Developing Ideas.

I said yesterday I'd talk about how I might use some of the images I took at Callender Park, so I'm going to talk about two of them, specifically.  The first is a rhododendron; there were a lot of rhododendron bushes, and a happy family clustered in front of them, so I couldn't take a range of photographs as  I would otherwise have done.  I did, however, get up close and personal with this one, at the end of the group.

This is the photograph I took, uncropped, au naturel, as it were.  I like the colours, the variation, the texture implied in those petals.  I thought it might be fun to tweak the image a bit...so...

Loud, man, loud!  I wanted to take a look at the way the colour is grouped, so fiddled a bit with the settings, to produce this... I rather like it, though I could live without the white, and could have done something about it, I suppose, but given this is a reference photograph, I let it be.  Besides, I love the semi abstract shapes that are suggested around those white patches.  It would be interesting to do a monoprint based on these shapes, or possibly an applique.  Finally,

Looks very similar to the first one, except... I've fiddled around with the colour intensity and the amount of contrast, to show up the texture a bit more.  Again, the shapes of the flowers are shown quite clearly in this image, good for applique reference, or painting, for that matter.  Flowers change almost moment to moment, so drawing from reference photographs seems a reasonable thing to do.

My eye was caught by lots of things in the park; the second one I'll discuss here, is a section of the wall of the main house.

This was cropped from one of the images I took yesterday.  I didn't particularly want to get up close and personal, so it was taken from a distance; often I'll photograph individual stones, or groups of stones, if I find them interesting.  I've always been interested in stone walls; that interest grew in Norfolk, with the incredible flint buildings there (I've talked about them on this blog before).  I like the variation in colour, texture and shape in this.  I photographed it because it struck me that it would make an interesting basis for a quilt.

So, once more, I played around with this image, cropping it again and playing with the intensity of the colour.  

Not a lot to choose between the two images, but when you look at this third one...

There's a distinct difference; much stronger colours, more contrast.  What this exercise has done for me, is to suggest how a series of quilts might develop 'about' walls.  I've never been interested in brick walls, because of their regular nature (the reason I don't make patchwork quilts is my dislike of regular pattern).  Taking a wall like this one as a template of sorts for a series of pieces, but varying types of fabric and gradually turning up the visual volume, as I've done in these photographs, would be an interesting way of exploring this form, as well as providing a challenge.  A bit like a crazy quilt, but in a far more regular form.

Will I ever get round to either of these possibilities, or any of the others I found at Callendar Park?  I don't know, to be honest.  My energy is limited, and there are plenty more ideas where they came from... I'll talk about choosing an idea to work with, tomorrow.