislike the program.) So, I use iPhoto, as it came free with my Mac, and it does not have much in the way of photo editing sauf I can change the brightness and the saturation of a picture. When I want to hook a face, such as that of my Mermaid rug, I took the picture (was a picture of a woman but I’m not saying who, lol) and put it on less saturation, so it’s black and white, and maximum brightness. Then, after I print off the photo, I take a black marker and trace around the eyes, and what portions of the nose that have shown up. Not all details will be visible, and this is what I am aiming for.

In this mermaid rug, very few details are hooked into the face.

I have just started another rug, no name yet…woman and ocean…it is based on an Emily Dickinson poem that I love. Once I get the face hooked I will post a picture. If she doesn’t look like an orangutan, that is. At which point I may have to move onto something else. I have 3 rugs on the go, a rarity for me, as I always used to finish a project before moving on. These days I start one, get blocked on it, or dislike it, and move onto another. Odd. Not like me at all. What is going on?