Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Using a negative reaction

Well I was really looking forward to the March TIF Challenge but when I saw the pallette of colours I'm sorry to say that my reaction was negative.

When I get a reaction like this, I find it useful to go with the dislike because it makes me work harder to create a thing of beauty. I started by naming the colours then assigning them a value: burgundy (dark), sand (light), olive (medium to dark), purple (medium to dark), black (very dark). Then I listed my problems with them:
I don't think there is enough light.
I don't usually think of the sand colour as "light" and I find the dark and medium colours depressing except for the purple.
The only complementaries, at a stretch, are the burgundy and the olive.
Juxtaposing the highest contrasts doesn't give a "zing" (sand and black).

I resolved to try to do each challenge using both the concept and the pallette, and I think it will be a stretch this month, but after all, isn't that what "Take It Further" is about?

Ideas to transform the dislike:

"Burgundy and olive" evokes lovely moments having apero during the summer, sitting on the front terrace.

"Not enough light" makes me think of moonlight.

"Sand and black without a zing" sounds like a cool title and could produce a figurative piece.

I have loads of ideas for the "little things/small moments" concept though:
Seeds, those miraculous packages of DNA,
Atoms and molecules, those gorgeous units of universe that make cloud shapes shown on The Hubble photo gallery,
Sand, that can trickle through the waist of an hourglass grain by grain, counting the seconds of our lives,
Insects that colonise our patches of garden - ants, grasshoppers, ladybugs,
Rockpools that contain their own little but complex worlds.

I may play with all these ideas as I'm currently on a roll, but I still have to deal with the pallette. Wish me luck!

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