The story behind "Alnmouth II"

I'm doing a series of blogs with a little bit of background information about some of the Harris Tweed "paintings" in my exhibition. at the Bakehouse Gallery in Alnwick this summer.

This is a really well known view of the lovely coloured houses of Lovaine Terrace in the seaside village of Alnmouth, Northumberland, as seen from across the river Aln. 

My first version of this scene won the Alnmouth Arts Festival poster competition in 2013. Winning this competition was quite a milestone for me as it gave me the confidence to become a full-time professional artist. But I have never been entirely happy with the first version as it didn't include all of the houses and this is why I did a second version. 

However, the technique I use to create my pictures, needle felting a Harris Tweed collage with the details added in needle felted wool yarns, means that there are limitations as to how small a very detailed picture can be. So as a result the picture had to be pretty large (19.5" square unframed) in order to fit in all the houses. I'd like to think my needle felting has improved over the years and I think that the houses in the latest version are definitely a bit neater.

All my pictures start with a line drawing, which I cut up and use as you would a dressmaker's paper pattern to cut out all the pieces of Harris Tweed for the picture. 

Gradually building up the collage onto a large background piece of Harris Tweed the size of the entire picture. Here the background tweed is the light blue herringbone tweed I've used for the sky.

All the pieces of Harris Tweed are pinned and ready to be needle felted into place. Once they are needle felted into place I then needle felt all the details onto the picture using wool yarns. Each picture takes between 35 and 45 hours to make depending on size and the level of complexity and detail involved.

"Alnmouth II" has been professionally framed in a plain wooden frame with an opaque white finish. It measures 21.25 inches square (inc. frame) and costs £750. It is also available as a greetings card or a giclee print in 2 sizes (£25 & £75) from the Bakehouse Gallery or our online shop.