Taking some of the photos related to my theme I chose 2 or 3 items selecting a rag rug found in a rural cottage, Egyptian cottons and twisted cotton rug. In particular I decided to follow through with the rag rug because two hues I wish to develop are orange and blue, complementary colours on the colour wheel, and the rug fitted this preference. Ideally I should use the original item, but as it is on the Isle of Man, the photograph had to do.
Taking the first photograph I decided to manipulate the photograph using the provision in editing pictures. Initially, I cropped and rotated it, providing a close up and an enlarged example, showing different tones of colour:
From this photograph I took a diagonal area using a window cut from paper about 1cm wide.
Records
Then, I started to experiment with the colours, recreating the long strip using acrylic paints, wax crayons, soft pastels, water colour paints, and inks, blending colours to try and capture the actual colours in the photograph/rag rug.
The first sample was the window strip but then the rest were made up of the strip to the right of the paper strip. All are shown below:
I could have mixed the colouring materials but instead used one material after the other.
Make coloured areas
There were several colours captured in the strips and for each of these I selected the acrylic paints to make 15 cm squares, ensuring all colours were recorded, as best as I could. Maybe I didn't experiment sufficiently, not providing rubbings, but I did see some effects where liquids blended when still wet (as in the water colour paints and inks above). Later I also used different surfaces.
At this stage I would like to refer back to the colour wheel work completed on the Certificate course Module 1, showing the main hues (chroma), shades and tints (hints incorrectly labelled on the wheel!). Primary colours were mixed to make secondary colours, shades by adding black and tints by adding white to each hue. Here are the samples provided on the earlier course:
Colour groupings
Exercise 1
I started by drawing 2cm wide, 15 cm long strips on the khadi paper, as the background.
Then, I grouped the colours using 1cm squares from strips 1cm wide by 15 cm long, strips cut using craft knife on cutting board with metal ruler (H&S)
The following page shows:
- Colours in order warm to cold
- Colours in order light to dark
- Colours in order by hue
- Colours in order of quantity / proportion
- Colours in order as they appeared on the strip
In 4, I now realise that each piece of colour should have varied in length to better indicate proportion and I made this same mistake when working on the Zeke colour scheme later.
Exercise 2
The next exercise was to provide 2cm x 15cm strips of the coloured papers, placing the coloured sequence as they appeared on the strip, with the same sequence of 1cm squares.
Comments were made beneath each sample of the effects created.
Exercise 3
The next exercise I chose to select different materials to match the colours, as labelled, using the same sequence as above, but presented vertically. The same comments apply.
The one colour I don't seem to have captured is the orangey brown colour as in (5) above
Computer manipulation to produce different colour effects
In order to produce first orange hues, shades and tints then blue, I returned to the computer, changing the background colours according to the selection on the photo editing, resulting in the following:
The first (A) is a colour combination called Zeke, the second (B) is Arctic.
I chose one to develop further - Zeke
This time I cut a 1cm wide strip vertically, slightly in from the edge of the photograph.
I only used acrylics, but coloured different background materials, using different papers and plastics as labelled. The bubble wrap also gave a translucency showing through the background colour, the white plastic bag was more opaque.
I then did the same as in Exercises 1 and 2 above, with the following results, which added texture to the colours:
At a later date I could repeat these exercises with the Arctic blues, including more layering using different colouring materials and rubbings.
I enjoyed experimenting and recording the results in another booklet called 'Colour studies' using sheets of Khadi paper.
I am not sure I've done sufficient for this chapter and still have a lot to learn in using colour, especially distinguishing warm from cold colours.
I have two references which I hope will help me
Karen Barbe 'Colour confident stitching: how to create beautiful colour palettes' Pimpernel Press 9781910258651 (2017) a book discovered in a recent article in 'Embroidery magazine' 'Creating colour confidence' May/June 2017
Carolyn Warrender 'Book of colour scheming: how to identify colours right for your home'
Harper Collins 0583337082 1998 as my theme is cotton used as household linen.
