Not quite...

My piece has really taken a lot longer than it should have and although I'm revealing, it really isn't finished.

Light and Shade

It is based on a photo by Jorg Reuter which is creative commons here.  Obviously, it is about balancing rocks which we talked about recently, and appears to be a very popular hobby! 
I sketched and sketched and came up with this.

Obviously this is not the right shape for our challenges and then I hit upon including light and shade in the background and widening it. I traced my sketch onto muslin (just the lines and dots, not all the black).
Then I sandwiched it and free machined most of the lines in black thread (That was a lot of lines).
Then I painted the background in acrylic (next time I will use fabric paint as it is very hard to stich through acrylic although the lumiere is so gorgeous....)
I coloured the stones and shells with watercolour pencils and a brush.
Then the time consuming part, which is not finished began.  I wanted to hand stitch all over it as it is so flat and I wanted more texture.

I tend to embroider by thread, lol.  I will start with one thread and when that thread is finished, I go to a different coloured thread and a different area and so on.  Stops me getting bored.
In the first pic, I have basically finished the bottom rock, but I haven't touched the background here.
In the second picture, I have done some work on the lower stone and have done some background stitching.  Still need to do some black back the other way,
On the shell, I have only stitched some highlights and a strand of pink.
I find that I am beginning to like this style, with thread sketching, painting and hand embroidery, only I need to make sure I have more time for the hand stitching, as I always underestimate how long it will take.
Anyhow, even though I am in no way finished this piece, I really like it (wow, first time for everything!) and am going to take my time and enjoy the stitching process whilst I think about the next challenge.
Too much talk, sorry.