Tagged: square
Sunday sketch #283
This week’s block-based design combines straight lines and curves to create unexpected secondary shapes within and between blocks.
The diagonal lines in the four flying geese around the centre square create a square on point within each block. And the outer quarter-circles in each block create circles with the blocks next to them. Lots of movement to draw your eye and keep things interesting!
I first explored this idea of introducing interstitial curves in Sunday sketches #209 and #210 – both designs use blocks with curves that create circles with adjacent blocks.
The fact that there are several elements within each block also presents lots of opportunity for colour play. In these first two versions, I’ve used a palette of 4 colours. Each block has 4 main elements: the curvy bits, the outer part of the flying geese, the inner part of the flying geese (which together create a square on point), and the inner square. So I can use one colour per element per block – which helps to balance the colour nicely across the whole design. (This is an approach I’ve used before – making sure that each element/colour pair appears only once in each row or column. It’s an easier way for my analytical brain to balance colour across a design.)
But there are plenty of other ways that this design could be coloured. You could use just one colour per block (plus white, which helps to tie the whole design together, and the dark background colour).
Or, of course, white as a background colour.
A pared-back palette also works; two main colours can be alternated across blocks for a bit of visual interest.
With (at least) 4 elements per block, lots of different colour placements are possible. I find that it can help to reduce the chaos if at least one element is coloured the same across all blocks (here, the middle square uses the background fabric).
Or, every block could be coloured the same way. Depending on the colour choice, this could be a nice understated way of interpreting the design.
This week’s design could be made into a quilt using quarter-circle blocks, flying geese and squares. (Plus borders, if you like to have the design ‘floating’ in the middle a bit, like I do.)
I really love this design (I know I always say that!), but I am so indecisive about a colour palette that I haven’t tried making it yet. Hopefully one day!
Sunday sketch #253
I’m posting a little out of order this week. If you’ve been following for awhile, you know that one sketch will often spark an idea for a second sketch, which will morph into a third sketch, which can lead off in another direction to a fourth sketch… and so on. When this happens, I usually post the designs in order of creation, so I can easily tell the story of how they evolved. But not this week.
You’ll see this ‘pinwheel flag’ motif (for lack of a better description) in an upcoming sketch, where it first started. But I like the simplicity of this variation, so I’m posting it first.
I tried to inject a bit of bright colour into this one, because my default palette with this dark blue is often white and grey….
In the variations above, there are secondary squares created by the closest quadrants of four adjacent blocks… so four white ‘flags’ create a white square, and four blue flags create a blue square.
But the flag colours can be mixed up to avoid creating those squares. I like to create designs that offer choices for colour placement, particularly with a limited palette.
I’ll do a bit more with this block next week. But in the meantime, here’s another variation, created by colouring in the secondary squares with the alternating colour. I also flipped the orientation of this one, to avoid potential problems.
I like how these two versions look almost chaotic and improv-y but are actually very controlled and rule-based.
All these designs could be made into quilts using a triangle-in-a-square block and squares. That’s it!
Sunday sketch #244
This week’s design is almost identical to last week’s, but with one small change. That tweak has created a whole new design with much more movement and colouring opportunities. Can you see what’s different?
I tried a few other colour combinations, and used transparency in each one.
The difference is that instead of using a simple square as the middle block in each ‘flower’ shape, it’s now a square-in-a-square block.
Remember last week’s chonky flowers? Here they are with square-in-a-square centres:
(Also, I’m in love with that blue and dark grey colour combo.) Here’s some more flowery palettes.
I prefer the chonkier flowers from last week; they’re less refined but just strike me as happier and funnier (and more fun).
But this new design creates opportunities for moving away from ‘flowers’ into other more abstract shapes. There’s now a connection between the different ‘arms’ of each shape – instead of the north/south/east/west arms being separate from each other, they’re now connected to adjacent arms through that centre piece. This creates a bunch of 90-degree ‘V’ shapes that can be coloured separately.
I’m still playing with these shapes, so I may have more related designs to share next week!
