Leafy Vine Folk Pysanka from Podillya

This folk design comes from a collection of illustrations of pysanky from Podillya (Podolia) in southwestern Ukraine (courtesy of Vira Manko via Luba Petrusha). I've altered the colors here so that the background is dark green; in the original folk pysanka the background is black.

Love in a Mist (Duck Egg)

I adapted this avtorska (non-traditional art egg) from a wallpaper design by the arts and crafts movement artist C.F.A. Voysey ("Love-in-a-mist" 1928). I wrote lines on white first, filled in the purple with a brush (applying some shading technique I learned from Mark Malachowski), wrote over the purple, dyed the egg green and wrote the green lines, then etched the egg back to white.

Cross with Pussy Willow

This is a diasporan design adapted from a pysanka featured in Ukrainian Easter Eggs and How We Make Them (Egg No. 2).

Embroidered Stars (Turkey Egg)

Fig 3-8 "Eyelet and overcast drawn-work are used together to form a beautiful sleeve on a woman's shirt." From Ukrainian Embroidery, by Ann Kmit, Johanna Luciow, and Loretta Luciow (Ukrainian Gift Shop, 1984).

I developed this design from an embroidery pattern featured in Ukrainian Embroidery by Ann Kmit, Johanna Luciow, and Loretta Luciow. Working from embroidery patterns can be tricky because the white portions are more disperse and colored regions have more a stronger structural role (such as the red lines that divide up the space with the stars).