I spent a lot of time trying in vain to find a photo of my assigned murder victim, Linda Hewitt so that I could depict her face. There's lots and lots on her murderer because he was a serial murderer in California in the 1970's. But I didn't want to focus on him of course, and instead try to make something beautiful for this young mother that evoked the beauty of then place where she died, San Diego. I did a fairly simple sketch that evoked some of the city iconography, a sunset.
I decided to use some of my precious hand-dyes.
I worked out the approximate size I needed the letters to be and cut them out on the CriCut out of card stock to figure out the placement before cutting them out in fabric. The requirements are that the name be legible from across the room, so they've got to be big and have a lot of contrast.
Still working on the placement of the letters. And I might add the years of the span of her life to the lower section.
I hand braided a cording that I'll use on the "ocean" part of the blue.
The setting sun shape really disappears into the background in the picture, it has a lot more contrast in person.
I worked out the approximate size I needed the letters to be and cut them out on the CriCut out of card stock to figure out the placement before cutting them out in fabric. The requirements are that the name be legible from across the room, so they've got to be big and have a lot of contrast.
Still working on the placement of the letters. And I might add the years of the span of her life to the lower section.
2 comments:
Good idea to practice with paper! I think focusing on beauty is a good thing. I am sure she did more than just die in a horrible way. Your ability to find little about her and a lot about her murderer is telling. I wonder if you went (or called??) to an actual library and looked at an article about her missing would produce more results? I really like the design.
Yes, I think the paper letters really worked out well, I was able to try out a lot of positions for the words and look at how well the name was visible across the room. I was sad about how little I could find about her, but that was how media was back then, no focus on the crime victim at all. It's a lot better now thankfully. The guy who killed her was a serial murderer and his was one of the very famous California death penalty cases in the 70's. I was able to find San Diego newspapers digitized online that covered the murder, as well as the San Quentin prison newsletter that covered the guy's overturned case.
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