Another sketch

Progress!

The dress will, in fact, be red. Synchronicity of ideas is a marvelous thing.

The Mystery Wind Instrument is a clarinet, it turns out. That's nice, since it's the only one of the three (clarinet, oboe & bassoon) that I can readily picture in my own mind. And, therefore, it was what I was already picturing.

The cello needs an end pin...done.

I've flirted with the idea of a left-handed cellist in this sketch, although I don't even know, really, whether a southpaw musician would obtain a specially-strung cello so as to bow with the left hand, or whether said musician might, in fact, be encouraged or even required to learn to bow with the left hand.

But it doesn't matter in any case. The whole reason for flipping the central figure in the first place was to get Cellist out of Violinist's way. But when I drew in more detail on both of them, I discovered that a cellist's bowing arm is actually fairly straight, so the next sketch will return to a right-handed cellist leaving, as originally intended, more room for the Muse.

The Violinist being the Muse, you see. She's totally taking over the quilt. But in a good way.

The violinist is a woman. That much we know. I gave the clarinetist a beard and ponytail in my first sketch, and I'm given to understand that this caused no offense ;)

My inclination, since we now have one clearly male and one clearly female figure, is to leave the gender of the Cellist undefined. Just because.

I would also suggest using a range of skin tones on the three individuals, but we're really not "there" yet in the design process.

So. The sketch.

(Click any of these photos to see a much larger view.)



It's also time to start playing with fabric. Turns out my stash presents a serious dearth of teal, which will have to be remedied. But here are some of the blue/greens and green/blues that I do have. The photo doesn't really show the true colors of these fabrics, but it's a starting point anyway.



Looks kind of oceanic, doesn't it?

Well, we have been using some water-related phrases in discussing this quilt; swimming in the music, floating hair, flowing clothing; we've even spoken of the violinist as a mermaid, given the way her dress flows across the bottom of the design.

Considering the kinds of flowing, graceful lines that will be used to show the flow of the music, it might not be a bad idea to keep the concept of water in mind. Even if we don't end up with a quilt that says "water" to the casual observer, having the concept present at this stage might help achieve the musical flow we're after.

Moving on...the violinist's dress is to be red, or to contain reds. My own inclination, when it comes to red, is generally toward purples and burgundies, so I've pulled a few contenders to see how they play with the blues and greens. (What looks like black in the photo below is actually a burgundy velvet. It was just camera shy.)



Overall, you can see that I'm looking at what quilters call "jewel tone" fabrics. These are rich, intense, saturated colors. "Saturated," in color theory, is the opposite of grayed-out. This means, for example, that even the "light" blues are not "pale" blues.