Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Lilies and Roses with Salt and Pepper

When I first read this challenge I wasn't sure how I could manage.

I had ideas of doing purple and pink fluffy. Early in Dec, I tried to sell some little soft Christmas trees for decoration at a Cancer charity fund raiser, out of 70, I sold 12! But the stall next to me made a killing with purple and pink fluffy glittery girly things. however, I couldn't carry it through because I have never been a purple and pink fluffy glittery person and I never had a little girl. :) Without going to the shops and looking, I couldn't think how the layout for those things would look.
But then I remembered I bought some crisps for visitors over Christmas...not a well known brand, it just had a good price! So, anyway, here it is, and here is the result. I started looking for fabrics and remembered the gold coloured fabric which had all the colours. When I tried it to see where it might lead, I thought it could pass for kitchen curtains. So, I went for a rather abstracted kitchen still life.

The reddish flowers started being a big dalia using the tissue pompom technique with the thin transparent paperlike fabric I sometimes use. But it rather overwhelmed things, so I cut it into 3 and they became roses. The yellow flowers were going to be glads, but I couldn't figure out how to ruffle the edges, so they became lilies instead.

I used silver and metallic stitching here and there because part of the colour composition of the packaging seemed to rely on the shinyness of the bag. But there is a bit of silver behind the word tortilla, too.

The part I like the most is the clock! It seemed to need that little splash of red and white that the packaging had.

I am not sure I learned that much about colour, other than to recognise this as a version of a triadic scheme with versions of blue, red and yellow. What I have taken away with me is that packaging is a very good way to learn lessons of composition. repetition of shape including the shape repeated in a scaled version, contrast of shape, and also things like small bright spots balancing larger duller colours. I think it would be worth looking at packaging for hints of composition layout in the future.

8 comments:

  1. I really like the colors in your piece and what you did with the flowers vs. original chips. My only suggestion would be the clock. It's so small and I really didn't notice it until you mentioned it. What if it was larger and partially hidden behind the kitchen curtains? That way it would all be drawn together more.

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  2. What I like best about your piece is how you have kept the original composition, yet changed all the elements. I love the two kinds of flowers, regardless of what you intended them to be! I agree about the clock being a tad small.

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  3. thanks for the comments.
    It is hard to tell in the photos, but in real life, the bright white on the clock does give it more visual punch. It helps to give a bit more depth to the scene.

    I don't really want the clock to be the first thing noticed. I kind of feel the composition has the eye go right to left at the bottom and swirl up to the curtain and up and out of the scene via the clock.

    Thanks Sandy

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  4. You did a great job of mimicking the colors and the design elements. I don't think the clock needs to be bigger. It's great that you were able to adapt your flowers to fit the moment. I like "Design on the Fly". Sometimes the best things happen that way.

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  5. Hi Sandy - I think you've got some really good elements going here - the yellow flowers and the clock particularly attract me. After reading your explanation of the kitchen curtains I understood better what that piece of fabric represented but it seems somewhat disconnected to me. Maybe it needs a wonky curtain rod holding it up.

    You did an excellent job of pulling the colors from the tortilla chip bag into your art quilt. Well done.

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  6. What a fun piece Sandy. I don't do pink frilly stuff either and I'm glad you used this label for your challenge instead.

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  7. Love the dancing curtain!

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  8. Love all the movement, this is a great interpretation of a still life. Nice choice of colors too.

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