The Temple of Dendara not only has fabulous painted relief work & pillars on the interior, but it also has some spectacular carved imagery on the exterior as well, including this beautiful lady oozing with lotuses!
To be honest, I'd love to do a really big reproduction of her, but for today's purposes, I needed to set my sights a lot smaller!
I was intrigued by the number of lotus variations that she was carrying, so decided to take visual notes of them...as is my usual practice. In the process of looking I noticed, for the first time, that hanging from her hands are some perfume amphorae. Their shape is so elegant & in keeping with the lotus, that I wondered if there was a way I could incorporate them into my design.
The other part of this figure that I loved, was the hair! Could I use the brick pattern of the hair as some sort of border perhaps???
With a considerable amount of drawing, erasing & tweeking, I finally arrived at a design I was happy with. This meant that I could dive into the fabric stash & see what I came up with!!
Given the very linear nature of this figure & her offerings, I decided that I would try a different variation of the contemporary reverse applique technique for this week's art project, and only needed two layers of fabric. One of them was very colourful & flecked with gold lines across it. Picking up on that gold, I chose a fabric with a gold tinge to it for my topmost layer..
My concentration needed to be on full volume as I worked out the stitching lines for this experiment. (An infusion of caffeine helped!!)
The stitching took a while but went without a hitch.
I took a lunch break then, because I knew I was going to have to fully concentrate on my cutting back as well. Having a break prevents brain fry!!
This variation is effective with a multi coloured background fabric, although it would also be quite dramatic with a plain fabric as well.
I enjoyed doing it so much I'm rather keen to try it in a bigger format...I'll have to get my creative brain working on a possible design!
Revisiting my travel memories in this way is proving to be an enjoyable & worthwhile project. I can't wait to see what next week will hold for me!
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