Fiddlin' around

I have been so immersed in house remodeling/cleaning/selling/painting/etc. that I have not done anything creative with fabric in waaaaay too long. Our small STASH group decided we needed a new challenge, so we settled on "tree". Last night I started fiddling with some ideas.

I carved a little stamp and stamped and painted some leafy fabrics. Then I sketched. I was looking at our old lilac out front and looking especially at the shapes and angles of the bare branches.

Today I scanned the sketch and cropped it to something that I liked.

Too many branches. I started taking branches out and simplifying.

I like that better. I took it into Illustrator and started tracing and adding some color to get a feel for what that might be like.

Now the trunk looks spindly and off balance. The background is a little icky too, but it's just a start.

I think this has a ways to go, but it's a start. This is the point at which I have to let it simmer in the back of my head. Most likely I'll get some kind of idea just as I'm drifting off to sleep.