100 Day Project: Week 6 Update

Week 6 Progress: Blocks 37-42

This completes my 6th week of creating daily #designbydice. Last week, I had the pleasure of connecting virtually with Lyric Kinard to record a new Covichats with Lyric & Friends, which you can watch here. The morning flew by as we discussed strategies for coping with Covid-19 by staying connected and engaging in creative play. I had the opportunity to share my #100DayProject, especially as I am using Lyric's Art + Quilt: design principles and creativity exercises book as a reference guide for studying the Elements of Art and Design Principles!!

And without further ado, let's revisit the blocks that were created this past week...

36/100

• For my neutral plus 1, I chose a variety of red-violet fabrics and some black and white prints and solids. I kept trying to make a curved style Mondrian work and it just wasn't. I kept playing with the various scraps, and suddenly one of them reminded me of a sail. The next thing I knew, I was constructing an entire sailboat, using the wavy black & white strips for the waves, and cutting out some purple waves to recreate wind. 
• Despite some rough waters early into this particular design, I am so pleased with how this design effectively utilizes a variety of values, as well as incorporates wonderful movement in both the water and windy sky.

37/100

• When I rolled a complementary color scheme, I reached for red and green, as I hadn't really used any true red in any of my designs (only pinks and magentas thus far). While I started with the red strips, I knew I needed something more for a backdrop.  
• I remembered to pause and capture photos of my process and the small details I kept adding along the way to draw more focus to the floating red strips (which now sparkled with pink boxes).
• This design uses a light, medium, and dark value of both red and green, adding wonderful sparkle and contrast to each area.

38/100

• Another achromatic/neutral dice roll, which was another opportunity to revisit brown as a neutral. I turned to nature for inspriation in the form of sticks and stones. The pebbles feature a variety of sizes and patterning for interest. The sticks also use different widths and frame the pebble center. 
• I'd like to revisit this design to see if I could create a more interesting design by changing the placement of both elements, as well as reducing the space between the pebbles.

39/100

• I hadn't played with a blue monochromatic color scheme yet. Almost immediately I thought of the Blues, which led me to a musical theme. The wavy lines were improvisationally cut and placed to create an ebb and flow effect. Instead of traditional music notes, I abstracted them through the use of small squares with smaller square accents.
• The bars along the left and right help anchor the design and create balance, as well as the placement of the musical notes along each line of music.

40/100

• I was surprised to roll all 6's. I had already used brown this week, so I reached for my box of black & white scraps. There I found a few heart shapes with a frosted white patterning which reminded me of clouds. By cutting off the bottom half of the heart, I was left with minimalist cloud formations. 
• This might have been the simplest block to construct as I used the same basic shape (heart) for uniformity, while adding in subtle variations in the height of the clouds, as well as varying the repeats to create longer clouds. The clouds were then positioned with varying space between each layer to create depth.

41/100

• I reached for purples and golds for the complementary color scheme and then just stared at the scraps waiting for divine inspiration!
• Some days, you need to just start cutting fabric which soon evolves into a design. In this case, I cut out a large yellow wedge that I then cut out some triangles to add some texture. I found the light purple spirals and just place them on top of the spikey wedge. I was about to scrap the spirals, but then looked back at all those cut yellow triangles and they reminded me of bird beaks. Next I set out to create spikey feathered wings, which looked better on top of their heads. So I set out to create new winged shapes. All the shapes were moved up higher in the composition so I could elaborate on the birds' nest. And I couldn't resist adding a wiggling worm being fed from a mother bird, as represented by one of the larger triangle scraps.
• Several different textures were used in both the nest, trio of birds, as well as the stripes to create worm segments.
• I tried to have all the various components draw focus towards the birds: the next spiking upwards and the wiggling worm being lowered to the leftmost bird. 

42/100

• An assortment of emerald greens were selected for my monochromatic color scheme.
• Several of the shapes were narrow leaves which reminded me of fingers. I added a lighter shade of green for fingernails. Since I only had 6 fingers, I decided they would be alien fingers reaching for a heart. 
• The central heart draws focus with all 6 fingers reaching towards it, along with the radiating wedges.
• So I may have taken the "space" assignment a bit literal with this alien-inspired design, but I am pleased with the negative space used in this design.

Not only was I running out of room on my design wall, but several of the blocks kept falling off.  So I finally removed blocks 1-25 so I could start playing with a quilt layout.  I hope you'll join me next week to see another week of #designbydice blocks!!

Blocks 1-42