Laura McKellar analysis

Embroidery

Laura McKellar is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia. McKellar mainly likes working with brown paper, flowers and watery inks. She combines retro photos with detailed stitching around certain parts of the photo, which is heat pressed onto brown fabric which look vintage and add more of a retro theme to the embroidery pieces. 

McKellar uses a combination of retro/found images, collages and mixed media to create and incorporate into her work, she collects second hand picture books and dress pattern books to find influences/ ideas to incorporate into her work. She uses "desaturated colours, detailed illustration and dreamy landscapes," the vintage classic photographs in pattern/ picture books which she uses in her embroidery work below. 

LM uses soft shades of colours as her background that don't clash with her main photo at the centre, also the colours she uses on the embroidery around the eyes complement the background colour. These embroidery examples I chose drew my attention to the vintage and detail of the work, also the process that the work was made in. The photo is vintage black and white photo which was heat pressed onto fabric that looks like it has an 'old paper' type of texture, which adds more detail to the work. 

The text no the work looks hand made using ink or fine liner but edited digitally before heat pressing onto the fabric from what I can see. The actual embroidery looks like a mask, the image looks edited and placed on top of the photo digitally before heat pressing onto the fabric. She adds stitching around the outlines which high lights the image around the eyes, she uses gold threading which makes the mask around the eyes stand out. 

Looking Forward

Flying Freedom

I personally find the process McKellar made her embroidery work and the detail she adds to it combining Textiles with her Graphics work interesting and relatable to my working mind. Her work inspired me to try to make this the theme/technique I follow to make my final outcome, combining Textiles and Graphics by editing photographs digitally and then heat pressing the finished image onto fabric to start embroidery. But instead of the vintage look that her work represents/ has my work will have more of a Pop Art theme like Andy Warhols work, by adding bright primary colours onto my photos with dark outlines to stitch into. 

Marilyn Diptych 1962