ABYDDOS MAN (WAP#14; Egypt)

Isn't he beautiful?
With the large cat claw on his arm, I'm guessing that he might be a young priest.  We found him in the Temple of Abyddos, which is the cult centre of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of death & resurrection.

Ideally, I'd have liked to recreate his whole profile in fabric, but realisticly.... there's no way I could manage that using contemporary reverse applique within an A4 space!!

What to do?

The obvious of course, get out pencil & paper & make visual notes of what I see.

Whilst I was reproducing those patterns with pencil, I wondered whether the way to capture the essence of the patterning on this man, was to create, what I call, a composite piece.  In short I make up each pattern into a seperate block & then sew them together a bit like patchwork.
It's a method I have used before with my Adelaide Architecture based work & I find the outcome pleasing, so...why not try it with these patterns?
I spent some time trying to work out a layout for the various patterns, having first identified thirds & quarter measures.  Whatever I did needed to look balanced.

My colour palette was to consist of various neutrals in 3 tonal values; dark, medium & light.
Whilst I have a lot of fabrics in this range, it was time consuming to find happy trios of tonal values, without including my expensive fabrics.  The mantra "this is just an exercise" had to have the volume turned up a few times!!

Finally I had 3 different fabrics for each 'patch', some fabrics being used in more than one  to ensure a sense of cohesiveness.  I also chose 2 variegated cottens to sew the outlines in with.  One was a grey to brown & the other a chocolate brown to gold.  Because they were going to be quite obvious, I had to be particularly careful with my stitching!!  Consequently it took more time than I'd expected!!

Here are how my patches looked after being cut back;

By the time I came to do the spiral piece, I knew I needed a heavier contrast to add some energy to the overall impact.  This curtain sample was perfect.  

Before sewing them all together, I laid them out in the order they were to go, did a bit of rearranging, tried another variation, and went back to my original layout albeit with a slight adjustment!  I recognised that I needed a bit more of that purple to tie it all together & was relieved to find there were sufficient scraps left!!  Then it was time to stitch & iron the seams back!

Here is my final result and I'm very pleased with it.  It could easily be finished to exhibition quality if I wanted to.  This is the first time I've used this composite method of design for one of my WAPs & whilst it totally engaged me creatively, it did take longer than a day to complete. All up I think I've invested about 8 hours on this little piece.  It was worth it though.  Each week these projects help me practise my skills in design , the technique itself & self critique when it's done.  Hopefully, all this practise culminates in making me a better artist as well, week by week!