Tuesday, July 6, 2010

hyper-realistic embroidery

Jill Draper holds a photographic panorama behind her tapestry version of the same scene

Incredibly realistic scenes from rural life have been painstakingly recreated by a British artist in her own living room - using just a needle and thread. Jill Draper, 62, creates embroidered tapestries, recreating scenes with astonishing accuracy from photographs. Each picture measuring around 15 by 30 inches contains hundreds of thousands of stitches done by hand and machine

A photograph [left] taken in Autumn 2009 of a heather path, and Jill Draper's hyper-real tapestry of the scene

A photograph [left] taken in Autumn 2009 of a heather path, and Jill Draper's hyper-real tapestry of the scene

A photograph [top] of sunset over a beach in Newport taken in summer 2007; and Jill's tapestry of the beach scene

Jill copies the photograph, painting the landscape onto padded bridal satin or pure silk with fabric dye. She then fixes the painting with heat before embellishing the material with stitches to create depth

A photograph of snow-covered trees taken in winter 2007...

A photograph of snow-covered trees taken in winter 2007...

...and Jill's tapestry of the snow-covered trees

...and Jill's tapestry of the snow-covered trees

Top: a photograph of a snowy Wenhaston, Suffolk in January 2010. Bottom: Jill Draper's realistic tapestry of the wintry scene

Top: a photograph of a snowy Wenhaston, Suffolk in January 2010. Bottom: Jill Draper's realistic tapestry of the wintry scene

Jill Draper working on a tapestry

She picks from her thousands of colours of household cotton or Terylene and applies them with a sewing machine or darning hoop. She hand-sews special detail with pure silk. She sews for around six hours every day and relies on natural light to distinguish between the hundreds of similar shades. She says she takes care to limit the amount of time she spends sewing, as the intense concentration required can make her nauseous

Some of the hundreds of different coloured threads used by Jill Draper

Some of the hundreds of different coloured threads used by Jill Draper

Top: a photographic panorama of a wintry river scene. Bottom: Jill's embroidered rendition of the photo

Jill from Wenhaston, Suffolk, said: "It's a passion and a labour of love - I get a thrill out of seeing the finished product, then I move on to the next piece. Once I get on the machine, I become quite manic and I will work on small areas of the picture, rather than the whole picture. I can work on it for days and then throw it on the floor and say 'It's finished'"

Jill's tapestry of a harbour wall in Starcross, Devon

She works as a full-time embroidery artist and has sold hundreds of pictures through galleries and as private commissions for between £500 to £3,000 for a piece. Jill and her husband Peter have recently bought a plot of land in a nearby Suffolk village and plan to build an eco-home incorporating a gallery for Jill's work

Jill's tapestry of the Shallows, Newport, which she re-created from a photograph