WEEKLY ART PROJECT #37; AGAVE BUD

Over the past few weeks we have been watching this Agave bud grow taller & taller!

It is a fascinating structure & up close it reveals a bizillion little buds bracing themselves to burst open into flower.  I have taken a number of photos & have been grateful to have had just the white wall as a backdrop, as nothing competes with the plant itself.

For this week's weekly art project I chose this photo to work from, but I used a viewfinder to focus on a much smaller area.  Using the crop function on my computer, I can show you the same section.

What attracted me to this composition were the beautiful curving lines & the contrast of two 'backgrounds'. Keep in mind that I wasn't working from this cropped & expanded image, I was working from what I could see within a small 2cm viewfinder, which compressed the visual information considerably.

Work began as it often does, with paper & pen. A few quick sketches before a more concentrated look at what I wanted to focus on. The bottom right hand exploration is what I chose to take another step further into a design.

I wanted my colour palette to be in keeping with reality, & to achieve the mixture of background greens, I chose to whip up a quick patchwork for the background, knowing that most of it would be cut away!

These then, were my fabric layer choices.

I'm sure you must be getting bored with seeing my pre-cutting photos!  But, I LOVE this moment!  It gives me such a buzz to look at this surface, knowing that with a few snips of the scissors, what I see before me will be completely transformed.  I guess this is the quiet before the storm.  This is the moment of contemplating the potential, of recognising that although I quite like these sewn lines just as they are....I'm STILL going to cut it back !

Here goes....

Whilst I was sorry to see so much of that patchwork background go, I really like the effectiveness of the random greens.  What I hadn't realised at a conscious level until this moment, was that the texture of the white fabric mirrors the square patterning of the patchwork.  That choice of textured white was a good one, because it brings interest to the eye & it is strong enough to create contrast with my pale green tendril lines.

All in all a satisfactory little exercise!