Brain-teasing Kuba Krazy, 2

[<<<Continuing from] Spent my meditation time today staring into another Kuba textile and trying to reproduce it on paper. Then I had to go back for more. The product doesn't look like much but it was a great exercise in guiding myself to see in a new way.

Yesterday I laid out the grid -- so many diagonal lines by so many diagonal lines. Then I realized the original embroidery did not quite match the grid -- it defied the grid... no, it danced with the grid.

Challenge: how can I describe a design without using words?

I stared at it long enough to see the loop-de-loops, interconnecting. I did an "air drawing" -- tracing with my pencil in the air. Then I could draw them squared off (more or less) -- fish heads. AH! More about rhythm and movement than about grids and geometry. (The Africans gave us jazz, right?)

And of course they made the double lines do crossovers to add complexity.

I finally "got it" -- though my loop-de-loops sort of crashed into each other because I'm not good at seeing the whole while I draw the parts.

The tiny little fill-ins were done last (as they are with the embroideries... big picture first, then the little improvisations). My brain was completely busted open by then, so they were easy.

1.28.2009