project 3, stage 6, exercise 2

This sample is done in pastels. The colors are mixed in such a way that they show a gradual color movement. On purpose I choose a different stitch from the previous exercise, this time a double cross stitch. It is a bit irregular, but I like that effect, but that is because the black fabric I used as background is such a thight woven one that threads cannot be counted.

The second color from the top is in reality not so bright as it shows in this picture.

For the second part of this exercise I used  a drawing on paper first - again using pastels:

The drawing at the left is done with markers and I like the difference between the thick and the thin parts of the line. Next to the marker drawing is a drawing done with pastel pencils. This is the idea I am going to use to translate into embroidery. And this is how it turned out:

For this sample I used embroidery floss in 4 different pastel tints. I could have used the satin stitch, but I liked the extra line I got when using a variation of the blanket stitch. And yes, I know I have to clean the scanner :-(.

Project 3, Stage 4, Exercise 2

Another exercise on color :-). I picked an image from my collection which I really like. It is 'Blue Triangles with Yellow' painted by Susan McDonald (www.mcdonald-studio.com), oil and encaustic on panel 18"x12":

I love the combination of yellow and blue she used. Using this picture as an inspiration source I made a color bag using threads, fabric and some fish scales). Also I mixed some of my acrylic paints to identify the separate colors used.

Somewhere later in this course this color bag will be used.

project 3, stage 3, exercise 2

Another exercise about using color. Startin point is a colorful piece of fabric. I used a sample of linen which I made during Jane Dunnewold's soy wax class. The colors I used on this piece of fabric I do not own, so using a handmade piece of fabric is not cheating :-). This piece of fabric is glued into my sketchbook and the task is to add colors to the edged, so that you cannot see the difference between the colors of the fabric and the ones of the paper. I used acrylic paints for this in the colors deep red, aquamarine blue, primary yellow, silver and zinc white. As the paint is still wet, I had to take a picture for this blogpost. So there might be a slight color difference because of this, I am not certain.

When I look at the picture I see that the green at the bottom could have been a bit darker and the yellow/orange/brown at the left a bit lighter. This is less visible when I look at the sketchbook. In all I like this kind of exercises.

Making marks, exercise 2

After I posted the previous exercise on this blog I realised that for all the mark makings I had used continuous line marks. This was not my intention, but apparently it just 'happened' as I do a lot of machine quilting. When I worked on the 2nd exercise I paid more attention to differentiation in the type of marks I made.
For this exercise I made 3 different areas of tone (light, medium and dark) using the same marks and the same pencil. Holding the pencil at a low angle and with little pressure creates light tones, putting more pressure on it and raising the angle the darker tones are the result.

 Some of the marks are so light that they hardly show. This is especially the case with the 1H and 2H pencils.