The Denman Kannon - the original pattern

I'm sure I once wrote a blog post that included the working drawing for the Denman Kannon but I can't find it in the label cloud on the right - if I can't find it, blog readers probably can't either! So here it is again.  It was drawn on an A4 sheet, scanned, printed out over 16 A4 sheets, each sheet enlarged to A3, stuck together with sellotape and traced through.  Not very high tech.

 

The original inspiration was a print of Kannon by Hokusai, from the 13th volume of his 'Manga', published around 1823 (if I remember right).  I kept the fish, but changed the pose and details of Kannon Bosatsu, taking ideas from other Kannon images I found on the internet - basic pose from one, face from another, crown from another etc. until I got it how I wanted.

... generally portrayed as a young woman donned in a white flowing robe and usually wearing necklaces of Indian/Chinese royalty. In her left hand is a jar containing pure water, and the right holds a willow branch. The crown usually depicts the image of Amitabha Buddha.

I wanted to have the willow bough so I could stitch the leaves by adapting a single hitomezashi hishizashi (diamond sitch) motif.