High quality handmade Silk Art looks alive because each artist creates it with a personal touch. These artists are masters of their craft. A machine cannot make decisions or infuse passion into its work. In comparison, machine-made embroidery looks dull and lifeless.
Each piece of handmade Silk Art is unique, even when using the same pattern; artists have the discretion to vary color and stitches. You will never find two completely identical pieces; every piece is one of a kind. Machine-made embroidery is just like a print, all the copies looks exactly the same, the color, the stitches, the final product are all exactly the same!

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5. Layers of Stitches – Visual Depth
Silk artists vary the length and thickness of stitches, layering them one on top of one another to create depth of perspective. The Silk Art creation process is different from paintings. When an artist creates an image in silk, each of the individual fibers and their color remain intact. Where a painter would blend the paints to create the exact affect desired, a silk embroidery artist must blend the colors by layering them. The effect is to control exposure of color, depth of perspective, lighting and shadowing, creating an effect not replicated in any other form of art. The more skilled an artist is at layering and stitching the more dynamic the interaction with light. This is a key measurement of quality called Visual Depth.

Some simple pieces may have 3 or 4 layers of stitches; larger works might have ten times that amount. When a Silk Artist creates a very complicated landscape, it has more layers of stitches than are completely visible, building and blending the colors to replicate nature as closely as possible. The same piece of art can become the forest in morning sun, to mid-day, to evening and even all the way to moonlight. It is truly spectacular and beautiful.

The post 74124 Portrait of Leopard first appeared on silkart.

2. Strand Size – The thinner the silk, the finer the art
The thickness of the silk thread is an important aspect of each work of Silk Art. One silk thread can be divided into 16 individual strands, the smallest, finer than a human hair. A good rule-of-thumb is the thinner the silk, the finer the quality of the silk embroidery.

Overall, the affected of Silk Art is similar to Pointillism. Up close you can see each of the tiny stitches and marvel at the design and execution of such detailed work, but when you step back, you are enthralled by the beauty of the image created.

The post 87141 Opera house first appeared on silkart.

Backgrounds are different
One very easy way to spot the difference between a handmade Silk Art and machine-made embroidery is to look at the back of the canvas. The back of handmade Silk Art is irregular and loose. You can see and feel the knots. Each piece of thread is no more than two feet long and so there are knots when a new piece is started or when the artist changes colors. The stitching at the back of machine-made embroidery is very tight and neat, every stitch is perfectly identical to the next. There are no knots on back of machine-made embroidery, because they don’t need to change thread. Machine thread is very long; each spool is a few miles long.

The post 75055 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer-Klimt first appeared on silkart.

4. Color – the more colors, the more realistic look of the art
Only carefully-dyed, pure silk is used in our Silk Art. We use thousands of different shades of color. The wide variety of tones and shades used by our artists, allow them to create shading and dimension bringing the silk embroidery artwork to life.The same images may made in different sizes and quality levels. Usually, the larger canvases will use a greater variety of colors. With few exceptions, very detailed and colorful artwork will need to be made in larger sizes.

The post 77213 The Light House first appeared on silkart.

The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting the emperor in his afterlife.
The figures, dating from approximately the late third century BCE,[1] were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong County, outside Xi’an, Shaanxi, China. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Estimates from 2007 were that the three pits containing the Terracotta Army held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remained buried in the pits near Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum.[2] Other terracotta non-military figures were found in other pits, including officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians.

据说秦始皇二十二岁统一中国后，就下令大规模地为他修建陵墓。因骊山风光秀丽，加上山阳产玉，山阴多金，金玉双全，正符合他的迷信思想，所以他把墓地选在骊山北麓。他不仅从全国调来七十多万“刑徒”，还从山东、河南等地征来大量民夫。修建期间，秦始皇还下诏令李期提前征集数千对童男童女准备为他殉葬。李斯见了诏书，吓得目瞪口呆。他想，征集这么多人殉葬，必定会遭到百姓强烈反对。百姓一旦起来造反，秦朝江山难保。但如不照办，得罪了春始皇，自己必死无疑。想来想去，只好上书说：“臣李斯，冒死直言，君征如此众多童男童女殉葬，必使天下骚乱，不如改用陶殉，以保大秦江山平安。”秦始皇觉得也有道理，就改变原意，立即下旨令李斯征集全国能工巧匠，烧制规模宏大的出巡仪仗队，而且要求烧制出的陶人陶马要和真人真马一样大小。
几天后，李斯从民夫中挑选出数百名烧制砖瓦的工匠，向他们宣读了圣旨，命令他们按期烧好陶人、陶马。如若不然，定杀不赦。

但是这些工匠只会烧砖瓦，谁也没有烧制过陶人陶马，他们试烧多次都没有成功。一百多名工匠因此被砍了头。在被杀的工匠中，有个老工匠想出一个办法，在临死之前告诉了他的儿子，要他单窑分段烧制。儿子含泪埋了父亲后，便按照父亲生前的嘱咐，单窑单俑分段烧制，烧成以后再组合。采用这个办法后，陶人陶马终于烧制成功了。

试验成功后，工匠们齐心协力，夜又继日，把几千件陶人、陶马终于按期丛部烧制出来了，并按照李斯的要求，把这些陶俑排列成整齐的队形。

　　秦始皇驾崩以后，秦二世胡亥继承了帝位。他怕工匠们泄露墓中秘密，便暗地把秦始皇灵枢运入墓中，然后下令叫所有参加修建陵墓的人，一齐到墓中看戏，并领取赏金。可怜那些为修建秦始皇陵墓流血流汗的工匠、民夫和刑徒，全上了秦二世的当。他们刚刚走进陵墓，便活活地被封闭在墓中，成了殉葬品。传说只有一个小伙子逃出来，他就是第一个把陶俑烧制出来的人。因为秦始皇陵墓里的水道是他修砌的，所以当他见情况不妙时，便钻进了水道，直到天黑时才逃出来。后来他流浪中关，依靠烧制瓦盆、瓦罐和瓦瓮（关中放面的器具）为生。直到如今，这些陶制品在关中农村还很受欢迎哩。

The post 78007 The Terracotta Warrior first appeared on silkart.

3. Stitch Length – The smaller the stitching, the more precision of art
Long stitches are faster and easier, short stitches are more time consuming. Quality is directly impacted by the stitching. It is how the artist controls the overall imaging but also the interaction with light and shadows. Stitching can be so small you can not even determined it has been stitched. The smaller the stitching, the higher quality of art.

The post 87142 Opera house first appeared on silkart.