project 3

After the exercise of stage 6 there is a part in the course book which asks for a review of my work and questions about use in color in general. I will answer them in this post.
I have been dyeing and painting fabric for more than 7 years now. My collections of procion mx dyes, textile paints, acrylic paints, water color and inks is rather large :-). Since I have taken 4 workshops given by Carol Soderlund I am cutting down on all the different procion colors. After all in those workshops - the first 4 she mentions on her workshop page - I have learned to create any color I want by just using the pure mx colors. Next to the dyes and paints I have a collection of paintsticks, inktense pencils and all kind of markers. Next to a huge collection of hand dyed fabrics I have a big stash of commercial batiks. In short you can say I am used to using - and mixing colors in my work:-).
About 1,5 year ago I started making artist trading cards and altered playing cards. Most of the time I use collage techniques for these. My stash of colored paper is growing because of this new addiction.
My stash of embroidery floss and pearl cotton was rather small, but I have been adding colors to it, so I have more choice in colors.

One of the techniques I like is to print on fabric using all kind of unusable objects or hand carved stamps. Making those marks is fun to do.

I can see that I am getting more used to hand embroidery. This is a technique which I have not used much in the past. The sample I made for stage 4 exercise 2 (the one with the French knots) is my favorite. The technique is time consuming, but I love the effect.

It is difficult for me to say which techniqe I prefer. Both the painting techniques have their advantages (they don't take much time so I can create a lot) as well as the color exercises we did in this project. The color exercises can be more useable compared to the painting exercises. For instance the sample I made with the French knots could be matted and framed. I admit this is not an option for all the color exercises I did, but I don't see any of my painting samples framed :-).

I was able to mix and match colors. At the moment I only have 1 red and 2 blue acrylic paints, if I would have another blue and 1 or 2 extra reds I would be able to do this even more accurate.