The beginning of the second landscape picture

I mentioned that I was planning on more embroidered landscapes and I purchased several adult colouring books of landscapes for this purpose. I wanted pictures that had something to draw you in, like the first one with stepping stones leading up to the gazebo. After perusing the 4 or 5 books I bought, I was thoroughly frustrated. 

Many of the pictures had faded mountains in the background, which are easy to colour, but not so easy to realistically stitch. Others had large sections of rocks, rocky cliffs or other boring sections that wouldn't lend themselves to interesting stitching.

In lots of pictures I liked the right side, but not the left, or vice versa. Many of the flowers were depicted as one or two oversized blooms surrounded by lots of non-descript leaves.

One of the old mill pictures was interesting, but the river was flowing at 90 degrees to the mill wheel!?! The only way to fix it would have been to draw the bottom third of the picture free hand. If I could draw anything somewhat realistic I wouldn't have needed the colouring books to start with.

The birds and animals were totally unrealistic. I mean REALLY unrealistic. I though some of the ducks were odd shaped rocks. One of the ducks had 1 leg under the beak and one under the tail. What's up with that!

I finally decided to take the portions of several drawings and amalgamate them into something I liked that I could reasonably stitch. I took the left side of one drawing and flipped it to make the right side of the page. Then I took the top portion of another left hand page, replaced some of the trees with something that worked better. I added in a more interesting shoreline from another picture, and a cluster of flowers under the tree on the right, as well as some reeds along the bottom of the page.

I went back afterward to mark which pictures I used, so that I'd have a clearer reference page to stitch from, and I can't tell which ones I used. Some portions were flipped to mirror image, some re-sized, and some drawn free hand to connect the pieces together.

This is the image I ended up with. Some of the trees on the left are probably meant to be done in fall colours, but with the cluster of flowers on the lower right, that would be out of season. 

The  little pink mark denoted the centre of the page. It let me pin the centre of the fabric to the centre of the page for tracing.

 

Being injured has made me feel far less energetic and the project is kind of stalled, but as I heal up my energy is returning, so I hope to have a little something to show soon.