Moon Priestess - A Fantasy thread painting

I love Fantasy and Sci-Fi and I have always loved illustrating original characters. Elves, dragons, knights, fairies...ever since I was a little girl, I have filled entire sketchbooks and gone through a multitude of different techniques: graphite, coloured pencils, ink, watercolours, gouache, charcoal, digital art...I thought I had explored more or less all the expressive possibilities but I was wrong!

I recently discovered a wonderful and art form from the past, which is often much undervalued because it is associated with something "vintage", repetitive and above all exclusively reserved for women.

I am talking about hand embroidery!

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that you can literally paint with just a needle and threads with extraordinary results!

Thanks to the thread painting/silk shading technique, it is possible to recreate the typical shades of paintings by alternating long and short stitches and using threads of different colours. You can work on very fine details and achieve a high degree of realism.

This is one of my first works, done in greyscale to simulate a pencil sketch.

I portrayed a Moon Elf-Priestess with a short haircut and two bold earrings with moon phases. I love to include nature-inspired elements in my works so I added two small branches to the sides of the figure and a few decorative water drops at the top.

I created original illustration using Procreate and then I transferred the lineart onto the fabric (a medium-thick neutral-coloured calico cotton). For the embroidery, I used DMC mouliné cotton threads and embroidery needles size 10-12.

I used a bamboo hoop to stretch the fabric which then became a simple but elegant hanging frame.

The final effect is really similar to a pencil drawing and I find that working in monochrome gives very impressive and contemporary results!