Sunday, April 15, 2007

Star of Panama window, next step



As many of you know, in my massive amounts of free time, when I'm not writing, editing, looking after four children, and avoiding housework, I make stained-glass mosaic windows. I make them out of salvaged glass glued (with Weldbond - it dries clear!) to discarded windows. I've been commissioned recently to make a window of the view from a friend's old-family home in Ecquador, of a Star of Panama (aka Poinsettia) tree with Mount Chimborazo in the distance. I'm sharing each step of it here, with you, for fun and for feedback. The elements I'm including in the window are: 1. The tree in the foregound 2. Snow-capped Chimborazo in the distance 3. A pink garden wall 4. Bare earth below.

For step one of this process (see my drawing in the blog archives - February, "Star of Panama") I sketched poinsettia plants to get a sense of how they branch and sprawl when they're allowed to grow free, and how the leaves shift gradually from green to red.

Step two, which you see above, is a rough mock up of the whole window so I can ponder overall composition and color. Things I'm thinking about right now are the placement of the mountain (lower? more distant?) and the shadow under the tree. I think I want a basic diagonal movement from upper right corner down to bottom left. So let me know what you think. Thanks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think this is going to be wonderful!
Love the blog too! Keep it up,

Linda

Anonymous said...

I love this. Really love it.

Rebecca said...

I love your design. Beautiful colors. The composition works for me. The only part I'm unsure about is the white (?) that backgrounds an upper portion of the poinsettia.

The song was great -- I passed it on...

love, R