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I had found in Tapestry 14 how changing the stitch direction enabled me to create strong, clean, and sharp diagonal lines and areas. In this particular piece, the use of different stitch angles made it easy to divide the canvas into four areas,
and have sharp lines - rather than stepping - in each of them.

By the time I had done a number of designs based just on squares, I realised I could use this technique to transform
two-dimensional squares into apparent three-dimensional blocks by adding top and side faces. And that shadows cast by these blocks were, perhaps, even more effective at creating a three-dimensional effect. I was, in fact, using a technical drawing technique called Oblique Projection, where lines indicating depth are drawn at forty five degrees from the front face of an object.

Oblique

It was here that the ability to move blocks and elements around without disturbing backgrounds or other features justified all the complicated programming effort to set it up. I could now simply place shadows into the background, create blocks over the top of them, and then move these blocks up and away from their shadows. Together with the effect of the oblique projection, this enabled me to create a convincing perception of space and depth.

Outsider

While continuing the use of oblique projection, I thought it would be interesting to try a couple of ideas where blocks are arranged to suggest an orderly, regular, and predictable state of affairs - whether static or in motion. There was then to be one element - an individual block - that did not conform to the rules, an outsider to the system.

Isometric

Isometric projection is a technical drawing method that - like oblique projection - uses angled lines to show additional faces of an object. In oblique projection the front of the object is drawn facing the observer, basically with horizontal and vertical lines. The lines indicating other faces are drawn at forty five degrees in one direction, left or right. It is not terribly realistic.

Isometric gives a more realistic impression, as though the object is drawn in a kind of three-quarter, or perspective view. Vertical lines remain vertical, but horizontal lines are now drawn at an angle, both left and right. The isometric angle is conventionally thirty degrees, but I decided again to use forty five degrees to conform with the canvas grid. The result is a slightly tilted view, but it still retains a strongly realistic appearance.

I found the stitching quite demanding, since stitch directions change quickly to follow the direction of the object’s faces. As ever, the use of light and shade, and using lighter colours for the nearest or highest faces, enhance the definition of the object.

Möbius strips

If you start with a plain strip of paper, long and narrow, it will have a top face and an under face. It will have four edges, two long and two short. Nothing mysterious there. Join two short ends to each other and you will make a ring, with an inner and outer face, and now just two edges.

Now, with the plain strip again, join the two short ends, but this time twisting one end through 180 degrees. A half twist. Join the ends together. Now you have a twisted ring, with one face, and one edge. Trace round with a pencil, and you’ll see the line will join up to itself. Now try cutting the strip along its length, as though to cut it into two narrow strips…

Spirals

A spiral is mathematically defined as a curve which originates from a point, and moves further away as it revolves around that point.

Well, this one is not exactly a curve, but it does get further away as it goes, and then connects itself
back to the beginning, rather like a snake eating its own tail.

Interlock

Are you seeing three dimensional objects here, disappearing out of view, or are they simply patterns, or arrangements of colour,
with no meaning? How would Gestalt psychologists have seen them?