#obsctuober2024

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 7: Orphrey 🪡

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Orphrey (n.)

elaborate embroidery or a piece of such

an ornamental border or band, especially on church robes

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1. Yay, we survived the 1st full week of October/Inktober 🎉

2. I continue to astound myself with dumb posting mistakes 🤦‍♀️

3. At least the art came out nice—Might be my new favorite! 😇

Click the "Keep Reading" and I'll explain more about those dumb mistakes...and of course my thoughts/process, too ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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Once again: Hey, congrats everyone—We've survived 1 full week of Inktober/October/etc! 🎉

And with that: Lucky Obscutober Number 7 comes first with an apology and second with a correction: I, in my infinite wisdom, misspelled "Orphrey" as "Orphey" on the original and Lite prompt lists. 🤦‍♀️ 🙄

I've since fixed it in the places I'm able to (so if you go looking and can't find the mistake, that's why!) and added a comment correction to the ones that I can't...And also made the discovery that I previously somehow accidentally deleted the Instagram post of the prompt lists?? 😦 So that's been restored now too.

I think I'm more bothered by the fact that it took me over a week to notice than I am that the mistake was made, but oh well. [Although—Maybe I did almost catch it and that's what happened to the Instagram post?? I don't know. I just know I thought I was losing my mind when I couldn't find it and I'm so glad Instagram has a "trash"/recently deleted place it went to so I could just restore the post as it was.]

My absent-minded posting mishaps aside, I got a later start on this one than I really wanted to, but this time it's purely my own fault for losing track of time while I was working on something else [the fruits of which will hopefully be revealed closer to November] so I can't say I'm all that upset about it.

I'd be more upset if I'd had more trouble pulling the mandala together, but this one came surprisingly easy. To be fair, I did look up a few references of embroidery and actually "orphrey" pictures before I went to bed last night, so my subconscious got some more time to chew on it. Another big help is that a lot of the orphrey pictures I saw reminded me a lot of mandalas and motifs I've already been using or thinking about.

Believe it or not, that was purely coincidental. I actually didn't look up pictures for any of the words while I was assembling the prompt list. If it didn't happen to come up while I was verifying different sources of the definitions—so usually, a small reference photo on Wikipedia, if that—I haven't seen it, so in that way I'm still often diving into these things about as blind as people who didn't put the list together. 😆 It wasn't a "rule" or anything that I set for myself, I just genuinely didn't think to look up any images at the time.

I noticed while looking at the images that it seems common to do a motif that alternates a more circular emblem and a square one like this example, so I made sure the get that in there. If I'd had more space, I would've filled my circles and squares a little more elaborately both per the definition and the reference photos, but I wanted to leave some room for other things and not spend too long on super-tiny details that would be difficult to see.

Besides, I think the way I did it, while maybe less elaborate overall than is really ideal, does a fairly good job of echoing the more simple stitching we (or at least I ) often think of when I think of more informal, artistic hand-embroidery.

And that simple embroidery stitching is more of what I focused on for the middle round of the mandala, in case it wasn't obvious. I looked up some embroidery stitch references and tried to replicate some I thought would be a little more recognizable as different from my "normal" mandala lines and dots. I kinda wanted to get some more variety in there, but I had enough trouble as it was trying to think of some simple motifs that would show off the "stitches" without feeling "inappropriate" for "church robes," so I just stuck with what I was more confident in.

Oh, also, I probably should've mentioned this sooner: A small disclosure that most official definitions for "orphrey" don't say "church robes," they say "ecclesiastical vestment." To which, upon first reading, I thought: "Thank you, that is no help at all."

There's definitely a hefty dose of irony in an already obscure word using two more arguably even more obscure words in its definition, but there is also a limit to exactly how far this "obscure word" rabbit hole needs to go. So I looked up that 2-word phrase and both of those words separately and determined that "church robes" is a reasonable substitute that most people will actually understand when you say it.

Anyway. When I think of both church-related and embroidered garments, my first thoughts are dark, heavy fabrics with gold or silver thread, which pretty succinctly explains all of the color choices here. The white mandala lines kind of stand in for silver, then spot color with the gold which also works the idea of heavy gold trim on some fabrics like that. And a bonus I didn't even think of until I was done: Since the gold borders are circular, they really echo halos, which is very nicely church-adjacent imagery. 😇

And then I mixed black, burgundy, and a bit of navy together for the rest of the background since those were the robe colors that came to mind the quickest.

I think the background colors are doing more heavy lifting here than I can fully appreciate; Typing it out and knowing how I put the lines together, the final product more feels complex to me than I think it should. That's certainly not a bad thing, though!

If the rest of the Obscutober pieces could come together this smoothly and I be this pleased with them, that would be amazing, but I know better than to expect that. 😅 But a girl can hope, right? At least it was a nice way to polish off the first week!

Now to hope I can get this thing cross-posted decently quickly without any more ridiculous incidents like the spelling mistake that making it technically started with... 🥴

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See the Prompt List

Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️