Craggy Trees & a Great Tip!

We are in my favorite "tree season". As much as I love the fall and the beautiful color of trees, I truly love "naked" trees for the wonderful configurations you see.

I especially love the craggy trees. There is a place on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC called Craggy Gardens. They have a wonderful hiking trail and lots of these trees with all the lichen and moss and stubby branches. They are so interesting. They are great subject matter for someone who does machine or hand embroidery ....what a field day they would have....

Maybe one of these days I will attempt to duplicate this...I especially like the upper right and left views as they are close in and you can get a lot of detail with thread, paint etc. There are also some beautiful color variations you can see in these very subtle pictures.

So here is a cool little tip which I've published in years past....I have used this so many times. Often a photograph is hard to break down into specific colors....especially those involving nature. The website CSS Drive Image to Colors Palette Generator will do that for you. Above you see my photo (below left) which has been uploaded to their page...you click on a button and within seconds, they break your photo down for you AND in different values....how cool is that. The official site is http://www.cssdrive.com/imagepalette/  Give it a try.

I think I would start with a digital image as a base and go from there...perhaps several of the same image printed on very different fabrics and layer them on top of each other, cutting away different parts on each layer. This is a technique I learned from the very gifted fiber artist Pat Mink.

Might be a cool way to start the New Year - 2021 which I think I can vouch for every person reading this....We Are So Ready For!!