A bee mate brought this to me from the free table at guild... it started a big discussion about color and proportion and what the heck is wrong with that boat?
shall we start with the tsunami wave right in front? Or the odd shape? what's the dark blue line about? The weird shading of fabrics?
I am not criticizing the maker. I am critiquing her choices in order to learn.
This seems to be based on a Lorraine Stangeness pattern. I LOVE her patterns using sew and flip pieces. She lays them out in such an easy graphic that you want to keep going til it's done.
This was given away for a reason. The maker just didn't get colors and shading right. To do her patterns one must consider more tone and shade, less contrast. It's why we have a design wall, so we can step back and see if fabrics blend or scream out.
I mean, each fabric alone is really pretty.
This is how pretty fabrics can go wrong, in relation to other pretty fabrics.
If something is supposed to be representational such as a boat in the ocean, in a sunrise or set situation, then why go from extreme orange to deep sky color to bright yellow stars to bright light blue skies to peach?
Our senses want to make, well... SENSE of an image.
I do not know who designed this, but I wish she had asked friends during the process.
"Something is wrong here... what is it? " Know what I mean? That is a great service good friends can offer each other.
Ask what's wrong, but do not worry if they do not see your vision of the finished item. I once had some unsolicited advice by friends, "You can't put all those yellows together!" But I knew what my vision was, and that quilt went on to win many local and several National prizes!! It's still one of my favorites and so very jolly. (I've never shared it here)
What do you do when you know "something ain't right" ? Do you walk in and out of the room til it comes to you? Do you ask a friend you trust to be honest? With design skills? I've done it all, including writing to it.
Um hm... a great design teacher once suggested that, early in my career.
I take out a pen and paper, and write, the mood I wanted to create, the idea or line or concept I wanted, and ask what do you want? I keep writing til it comes to me, Ohhhhhhhhhh! That's what's missing/too much/wrong. It's worked for me more than a few times.
I've studied design principles and listened to artists, looked at a lot of art, often ask other artists what they like or not about certain pieces, all in an effort to make the process....effortless.
Learn all you can, observe nature, draw a lot so you learn about shadows, take a lot of photos so you see reality differently, critique your own work honestly.
Then it's intuitive, lol!
And it is really.
I took an hour to really look at this, adding in pieces, changing proportion with folding, ripped off the bottom offending strip, and as much as I like little color scraps, I decided to offer it up to you as a challenge.
Notice what I've temporarily done here...
a dark strip under the boat,
change of fabric under the ocean,
replace the tsunami with another orange,
remove some of the peach replacing it with a sunset fabric...
Not perfect but it's more balanced to me.
The boat is still weird.
You will receive it as it was originally minus a little bottom strip, not the way it looks after my manipulation.
So are you ready for a challenge? Will you actually work on this and show us what you accomplished?
Do you disagree with me, and like it as is??? Fine with me!
Want to be part of my little critique group here? What do you think? Leave an amusing comment and I'll send it to you... if there is more than one response, I'll just pick one of you.
Come on and play!
