Tuesday 25 February 2014

This is me!

I forgot to post this photo of me starting to paint my grey pieces.  Taken at my Textile Group in the village hall.

Monday 24 February 2014

Module 1. Chapter 3.2 and extra activity

This is what I always dread, having to draw and paint something and try to make it look like the original.  My sister is the painting artist in the family.

So I chose what I hope was a simple arrangement that had a reasonable quantity of light and shade and I photocopied it in black and white to start with.

 
From this picture I chose the rhubarb and leeks to draw.  The photocopy I didn't find all that useful as it was very dark.
 


This was my picture in greys and white.  I got a bit confused with where all my sticks of rhubarb followed through so they aren't all in a line.  I was suprised what a difference a background colour made, anything other than white.



This was my second go using orange and I got the rhubarb lined up a bit better. 



For this one I used the turquoise blue and put in a grey background.  I think it might be a bit dark but it certainly makes it dramatic.


 

Module 1, Chapter 3.1

I hope I have done this right.  Many of these colours are what I would call beige rather than grey.  I hope you can see all the shades in the photograph.


Starting from the top left - black and white from tubes mixed together to make various shades of grey.  Top right - black made from equal quantities of red, yellow and blue (that is the top card).  This is then mixed with white to make shades of grey.  Bottom left - the top card is red & blue mixed together to make purple and then yellow added, this has made pinky shades of beig.  Bottom centre - the top card is blue and yellow mixed to make green then red added.  This produces a brownier beige.  The bottom two cards have had extra water added to card colour 5 and 2 (if that makes sense).  This has had the effect of slightly changing the shade.  Bottom right is red and yellow mixed to make orange and then blue added.  This came out very green and I decided I had not added enough red to the mix but when I did, I got back to a regular grey so I wasn't sure where I had gone wrong on this one or if this is correct.  Looking at your colours, I was expecting another shade of beige.  Also, with the beige colours, adding the mixed colour to white seemed to change the shade and bring out one particular colour.    This was very interesting and reminds me that if I want to use beige, I need to mix plenty of colour otherwise it will be extremely difficult to match it up.


Chapter 2 - Extra activity

I really looked forward to doing this exercise and it didn't disappoint.  I made some lovely patterns and the colours all looked wonderful.  I decided to use some of the paints that I hadn't used too much so far.



So this one is turquoise blue and orange using cadmium yellow.  I will I had photographed my palette with the paint in because the turquoise was so much more distinctively 3 different shades.  On this page, all the squares are the same size.



Here I have used the magenta to make red and red/orange.  Here the lines angle slightly across the page.  I liked this one.  I have just noticed that the sun came out right across the page. 



This is red/violet using magenta and green/yellow using cadmium yellow and turqoise.  This time I have drawn wavy lines across the page.  I just love the colour and pattern of these pages.  I don't normally work with a lot of colour, my daughter's comment is usually 'it's very nice but it's brown again).


 
 
I decided to take out one of the patterns on the violet/green page and try it in fabric.  Firstly, as you will see, patchwork is not my forte, neither is free machining round the edge of patchwork. I just can't do all that careful measuring and cutting.  I used three shades of red and green and all are cotton fabrics.   I didn't think it would work at all but using a single colour for the stitching brings them all together.  It was just a quick piece and I am sure it would look much better with a bit more thought over the choice of fabric rather than using scraps. 

Wednesday 12 February 2014

An embroidery in analogous colours

I have recently done this embroidery all in greens and white flowers.  One of our speakers brought several pieces of fabric printed with this design and some of the members bought them.  It is interesting to see how different each one is turning out as they all embroider them.  I hope they will all have them finished for our exhibition in April.


I have got the pages and backing prepared to make this into a little book and I hope to fill it with images of a summer garden, which will be the focus of our central display at the exhibition.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Activity 2.3

I decided to play devil's advocate here and chose the three sections next to each other that are really three different colours.  To me, this is where the colour wheel joins up and the continuity isn't quite as good.
 
So, this is yellow/orange, yellow and green/yellow.  Because the orange is so different it splits the whole blending up.  It isn't helped by the fact that I have accidently arranged the orange in a row.  I still wouldn't hesitate to team orange with green,  Marigolds are lovely!


Now I have moved one wedge to the right and have got yellow, green/yellow and green.  My green colour has come out much bluer here than on my page, both the green and the pale green.  The blending of colours is much better and I think that using different yellows and blues you could eventually get a range of greens that all tone in well together.
 
Moving one more wedge to the right I have now got green/yellow, green and blue/green.  I am using much thiner paint hereand the colours blend in really well.  The white I have is a different group to the others although it is the same make and it is much thicker and more opaque and even though I have thinned it down the coverage is still quite flat.  I am pleased with this excercise and enjoyed doing it, I think this page looks good, the colours do all work well together.
 

Activity 2.2

I think a trip to the opticians is in order after this excercise!  Using purple and yellow I did page one with basic squares.
 
This worked fine, the smaller the squares the more the darker colour takes over.

 
I liked the one on the top left, shading from light to dark, I think it worked really well.  Top right was rectangles in two directions created a different pattern of zig zags but not shading.  Bottom left was large and small squares and rectangles.  It is supposed to be staggered at the sides like the ones above but they seem to have merged by the time I got to the bottom.  The bottom right was supposed to be random lines but it seems to have come out similar to the one on the left.  I didn't think that the two patterns showed up very well so I inked in the line where the pepper is shaped but I don't think I improved things.  I should have left it as it was.  I then realised that I had only done straight lines so make my patterns so I decided to try wavy lines.

 
I love the top two.  They may not have a lot of shading but the patterns they have formed are great.  You could take this one on forever.  I then wondered about changing the form of the pattern again from lines to dots.  This works well too, except that it looks like a very sick pepper.