Project 3 - Colour

Stage 6 - Combining textures & colour effects - Exercise 1

I really enjoyed this. My base thread colour was a simple scarlet red. I worked the french knots in varying thread thickness, 2, 3 or 4 strands. Adding extra threads in the reds, using a variety of pinks and purples from the secondary colour range. My favourite however was the red and green mix. Depending on how far from or how close I was to the fabric, the thread mix became more purple or almost blue. After several hours of this, I was starting to doubt my eyesight or at the very least my colour perceptions.

Stage 6 - Combining textures & colour effects - Exercise 2




Looking back through some sketches and photos, I was particularly drawn to an image that I saw on a news site a few months previously. It was an article about some stunning ice caves. Having already done the 'hot' & 'cold' subject earlier on in this section, I thought it would be interesting to pick out one of those extremes and try to recreate it in some way.

When looking at the photo above, I saw a wide range of pastel blues intermixed with some of the more intense blues. Here is my interpretation of some of it.

Project 3 - Colour

Stage 4 - Colour Moods & Themes

Take three pairs of opposite words and try to find colours that express them.

I started this exercise by writing down various pairs antonyms (opposite words). And then, using watercolour pencils, tried to get some of the feeling of those words down. With 'dead' & 'alive' this was fairly easy. Green to me, as it is to many people, is always associated with living things. Fresh verdant growth, new shoots or leaves, bright vivid greens. Dead however, is black or a dingy brown.

Rational was very easy for me to visualise. It is calm waters, soft blues and gentle waves. So to me, the opposite - demented - would be scruffy and squirly, a mess of blacks and purples.

I also chose an obvious one in 'hot' & 'cold'. The obvious colours to go for were red and blue. But to me they had a different element to them. People say white hot as well as red hot. I just thought of the moment that you step into a bath that is far too hot. For just a second it feels ice cold when in reality it can be scalding. Think again about very cold temperatures. Being out in the snow as a child, losing a glove and your fingertips feeling very very hot even though they are obviously very very cold. This is why I gave the centre of each image, the white spot.

Project 3 - Colour

Stage 3 - Recording Colour Accurately


I used Acrylic paints for this exercise. I find I'm a little bit more capable of getting the colours right with these.

I think I actually recorded more colours than I initially saw. One thing that I am grateful to these exercises for, is the ability to make me see 'more'. Six months ago I might have looked at this image and thought that I liked the orange and the dark blue together, without seeing the softer blue and orange together.

Project 3 - Colour -

Stage 1 Introduction and Preparation

I'd always known about primary colours and secondary colours. I'd never even thought of tertiary colours and if I had, I wasn't aware that's what they were called. Or even what combinations were needed to make those. To me, greys were usually made by mixing black and white or browns were made by generally mixing together several colours if a ready made brown wasn't available.

This section has taught me how to see colour differently for sure. Where I might call a colour 'intense' or 'vivid' I now know the word for that is 'Saturation'. I also know that 'Unsaturated' refers to those smoky colours, the muddier and more greyed down colours.

I'm not confident with colours. I'm that person who goes for an eye test and is worried whether I'm giving the correct answer when they ask me to say which is brighter - the green or the red? I love bright and vivid colours although if I look in my wardrobe, it contains mainly slimming black. When I have created pieces of art in the past, I have always gone for the bold reds or blues. Subtlety is not a word to describe anything I have flung at a canvas.


Stage 2 - Colour Perception - Exercise 1

I'm not sure that the photographs will show colours effectively but I think they still convey a little of what I saw when I looked at my colour compositions. Above, using the red square make the backgrounds seem much darker overall, than they are. This in turn makes the background colours seem cold to me.

Using the yellow squares brought out a lighter background shade overall...to me anyway. Almost like warmer hues.

In all honesty, I'm not even sure what I think of the grey squares. What I actually see, is a darker edge around the grey, so that on the green square, there appears to be a darker green edge around the grey. With the purple square, there is a darker purple edge around the grey and so on.