Art makeover part II

I was flipping through my unframed print rack and I stopped at a print titled “In the Dog House”.

I love that title.

It looks like this:

In the Dog House

I thought to myself, “It looks too similar to other images, I’ve made”, which is not unexpected, since I work in series. But more importantly I thought, “It needs a dog.”

And so another art makeover began.

First of all, it needed texture, so I printed one of my abstract solar plates over it. And then, I didn’t really like how that turned out, so I printed a geometric stencil over it, being carefully to block out sections of the original print.

Yes, much better. All it needed was a dog.

I looked for a reference picture of a sad dog and drew it in my sketchbook several times, until I had a nice simple drawing. I then copied that onto tracing paper. I tried different placements on the print, and then carefully taped it down.

Next I used a needle to punch holes through the drawing and the print, in preparation for sewing. I back stitched a bright green embroidery floss for the body and deep purple for the eyes. Now it looks like this:

In the Dog house, redux

Now I like it so much more.