Progress report: I picked out gold silks for the belly instead of suggested candy-can striping. I think it’s a good compromise between not out-sparkling the horns while still standing out against the scales.

I worked up another patch of waves. I still need to overstitch with silver to make more foam.

And I finished the face! Next week: A view of the whole work so far.

On a totally different note, I recently did some watercolors based on images in medieval fencing instruction manuals. If anyone is looking for embroidery design ideas, there is a wonderful site called Wiktenauer (link to their list of books) dedicated to scanning, translating, and making these images available. So if you’d like a change from birds and flowers, there is a ton of interesting art to work with. After all, both embroidery and swords involve stabbing things.

For instance, this painting is based on images in the Wallerstein Codex:

And this one is from one of the books by Joachim Meyers: