An Easy Colour Study to Try

Is this how you feel about colour? Does it challenge you beyond endurance? Keep in mind that the more we work on something, it more skilled we become. This is true for truck driving as well as our art!
Last week, I taught a class on Design Explorations that focused on some of the Elements of Design and my students loved this exercise involving magazine photos and coloured papers. You can also do this with pictures in magazines.

Find a picture you like and tear it out. The find all the colours in the picture by cutting small pieces of those colours or painting them and glueing down beside the mail picture. This exercise is about looking and seeing how many possible colours there are in just one simple photo.

Another exercise is is to cut out pictures of one colour and glue them down in place. This will teach you about some of the possible values, tints and shades of that colour.

Now, how about trying some of your own?

Mrs. Matisse Does Applique!

I've updated my workshop pages and have some great new ideas that I've love to share with you! I think they are all pretty exciting but I had so much fun designing this one, I thought I'd share it with you:

What if Henri's wife had great fabric and fusible web to play with?  Design a unique mosaic-style foundation with painted and dyed fabrics then cut out shapes for a still life or floral arrangement. Additional interest can be added with paintsticks, markers and coloured pencils. Explore the many design options possible with fused collage. Stitch and thread choices will be an important part of the day!

Check out other new ideas for your guild or group here: http://susanpm.com/category/workshops/ and here: http://susanpm.com/category/surface-design/

From My Palette

If you asked each quilter and artist “what is the most challenging aspect of designing and making quilts?”  I think the answer would be colour– don’t you?

Understanding and using colour is a lifelong journey through our senses. I’m not going to try to teach you in this little column but I am suggesting that you can learn a lot by creating a little self study course of your own. Buying a book about colour and working through it is one good way to learn. But here are some little exercises that you can do as well.

I’ve chosen blue as my focus, but you can begin with any colour. Get a small sketch book; 8” x 10” is a good size and use it for the full colour spectrum.

· Make a list of every thought and feeling that uses blue: blue moon, feeling blue, royalty (blue blood), sky blue,  are some possibilities. Ask friends and family to add to the list.

· Take snips of all the blue fabrics in your stash. Glue them in your sketchbook, arranging them in order of value (light to dark). Or arrange them in two groups; ones with a yellow (blue-green) cast and the other with a red (blue-violet) cast.

· Cut blue paper strips from magazines and glue them in your book. Arrange them in value or cast . Play with different orders, name the groupings, create other arrangements, put them into nine-patch blocks.

The idea is to play with blue and get to know it well. Understand your feelings about the colour and how you use it in your work. 

· If you use paints, then make little colour studies of blue by adding white and then black to sweeps of colour. Then try adding yellow and red and finally other colours to see how they act with blue. If you don’t have paints, then use crayons or pencil crayons.

Sketchy Thursday

I love the start of the new year, new beginnings, new ideas, new inspirations! I decided that I would try to post on my blog on a more regular basis and try for a few different themes to keep it interesting. So for each Thursday I plan on posting something from my sketch books.
I've maintained sketchbooks for a few years, I think the habit came from the variety of workshops I took with Gail Harker, first a series of City and Guilds classes and then some of Gail's own series. Check out her offerings at www.gailcreativestudies.com I sure can't recommend them highly enough and now she offers them online-a real bonus if you don't live in the Pacific Northwest!

Gail introduces her students to one of the best quality sketchbooks that are produced. They come in a variety of sizes and I love the 9" x 9", but also the 8" x 10" and the 6" x 6", the 6" x 9" and probably every size there is! The line of sketchbooks is called the AquaBee and they are perfect for mixed media, wet and dry applications and are a Natural White paper. I use a variety of marking products, this time I'm using felt tip markers. Just a note on markers----don't use Sharpie, they tend to leave a hard dot at the beginning and end of a line and they often smear when wet. I much prefer Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens, Pigma markers or Pentel markers. Actually my favourite is the Pitt marker as it has India ink which is perfect for using in my Thermofax machine!

 

 

If you are nervous about putting a line on a BIG WHITE PAPER, many people find it to be helpful to mark the paper first in some way. I love to paint my pages first. You can use any colours or media you want, such as acrylic paints (great way to use up bits and pieces of colour) Procion dye washes, watercolours or gouache. Try a variety and play with colour combinations. You can't make mistakes! I used complementary colours of yellow and mauve on the pages below and added some iridescent wash as well.

