Embroideries based on photo walk and sketches. Part six. Leaves as overlapping outlines.

In the reference photo for this piece, the leaves were very mechanically shaded and divided, the lighting being rather harsh.

I thought that using this type of shading, whilst I'm sure it would be effective, would be too similar to my last piece. Therefore I used more intuitive stitches (as they are almost always crossing over each other, it doesn't seem quite right to call them straight stitches, though it is the same basic action) to create the outlines of the leaves, and overlapped them by pretending they were transparent, going down through all the layers. Here is the result:

It took a good long time to do, and though I used plenty of different colours in working it, I don't know if I should have used such a dark green as the top(-ish) layer. If I was working in textiles generally, and not just embroidery, I could perhaps have done this as part-appliqué.