Friday, August 15, 2008

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!


8 comments:

JoWynn Johns said...

I so enjoyed going through the process with you. Thanks so much for telling us the story of how you got to your final design idea. Now to see how you stitch this design. I'm waiting!

Magpie's Mumblings said...

Wow, what a wonderful post about your design process. I loved reading it!

Anonymous said...

Yes, cats ARE very distracting! I found it very interesting to follow your train of thought as you sought concepts to evaluate. I like the water colours you've done in this exercise.

MargB said...

Vero
that was fun. I like both your designs and look forward to the execution.

Conni said...

Loved the result you posted on Flickr - and enjoyed reading about your process, here.

neki desu said...

hi from madrid!

i love reinvention of the wheel.
anxious to seeit intextile

neki desu

Muriel said...

Quel chemin! :-)

Muriel said...

Quel chemin! :-)