What's Left Behind - Print and Stitch

For a college brief, "what's left behind". My theme is what death leaves behind, both in a spiritual sense, and in the decay of architecture. 

First of all I took some photographs at a local graveyard, of time-worn tombstones, and decided to make a drypoint print using specialist machinery. I printed several times to get the clean-lined print with less pick-up, developing my technique each time with different effects, such as shading, clean lines, and noise.

In the above print, I decided to shade into it with a pencil to get more depth and the decayed marbled effect. 

For other prints, I have photocopied in black and white and embroidered into the paper, to show the overgrown by nature look that some of the graves I visited had. This was an experimental technique, using stitch as line and adding a pop of colour. It shows that the deceased person is left behind, forgotten by nature and time as a reminder of their life and death is overgrown and neglected.