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| Inspiration |
It's been a tough week. Nothing like a crippling icy snowstorm to cramp your creative style. The bright moment in the week was Cindi Gay's Rug Hooking class. I really look forward to her classes. They have just enough structure to make them productive but she doesn't mind going off on a tangent of everything rug hooking. Because her background is originally painting, lots of times it comes with a fine arts bent.
This week we finally summarized our Geometric Rug Journey. What started off with how to do a geometric rug back in September ended up with a season long lesson on how to design a rug overall. The funny thing is that it's not really that much different from the way you design a quilt.
The Process
1. Find Inspiration and Do Research
2. Brainstorm Design Ideas
3. Settle on One or Two Ideas
4. Do Value Studies
5. Pick a Palette by Color Emotion
6. Pick a Directional Hooking Plan
7. Do Small Sample Pieces
8. Transfer Design
9. Hook the Rug!
Looks cut and dry doesn't? No, its a LOT of work. The nice thing is that when you are doing this much work ahead of time, the hooking will go quickly since you know it's going to look great.
Most of these weren't unfamiliar but one concept that was new to me was pick a color palette by emotion. Anybody who has been paying attention knows that I love color. I've explored a ton of ways to pick palettes. But Cindi's favorite way is to take pick two emotional descriptive words and go from there. I could explain it but it's more fun to show you....
Romantic and Muted
Joyous and Bright
Moody and Mysterious
Neutral and Serene
You get my drift. Plus, Cindee doesn't like to limit herself to a handful of colors like they do in these examples. She's happy to pick as many colors as she wants as long as they stay in that emotional category. I think this is really smart. I always say that the color palette you chose for a piece is going to go a long way to helping you convey what the message of the piece is overall. After all, emotion is at the root of most art.
All along I've been doing the exercises she's assigned, but now it's time to
Defecate or Vacate
Fish or Cut Bait
Paint or Get off the Ladder
Or simply decide on one of the MANY designs from step 2 and work my way through the process.
Stay tune...since our homework is to do exactly that, I should have something to show you next week.
So What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?
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