Take it Further challenge - January

Along with many others, I signed up for the Take it Further Challenge. This will be my 6th year of making A4 Journal quilts and I thought it would give me a focus to base them on ,however I'm already struggling! Journal quilts for me have been a combination of trying out new ideas and documenting what's going on my life. Last year I found even the use of portrait only format for CQ challenge a bit restricting but I managed to do all on time despite moving house ( do I get a gold star?!)

The January TIFC concept is for a feeling of admiration for someone and the colour palette pictured above. My heart sank, I couldn't relate to the concept and I'd hoped it would be a single colour rather than a range. And what I really want to do is start the year with interpretation of my journey through Iran. I haven't the time to do 2 unrelated Journal Quilts so I fear the TIF challenge will remain a paper exercise.

Still, I thought I'd show willing and have a crack at the colour palette, practising using the adaptive palette and changing colour options on Adobe Photoshop that I learnt on Michael James workshop in Rolduc a few years ago.This involves picking out colours from an image to construct a palette then various colours can be changed. A fairly restricted initial palette helped as did just being able to type in the numbers listed across the TIF Jan Palette rather than guessing what the colour might be. It does raise the issue about how different monitors and printers deal with colour.

This picture I took of old tiling on the old Bazaar front in Yazd. The whole city was preparing for the visit of the 'Supreme Leader' the following week so there were posters of him everywhere and scaffolding and huge placards being erected. There was an photo of this gathering on the front page of the 'Terhran Times' on the 3rd January when we flew back. There must have been thousands in the crowd to hear him talk, no wonder they needed all the crash barriers.

The changes in colour below are quite interesting but as the essential colours of Iran are blue and turquoise, I feel its an artificial interpretation, not one I wish to pursue.


So I decided to move back to my studies of Henry Moore sculptures - being abstract to start with means that to some extent what colour they are is irrelevant. The challenge for me was whether the colour changes added anything or indeed detracted from the original.

Original sketch by Henry Moore

Colours changed to Jan Palette - what was interesting here was the practicalities of sampling colours from a very restricted colour range. Although superficially a lot of the sepia/sanguine colours in the original were very similar, when these colours were changed, they weren't evenly distributed and a lot of the subtlety was lost. I also left some of the original colours which helped maintain some of the structure.

Next, a monochrome Photoshop image I'd already used for October 2007 Journal quilt composed of 2 pictures overlaid each other and desaturated

Parts of this (particularly the sculpture) I rather like in the Jan Palette, having retained some of the patination of the bronze. It was rather difficult sampling colours in black and white - I should have used my initial photos as the basis instead. Not sure about the yellow sky either!

This photoshop image I had already printed out on fabric a while ago - again composed of 2 different viewpoints combined but then hue and saturation drastically altered. Its close enough to the Jan Palette so I'm considering stitching into it then overpainting with acrylics in 'D4D490'

I'll share the results later.