BOTANIC SAMPLER (WAP #16 Inspired by travels in Egypt)

Just down the road from Luxor is the magnificent Temple of Karnak.  Not only was this where we encountered a multitude of fellow travellers, but this temple complex was seriously overwhelming in both size & beauty.
It may seem ridiculous, but we were struggling to grasp that this was real....that these incredible buildings with their exquisite decorative features were so very very ancient, yet here we were in the 21st century walking around them! This wasn't a dream, or a book...it was sun, sand & stone! Real!

One of the parts of this complex that I most wanted to visit was the Botanic Garden of Thutmose 111.  This was a series of walls, which I imagine once surrounded a courtyard, at the back of the Festival Temple.  Here Thutmose had asked artisans to carve relief drawings of the many exotic plants & wildlife he brought back from his military campaigns in Syria.  It seems that old Tut was a bit of a Botanist, as he liked collecting specimens from all over Egypt as well.

When we finally found the right spot, the sun was very bright & it was hard to actually see the reliefs, and photographing them was also difficult...I literally couldn't see where I was pointing the camera! (I have a photos where heads are missing from birds etc!!!!)
With the few photos I have, I chose to make this collection my muse for this week's art project.

 First I needed to discover what I could from the photos with line drawings.  It didn't take long before I knew that I had more than enough to create a composition that might fit into an A4 size, so I started working up a design , erasing...and working up again!!!

Last week I had popped into Spotlight fabric store & couldn't resist this bundle of greens.  I decided to use them as part of my colour palette for this exercise.

Once the fabrics were chosen & the design was transferred to the top fabric, I chose a variegated neutral coloured thread to stitch in the design.  Then it was time to let the cutting back begin.  Here's how it went;

 Whilst I was pleased with the effect of the cutting back, it needed a bit more tweeking...

 ...so I added some handstitch. 
Hmmm, I still felt it needed more, perhaps more texture...more something.  How about more stitching into the background without cutting away?

 This is my end result & I'm happy with it.  I still feel that as an artwork, it is not finished, but as this is an exercise....it has been a valueable experiment.  I'd tried a similar variation of the reverse applique technique a few weeks ago using just one multicoloured fabric as the middle layer, so I really wanted to try using plain coloured fabrics, but a few of them! I really like the shapes of the plants & the simplicity of using blocks of colour like this, but to make it more interesting, I think adding the additional stitching helped.

I was very engrossed in this work & am so inspired by the Botanic reliefs, that I think I'll return to them again next week for more experimenting. Until then...happy creating!