A bowl half full

I started off by stitching the outline of the fishbowl itself, using Kreinik #12 tapestry braid #032. The lip of the bowl was formed with slanted gobelin stitches over two threads, the sides with tent stitches, and the base with more gobelin stitches over either two or three threads.

Now to fill the bowl! There's a fair amount of water background here, and I didn't want it to look like a great blue blob. I decided to build in layers within the water--needle-blending with a twist!

When I needle-blend skies for my lighthouses and other landscape designs, I try to pick a blue color family of DMC cotton floss in which the values are very close together to produce a seamless sky. For the water here, I picked a color family in which the values are wider apart. I also counted the threads from the top of the water to the gravel area at the bottom--66 threads. That gave me six layers of water with a depth of roughly 11 threads each. (Note: Stitch-painters tend to count a lot!)

Here's the formula I'm using to needle-blend:

Layer 1: DMC floss #3811 - four plies
Layer 2: DMC floss #3811 - three plies, DMC floss # 598 - one ply
Layer 3: DMC floss #3811 - two plies, DMC floss #598 - two plies
Layer 4: DMC floss #3811 - one ply, DMC floss #598 - three plies
Layer 5: DMC floss #598 - four plies
Layer 6: DMC floss #598 - three plies, DMC floss #597 - one ply

When I'm finished, I'll have water that more closely resembles a watercolor painting (no pun intended) than a photograph. Then I can pour in the gravel!