Up To The Challenge?

     How can I incorporate the images I've been using in my latest series in a challenge about wildflowers? My art group, ArtsEtc., has an exhibit coming up in our City Hall about wildflowers and I want to use the image I've been playing around with of my niece in it.
     To try it out, I did a sketch using her image scattering seeds with simple shapes around her similar to the quilt I made of The Puppeteer seen here. I added some flowers to the bottom right. Not too bad.

practice sketch 1

     When I was in Croatia, I did several sketches that I really liked with that image. To me, the image represents a force in the Universe of some sort. I decided to try the Croatian influence on this theme. So I started a sketch with her in the top left sitting in a ruined window. Then I drew some flowers in the bottom right and developed the sketch from there using photos I took in Croatia as references.

practice sketch 2

     I think this has promise. I could see monoprinting the background fabric for the wall and ground and free motion quilting around the shapes.  The next step will be to choose a color palette and start playing with fabric. My guess is the final product will end up different than the sketch, because fabric will call upon me to make other choices. I took out some embroidery floss in colors I might choose.

possible color palette

     This week, when I meet with my sketching group, I think I'll paint a couple of versions of the sketch in those colors and later in the week maybe start getting fabrics ready. A possible title is The Seed Bearer. As I'm working with this series, I'm finding that I can adapt her image to a variety of themes which is bringing a lot of creativity out of me that I didn't know I had. It really is true that there is great value to working with a series.
     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.