Honestly, I was too lazy to do a write-up for last week, so this will cover the last 2 weeks of progress. I got a little unfocused since the last time I sat down to write one of these, but I am back focused with a more solid plan and much clearer goals.
I finished my first draft of my cow composition, but there are a few things that I am unhappy with. First, I think the size is perfect, everything is proportional, and the spacing between my cows is lovely. I strongly dislike the fabric choice (non-factor, as these are samples), the uninteresting background, the choice to put clouds into the” to suffer” half of the composition, and the overall shape of the cows.
To remedy this, I will 1st make a more engaging background through painting abstracted one-color backgrounds, like how I was shown in class. 2nd is to continue to push the cows further into abstraction and use flat, blank colors for the cows. 3rd is to not add any clouds to the composition. Also, generally, the quality of stitching needs to be higher. I hate how there are puckers on some of the hills due to bad presser foot tension.
My work with the cows took the majority of my time last week and this week, testing which color on top of which color I liked, and generally getting a feel for sewing all those small curves. I really enjoyed the cow work, but looking back, I spent way too many days on it and could have done a whole other set of compositions rather than making cows, but so is life.
I got my paint samples up on the wall, but honestly, they are too unorganized as is to really do anything with, so I plan to put them onto sketchbook pages and rewrite the notes.
On the topic of rewriting, I think I want to rewrite my stitch dictionary notes and use the stitch samples I created to make one large composition of all the items. I really had no serious intentions with them outside of a practical dictionary, but seeing them all together really makes me like them, and I really would like to present them as a set. The only issue with stringing them all together is coming up with some sort of artist's explanation for each one and all of them together as a unit. The use of weapons and people is definitely gonna lead the viewer to ask questions. Honestly that may be the angle to take, objectively presenting the collection as a stitch dictionary alongside small booklet that has product photos of the front and back of each item along with my typed-up stitch notes for each one, allowing the viewer to take whatever meaning they want from it, as I made these as a study of stitches not an art piece with a message. 
The fact that 1 unfinished composition and a bunch of cows is all the work I could manage to do is indicative of the lack of direction these last 2 weeks. I am making the commitment to put my cows to bed,get my master studies stencils down, and hopefully put down all of my large-scale practice blankets and displays this week. I can't drag my feet any longer because if I don’t have major progress on the master's studies done by spring break, its joever.
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