Done for now

I still have to add a single course of cells around the perimeter, which is the area that will be overlapped if I mat (mount) this picture. For now, though, this is it.

[Update 1-5-15: I finally got around to adding the last courses around the outside. Below is the picture, all done. If I'm counting correctly, there are exactly 3,100 cells in this. I hope I never make a picture with this many again.]

I'll replace this photo after I try taking more photos in different light. I also need to figure out how to square up the camera a little bit better. For now, though, you get the idea.

To be honest, this picture only slightly resembles what I saw in my mind when I first started in on it. But then, that's the way it always goes with blossom pictures.

Usually, while I'm working on these things, I draw all sorts of lines and write notes on the sheet, using a watercolor pencil. As the picture progresses, I try to erase the lines and notes whenever I realize the picture is changing. It has taken years, but I've learned that the blossom pictures have a maddening tendency to change character with the addition of just a few cells. This was the first one I've done in a long time where I didn't draw anything or write any notes on the sheet; I just let the picture take its own course, with me along for the ride. The picture below, which I posted a while ago, is one where I had to draw and re-draw repeatedly throughout the process of making the picture.

(This one has a somewhat similar vertical shading, but there's a horizontal shade shift and an alternate cell coloring that sets up its own rhythms. Both of these pictures have a lot more going on than the obvious value contrasts, which is why they take a while to sink in, at least for me.)

I don't know if it's a peripheral vision thing, but it always seems that while I'm in the middle of working on one of these a time will come when I prop it up so I can look at it from across the room and it's only then that I see that patterns are developing, colors are repeating themselves, or the rhythms are changing.

I'll probably just lean this against the wall and let it sit for a few days so I can see it in different light throughout the day. I just don't know what to make of it. I don't know if it would help if I cut a mat and temporarily mounted it. I really can't recall being this confused by something I've made, and I don't even know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing... The only thing I'm certain of at this point is that I really enjoy looking at this picture from a very short distance. It's when I move away from it and look at it from more than about 8 or 10 feet that I begin to lose a connection.

Oh, well, enough introspection for now. Time to decide what's next. It's a new year, after all.