The Owl and the Pocket Watch

When I'm having a creative block, one thing that gets me moving is a deadline. An art group I'm in issued a challenge: create a design using a pocket watch. Deadline: one month. Scouring the house turned up no less than three pocket watches! I chose the oldest, a broken one that I bought at a garage sale with the intent to take it apart to use in my mixed media artwork. You can see the base photo, first in the row of photographs.

I took out the background and drew on the watch to make it a little less clean-looking.

Since my favorite thing to do is design fabric, I used elements of the cutout image to make some kaleidoscope designs, which often produce great fabrics. See the third photo in the row for one of them.

That was okay, but I wasn't satisfied. I decided to switch gears (no pun intended) to make a blended collage. What image would work with the watch face? I have a folder on my computer of what I consider to be my best photos, and when I opened it, look who jumped out at me (fourth photo in the row).

Now we're talking! I was very happy with a few of the different blended images I came up with. The fifth photo in the row is the one I liked best.

I printed variations of the collage onto heat transfer paper and decorated a wooden box, but will leave photos of that for another day.

Have you used the pressure of a deadline to make yourself get to work? I'd love to hear how that went and what you created. 

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