Over the past few weeks my usual first-thing-in-the-morning routine has been altered as I have been trying to complete one of my (many) projects. This has meant that instead of doing the breakfast dishes at 8am, I've been doing them at 10am! What has excited me about this, is that the garden I look out on whilst doing those dishes, has been bathed in a different light than what I'd been used to! Consequently, as you can see in the photo above, there have been some lovely light & shadow moments seen in the agave leaves. When it came to choosing a focus for my weekly art project this week, I knew exactly where to set my gaze!
I began by cropping (with a view finder) the image to this amount of visual data. By restricting my options, I could be more economic with my time.
Out came the pens & paper to explore both the range of lines & the range of light & shade. I was interested in the background where I had two different 'line' variations competing for attention; the strappy leaves of the plant behind the agave & the the brush fence beyond that. Although I wanted to reference them, I had to be careful that they didn't detract from my Agave leaves in the foreground, and I had to also be mindful of a limited time in which to complete this project! The paints came out for a little further exploration of ideas.
Finally I settled on a design that I felt could be translated into contemporary reverse applique & so proceeded to draw up a 'map' for myself to achieve this.
The fabric stash was rummaged through & I quickly painted up the stripey fabric for my background.
Once the design had been stitched through the whole 'sandwich' of fabrics, I used my white pen to mark out where my cutting lines would be. For this piece, not all the outlines were going to be the same width. I wanted variation in size to give a sense of shadow & depth, therefore drawing on these guide-lines was important.
It wasn't until I had cut the second layer that I realised...whoops...I'd put the greens in the wrong order! That's what happens when trying to do more than one thing at once in more than one room of one's house!!!!! Because of this mistake, I had to concentrate a bit harder on what I was cutting & where, and as a result...I forgot to take my usual quantity of cutting back photos!!
When all was cut back, this was the result.
The only change I'd make if I were to do this again, is to make the wider outlines a little more wide. The contrast in widths isn't so easy to see here!
A fun project for me this week, even if I was distracted with other things. :-)
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