Project 3, Research point

For this research I decided to use this hand knit sweater which was made for my daughter Jacque when she was 3 years old. We pronounced her name as 'Jackie', but we used an unorthodox spelling for it: Jacque. So every where and every time we had to spell her name because people wrote it wrong. A friend of us had the solution for this: a home knitted sweather with her name on it.

The sweater was made late 1991 early 1992. It was knit on a knitting machine using acrylic yarns. I can tell this because all the stitches are the same size. Hand knitting shows more irregularities. Plus the sweater was finished in a day. The pink is a very girly pink, but Jacque loved that color even though she was not a 'girly' girl. As it is a sweater, it was worn as long as it fitted her.
This sweater has an emotional value for me. Jacque loved it and it is one of the few clothes I kept. My daughter died when she was 7 years old.

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.

project 3, stage 5

Not the most logical sequence <vbg>, but here is what I did for stage 5:

For this sample we had to use 2 primary colors and use them in different proportions. My first sample (top left) has equal numbers of yellow and red lines of chain stitches. Because red is a darker color than yellow, the red blends a bit more to the background. If you compare the sample with the one next to it - where I used 4 lines of yellow and 1 line of red - you see that where there is a lot of red, the yellow looks darker. It is the same color of pearl cotton I used, but the sample at the right looks a lighter yellow than the one on the left.
The left bottom sample starts with 4 red lines and reduces down to 1 line while the yellow goes exactly the other way round. To be honest I find this sample rather boring.
An other thing which we had to explore with this sample was to show more - or less - of the black background. With the chain stitch there is always some background visible, so I had to do something else with it. Instead of static straight lines, I decided to use wavy lines. All 5 lines start at the same spot, but they travel away from each other further down. Of the 4 samples I made this one is my favorite. It is the most dynamic of all.

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 6, exercise 1

By mistake I worked on stage 6 while I had not yet done stage 5. Pictures of stage 5 will come later this week.
This exercise was about combining color with texture. As you can see I worked on a black background fabric and I used different yellows, blues and green - some a bit darker, some a bit lighter. Next to pearl cotton 8 and embroidery floss I also used some yellow eyelash yarn. I did not have this in green or blue. The whole piece was done with French knots. Some a bit more loose than others.

What I like about this sample is the difference it shows between areas where a lot of knots are close together and the areas where more of the background is shown. I especially like the centre where the 3 different color groups meet. In some areas it is difficult to see whether that stitch is green or whether it is blue :-). I love this effect of color mixing.
There is only one thing I do not like about this embroidery stitch and that is that it is time consuming. This sample is 6"x6" and it took me more than 4 hours to create.
On purpose I limited myself to only these 3 different kind of threads. This way I could create a unity and I was afraid that if I added lots of different threads it would more become a showpiece of everything I had in stock. I even had some doubts about the eyelash yarn.

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 4, Exercise 1

It is some time ago since I last posted, but computer issues took up most of my time. I have a new one and that meant transferring files and reorganising everything. But that is done so I can now spend time again on this course.
This exercise is about color and the moods the colors can represent. These contrasting words I 'translated' into colors and this is what they look to me:



I know that cultures respond different to colors and even in our Western cultures there are opposite words which can be represented into the same colors like love and hate. Many people associate both colors with red. Even in the examples I used some of them are a bit alike. The association with active, young and healthy can be done in the same color.



project 3, stage 3, exercise 4

This exercise was about 3-dimensional objects placed on a colored piece of paper. The color of the paper has its influence on the color of the objects and a red object is not the same red everywhere. I used 2 wooden blocks - guess they are children's toys, but I have no idea how they ended up in my studio :-) - on a light blue paper. Painting is not my best skill, but I think I achieved what this exercise was about. The inner part of the blocks has a deeper color than the front. Same goes for the side of the blocks, the color has a different value there. Where the blocks touch the paper, there is a dark line as a shadow and also the blocks reflects a light shadow on the paper. While the corner lines of the blocks are lighter than the other parts. The paper the blocks are on, is not the same color of blue everywhere, there are some shadows caused by the blocks and some lighter areas caused by the natural light. If the sun had been shining while I did this exercise the light blue would have been even lighter. By mixing the acrylic paints I got as close as I could to reach those results. The colors I used were red, my 2 blues and white.

project 3, stage 3, exercise 3

Starting point for this exercise was a detail of a photo of pansies The idea was not to copy this photo, but to mix paint and create the same colors as shown in the photo. This is what I came up with:

I am satisfied with the green and the yellos, but the purple gave me problems. I used acrylic paints for this exercise and I only have one red and two blue. This makes the variety of purple I can create limited. And the result I got is proof that I need another red to achieve this purple.
If for instance you compare the green of this exercise - made with brilliant blue (a light blue) and primary yellow and the much darker green of the previous exercise -  made with aquamarine blue (a medium blue) and primary yellow, you see how much difference a light or a dark color can make.

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.

Project 3, stage 3, recording Color exercise 1

This exercise is about mixing colors and the effect which has adding white or black to the color. I did this exercise with both acrylic paints and with water color paints. The first picture is done with watercolors. I used my waterbrush to apply these colors. This is a brush which  as a compartment for water in the brush. By squeezing the compartment, the water flows into the hairs of the brush. I love this brush as it makes color mixing much easier than with a regular brush. The first section of the colors was done by adding white to the color. The second section has black added to it.

As you compare the water color with the acrylic one you see especially when black is added, that more variations are visible with the water color than with the acrylic paint. The precision of adding black is for me more difficult with acrylic paint.

And I know that if I would do this color with procion dyes, I would get better visible gradation. Adding even a tenth of a gram of black results in a different color.

Project 3, Stage 2 color perception

The first assignment is finished and will go into the mail one of the coming months. Today I started with the second part which is all about color, design, printing and painting. Love those subjects :-).
The first picture shows what I did for exercise 1. I used fabric instead of paper simply because I have much more fabric in whatever color you want than paper. By adding a small square on top of the background although the color of the small square is the same on all of them, it will look a bit different depending on what the background color is. And this is not only with the color, but equally so with the size of the little square. Take for instance the dark blue background compared to the light blue background. The squares are the same, but the one on the dark background looks smaller than the one on the light background. This knowledge is extremely useful to have when you are designing.

My second picture for today, is for exercise two. In this case a small grey square was put on top of different colors of background fabrics. Again although the grey fabric is the same on all backgrounds, they all look a bit different. On for instance the orange one, the grey is much bolder than on the purple one. Just as in exercise one, the size looks different depending on the color of the background. But there is also something more. Depending on the color of the background, it looks like the grey has picked up some of that color. For instance the grey on the light orange shows brighter (more orangy) than the grey on the purple one.