When is enough enough?

[gurdymonkey]

  As I look at the work I've done so far and compare it to the portrait, I didn't put anywhere near as many white flowers on my kosode as the original artist did.

Part of me is angsting over it, part of me is rationalizing that I'm faking brocade, surihaku (stenciled rice paste and gold leaf) or embroidery (or a combination of all three) based on a very small reproduction of a portrait in a book. A portrait, not an extant garment. An impression of a garment depicted in a portrait, come to that!

Aesthetically I can't decide whether I want to go back and add more flowers. I like what I've done so far - there's a great deal to be said for the joys of negative space, not the least of which is if I don't paint it, I can't screw it up! But the portrait kosode is just so - well, you can see right there.
 
I just painted a couple of leaves on in the green and now I'm waiting to see how they dry. The green fabric paint is a lot thinner and wetter than the others I've used and is actually bleeding through the back of the fabric a little. If it dries really dark, I may have to mix some white and yellow into it to give it a little more contrast. I'm also thinking that some subtle highlights in gold on the leaves might be a nice touch....

Bottom line, I would like to have this done so I can wear it at Pennsic. That means that the paint work MUST be completed by next Wednesday so that it has 24 hours to dry before being folded up and packed. And I still have to finish sewing it. I'll probably take it to A&S this weekend and work on it there.

Comments

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, on that brown, the green may well need to be lightened a bit so it can be seen properly. Good luck with finishing it on time!

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Portraits and genre paintings from this period can be amazingly detailed, so I have no reason to believe that the sitter did not own a kosode that looked like this - though we have already debated how true the 500 year old painting pigments are to what it looked like.

Momoyama period textiles go both ways - they can be simple, they can by dizzyingly busy.

There are sprigs of leaves around the flowers and stems, so that's where the green is.

I'll work on it a bit tonight and I'm packing it with me to A&S tomorrow. There definitely need to be a few more unbudded flowers at the very least!