TIF August

The TIF challenge for this month sounds like this:

How do you balance aspects of your life? That is the challenge this month - balance.

and the color palette is this one:

Up-to-now, I have regretted that I did not think enough before starting the challenge. After the course by Sharon on Sketchbooks, I had no excuse left.
Thinking and drawing when you are cat-sitting is not easy:
but not impossible. I started by listing things that made me happy, thus balanced: (this visual list is not exhaustive, I could add some humans...). However I did not see how I could translate them into textile, at least within a short period of time. So I browsed the web for symbols of balance. Ying-yang came first, and some crop circles considered as derived from ying-yang:

A crop circle is not me. This one is more me:
The ideas of circles, and things interacting with each other to make a balanced life led to this one:

At the end of the day, I reverted to the basic ying-yang and painted some in different scales. At the end, I found it was too clean and decided to add a bit of spritz. It was the end of the day, my brain did not realize that adding a spritz of water would make the watercolors bleed. Once they did, that looked awful. So I added some salt, to see what would happen, and after all I like the result. May be I'll use it as a background someday.

With the ying-yang, came the letter PHI. Before spritzing the ying-yang page, I had made one with PHI. This page too received some unwanted water, but I left it as it was The next day, I had decided to use PHI , in some kind of composition. Until recently, I've considered myself as rather straight or square. But I tend to turn more circular. No wonder I like the combination of the straight lines and circle in the PHI. I wanted to work on that combination of circle and square. My first attempt: clearly I re-invented the wheel... I did not work on that one longer. Started this one instead:
Not fully completed but a good squeletton for what I want to do.

Now I'm going to audition fabrics!

Have all a nice weekend!