Tagged: improv
Sunday sketch #48
Last week I posted the first in a series of designs using diamonds, a shape I don’t sketch – or sew – very often. The first sketch was an ordered, regular pattern; this one’s more improv.
This design reminds me of the twists and turns of barbed wire, with sharp edges pointing in every direction. The diamonds are 2:1 scale – in other words, they’re twice as high as they are wide. You can see ink spots in some of the long lines where I paused to check I was on the right trajectory!
I don’t always know how a design would (or could) be made into a pattern when I’m sketching. Most of the time, I figure it out after I’ve put the pen down. In this case, I think it would involve a lot of angled strips and diamonds, and maybe even some half-rectangle triangles. Plus some partial seams, and a lot of planning.
Sunday sketch #43
I take photos of my sketches with an 8 Mp phone camera. I usually play around with the colours a bit (in Preview or Photoshop), as the phone camera – or the not-so-bright room where I take the photos – tends to make the white Rhodia dot pad look decidedly blue. I never seem to get the white balance quite right, but as these sketches are just a weekly exercise in creativity and commitment, I don’t mind so much.
Today I gave up on getting it right, and decided instead to get it really wrong:
I kinda like how the electric blue reflects the energy in the design – all straight lines and odd angles. It’s a rare occasion when I stray outside the dots! There are no half-square triangles or rectangles here – it’s all improv*. (Or a very big paper-pieced pattern!)
* For regular readers, it will probably come as no surprise that in the 43 Sunday sketches I’ve posted so far, this is the first time I’ve used the tag ‘improv’.
