Lovely Crewel Petals

I love embroidery…. And my grandmother was an amazing crafter who taught me needlelace, needlepoint, crochet, and so much more. I miss her! Some of my favorite favorite types of embroidery are Jacobean flowers, also called “Crewel embroidery” because of the type of thread used. I've posted “crewel-inspired” pictures on and off here at my blog:

Now I have finally created a lesson on how to create these lovely petals and leaves using a coloring technique inspired on these amazing embroideries. The goal is not to copy exactly, but to produce effects that have that same strong contrast and color control.

The thing I like the most about this coloring technique is that it explores contrast in different ways than just dark versus light. Contrast is a fantastic tool to be used by artists — probably one of the most important ones — and I feel that we give so little attention to it. In this technique, there is contrast of quality of line, contrast of color, contrast of texture versus smooth, and so much more.

I also really like how the controlled color palette makes everything extremely colorful, but tasteful. You can create several different pictures using the same color palette and they look like they “go” together. Here's a second one:

I'm hoping that this first lesson will be the “prequel” to second lesson on how to design Crewel-style flowers. For now, you can enjoy this coloring technique creating flowy petals and leaves when you get this lesson at the Shop.

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