Embroidery Column
Elevating embroidery with curved fills and colour blends
Wilcom’s Maria Palma advises on how you can add depth and dimensions to your designs. E
mbroideryStudio Designing, a cutting-edge digital embroidery software, unlocks new dimensions in design through its advanced curved fills and colour blending capabilities. This technology empowers creators to infuse depth and richness into their designs, rivalling the intricate nuances of traditional artistic techniques. By seamlessly blending colours and utilising curved fills, EmbroideryStudio brings a new era of creativity to the world of embroidery.
In the world of embroidery, achieving depth and dimensionality is a cherished but challenging endeavor. However, this intricate task becomes attainable with EmbroideryStudio’s revolutionary open and curved fills and color blending features. The result is a mesmerising interplay of colors that adds life-like shading and texture, reminiscent of the Japanese woodblock print “Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake,” created by Utagawa Hiroshige in 1857.
In the pursuit of emulating the masterful artistry of Hiroshige’s print, EmbroideryStudio’s toolkit proves indispensable. The interplay between dense and open fills, a technique known as Accordion Spacing, reproduces the graduated shading found in the original artwork. The complexity of this shading would be difficult to recreate manually, making EmbroideryStudio’s automated approach a game-changer for the industry. At the heart of this innovation lies Colour Blending, a technique that masterfully combines complementary colors to create a smooth transition between hues. This allows for replicating Hiroshige’s subtly layered color gradations, a hallmark of the ukiyo-e tradition. The video guide takes inspiration from the famous print’s delicate use of colour, demonstrating how to replicate this effect in embroidery with a limited palette of just eight thread colours.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
With an array of creative stitches and effects, artistry and technology meet to create exquisite, embroidered artworks channelling the spirit of timeless artistic traditions while embracing the innovation of the digital age.
•
https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hvdqa7ri2h8 •
www.wilcom.com
The video delves into each step of the process, carefully dissecting how EmbroideryStudio’s tools recreate the iconic artwork’s features. For instance, the challenge of capturing the essence of water is met with a strategic combination of complex fills, tatami stitches, and colour blending. The background’s serene water and sky are brought to life with open fills, while Accordion Spacing replicates the tranquillity of the water’s movement. Throughout the tutorial, intricate details emerge. EmbroideryStudio deploys techniques like Liquid Effects, Florentine Effects, and Hand Stitching to capture every nuance from the dark storm clouds to the distant shoreline. The process involves manipulating guidelines, stitch angles, and layering techniques to mirror the organic flow of the original print’s elements. Digitizer Ai Matsumura showcases the expertly digitised facsimile of Hiroshige’s masterpiece. It’s a testament to how EmbroideryStudio’s ingenious combination of object types and stitch effects mirrors the layered and translucent quality of the original artwork. The blend of Accordion Spacing, Colour Blending, Florentine, Liquid, and Hand Stitch effects culminates in a faithful reproduction that pays homage to the artistic brilliance of “Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake.”
EmbroideryStudio Designing presents an all-encompassing toolkit that reshapes the landscape of contemporary embroidery.
Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake is one of Hiroshige’s most famous designs and is universally appreciated as the masterpiece of the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Dense black clouds have gathered in the sky and are releasing a heavy summer downpour of rain onto the landscape beneath. Pedestrians crossing the bridge hurry off, huddled under umbrellas or straw capes. A solitary boatman guides his raft of logs along the river beyond. The bridge is Ohashi which crossed the Sumida River and along the far riverbank are the Shogunal storehouses at Atake.
After Japan opened its borders in 1858, Hiroshige’s prints soon saw popularity amongst the Impressionists in Europe. The artist Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a collector of Japanese prints and greatly admired Hiroshige. His fascination with the artist culminated in two oil on canvas renderings based on two of Hiroshige’s prints from the One Hundred Views of Edo series: Plum Estate, Kameido and Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake. Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) was executed exactly thirty years after the original work was published and embellishes the original design with a border ornamented with decorative kanji characters. For van Gogh, Japan occupied a utopian place within his imagination; it was the land depicted in woodblock prints unmarked by shadows and radiant with light and colour, and in his rendition the colours are noticeably more emboldened.
October 2023 | 77 |
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88
