Fierce Planets Continued

 Earlier this week I shared the first steps in my quilt for the Fierce Planets called.  I got this far and thought I was almost done but something about the composition was bothering me.  

I wasn't even sure exactly what it was that was bugging me.  If it was the colors, the way the planet and the background joined together (or didn't join well) or what.  I had strategizing sessions with my mom and several fiber friends.  Lots of different opinions and very helpful suggestions.  My mom thought it looked like pac-man and not planety, but I didn't have a good way to change the lines inside the planet.  I tried it upside down to see if it would look less pac-many, but that just looked completely wrong to me, and I finally decided I actually really liked the face that had inadvertently emerged and was not bothered by the pac-man quality.  Mom also suggested the orange stripes might be a little too bright for the rest of everything so I overpainted it and liked it better a little duller.

I also decided that the background was a little plain, so I used my shiva paintsticks to add a bunch of shading and space-y shapes to the background as well as a halo around the planet.  I liked that, but I still wasn't sure about the composition.

I started mocking up a bunch of different potential options on the computer.  This was what it would have looked like without the background, 

As an oval final shape.

With a little bit of background and a round finish.

Squared up?

I even tried some really weird ideas.

None of those were doing it for me.  I think the one I liked the best was the round one, but I didn't want to lose my big radiating lines.  So I did another mockup, decided I liked it and cut off all the background down to this.  And then immediately hated it.  I missed all my purple background!!!  This felt like a real struggle.  Come back later in the week to see how I resolved it!