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| Inked on warps |
First some thoughts about the cartoon
With the letters hard up against the edge of the frame with some being cut off it gives the impression that it is not a complete design, but a part of a greater piece.
Is that what you had intended?
I notice in the tapestry that the letters start well in from the edge and that the background has changed from dark to light. It would probably be useful at this stage to work out your design carefully at the cartoon stage especially the darks and lights, and the frame/size of background around the letters. Darks and lights have the characteristic of pushing and pulling shapes backwards and forwards in the picture frame making some shapes float in front of the background or even create visual ‘holes’ in the background. By changing the background to a very light value it will change the look of the tapestry quite dramatically. Not that this is wrong the slightly flecked background works well, just want you to be aware of what happens if you change the values/colours. The frame and the amount of background also makes a difference to how the finished tapestry will look. It is useful to work out the ]varying proprtions of frame/background at the cartton stage.
Warm neutrals will come forward and cool neutrals will recede. It would be useful for you to explore this at the design stage and explore how the shapes react, , rather than make the colour decisions entirely at the weaving stage. Some tapestry weavers often make a colour design, then convert it to greyscale, relying on the colour printout as a guide to colour and the greyscale as an indication of colour values. In general the eye has evolved to see black and white first- as pattern recognition, then greyscale -as an indication of three dimensionality, and distance; colour comes last.
You could via the computer graphics program experiment fairly quickly with the lights and darks, browns and greys doing different versions to see which looks best.
I notice in the photograph of the tapestry that you do not seem to mark the design shapes on the warp.
Once the loom is set up and warped ready to weave I would recommend that you mark the warps with your design. Use a permanent felt tip pen (fine point) and test it be marking a piece of warp yarn, letting it dry thoroughly, then immerse it in water – if it runs or bleeds try another brand do not take it for granted that all pens sold as permanent are permanent)
Once you start marking the warps do not move the cartoon.
First mark with a small dot of ink at the front or the warp outlining each shape, then after each section is completed go back and ink around the sides and back of each warp. This is time consuming but will help you make accurate shapes.
When weaving weave right up to the ink marks on the warp, making sure the wefts are packed down well. The accurate marking of the warps will enable you to wee before you start weaving how the shapes are going to evolve, for instance you say that the grey letter you have begun to weave is too broad, when you mark a vertical line on a particular warp delineating the edge of a shape you will, with practice, be able to decide where that particular mark should remain where it is or be shifted one warp to make the shape look correct when woven.
