on proportion…

church pew

The muse is in residence these days while the brain is trying to interfere with ‘maybe now would be a good time to clean out the basement’ or ‘ let’s start the final purge in the living room today.’

The first is illogical and the second impractical. Who wants to spend time in a basement in December? And since I already purged the entire house, I have more than enough tax deductible donations for this year anyway.

One should never ever ignore the muse when she is thriving! So now ‘we’ are designing number ten. That in of itself is exciting, meaning I am nearly to the half-way point in the series. I continue to love and be inspired by this meaningful narrative work.

While I was gifted with an innate sense of color I was behind the door when perspective was handed out. Well that is not entirely true. I have keen perspective on human interaction and social behavior, but am ‘blind’ when it comes to seeing proportion and perspective when I design my work. I have taken numerous classes in perspective, which have taught me at least where to start but it is as if that part of my brain is asleep. So that is where my in-house critic comes in handy!

It has not always been this way. I have been designing textile art for over a decade now and initially  resented the in-house critic’s comments about proportion and perspective. Eventually or as my mother used to say…too soon old, too late smart I figured out it is not criticism as the word critique might imply but rather an enormous aid to a skill I simply don’t possess.

Since I don’t see perspective it’s a challenge to draw a cartoon for my work. So I googled church pews to get a picture from which to start. Even so my first construction of the pews did not look like rows of seats but rather lines on fabric. In stepped my helper and mentioned the pews go all the way to the floor (duh!), so after a bit of repositioning, voila! church pews. He also helped me with the building. And I plan to engage his point of view later today with another aspect. We make such a good team but then I already knew that!

country club