 

 

 

Next I chose to use circles as a theme for one page, how many ways could I draw lines through those circles or divide them up into other shapes? Here's just a little sampling of limitless possibilities:

 

 

 

On the second page, I following the colour changes and made contour lines to emphasize the borders between the different colours, I also played around with some silver pen to highlight some areas. There's so much more that I could add to these pages, let's try some other ideas out for next week!

 

What do you like to try in your sketchbooks?



 



Five Essential Studio Tools!

If you know me you'll agree that I do like, and am easily distracted by bright, shiny things but I am a cautious shopper so don't have a lot of the latest doo-dads and gadgets in my studio (the kitchen is another matter!)
Btu I wondered about some of the tools that I keep using over and over again that aren't necessarily quilt related. These are items I consider essential in my studio and perhaps you would agree. So, in no particular order, here they are:

Proportional Scale

This gadget is the answer for enlarging or reducing drawings, patterns, or anytime you want to change the size in a copier.
Its simple to use and saves paper and aggravation! You can see a short Youtube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi_6u338yhU

Sharps Container

Sitting in the doctors office a couple years ago, led me to think about all the bent pins, broken needles and dull blades I have thrown out over the years (I've always wrapped the blades in cardboard before disposing of them). So I started my own little Sharps Container and have another one in my workshop kit for travelling. Once the container is full I cover the lid with masking tape and put it in the garbage. Hopefully I've made the landfills a little safer!

Camera Tripod

I take a lot of pictures in my studio of work in progress and finished pieces. I take pictures of my dye work for Facebook and my blog.
Last Christmas I got a tripod from DH and love it! It keeps the camera steady, as even the slightest tremor can distort your images and I found a small table mini-tripod for small pieces of work.

And as another tip: I take my camera and a hiking pole out on walks with me, the handle on the pole unscrews so I can mount my camera for a monopod!

Colour Tools

I work with colour all day, I've taken many colour courses, have lots of books about colour in my library, but find I don't have a good colour memory!
So I often rely on these tools to help me when working with dyes or fabrics. They are indispensable in my studio. I often pick up those palette brochures and paint chips at the hardware store as well, they are fun to play with!

Idea and Inspiration Boards

 

I find that any piece of paper, photo, magazine article or snippet of something that lays on a horizontal surface will disappear within minutes. But once its pinned up on a board its more likely to stay there (though sometimes the papers do getting stuck behind other papers!)
So I have put up one very large board and not one, but two more boards as well! I can generally find what I want or needs within a minute or two instead of hours! Sometimes I even try to make them pretty and every couple of months I purge the boards of anything out of date.

So do you have favourite tools that you'd be lost without? Why not sure them with us!

Colour to Stitch - New Class!

I've added a new class to my website http://www.susanpm.com/ - This is an exciting class developed for quilters, stitchers, mixed media artists and everyone in between. Students begin with basic colour mixing theory using Procion MX dyes. They prepare and dye a range of fabrics and threads using a planned palette showing value, tints and shades. Students will learn how these fibres can be used in their work and there will be a focus on safe studio habits.

For a second day students will create and begin a plan for their beautifully dyed threads and fabric while exploring important design elements. Join in the fun!

Surface Design in Edmonton

Here are a few more pictures from Day Four and Five at Quilters Dream. Students learned a variety of methods of creating their own stamps including Art Foam, Speedy Cut and pre cut shapes.

Carol has created design on fabrics she had dyed on previous days. She has a coordinated palette to work with.

Cindy made a stamp with concentric circles, the designs makes an interesting secondary pattern.

Kathy is intently working with a repeating design using her stamp.

Lynette has a leaf pattern using Decolourant paste and then has stamped a design as a border.

Another project with adding Decolorant paste over a quilted texture.

We had so much fun with a very talented group of creative ladies. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share with you!

Another Colour Study

Here'a another colour study I did, this time with knotted fringe. I was surprised with the touch of blue/turquoise in the art, it works well becasue the blue is complementary to orange.

Note also the range in value, light through to very dark. Do you have a wide range of value in your quilts?

Colour Study-Lily

Here's another colour study of a lovely lily. Take a moment and look at the values shown in the picture, from a very dark green that's almost a black right through to the lightest, pale pink.

Now, if I remove the colour and make the picture just black and white, you can clearly see how wide the value range is. Remember that value is only light through to dark when it is compared with another value. To say something is a medium value has no meaning until it is compared to with a lighter or darker value.

You can see what a difference removing the colour can be when you study colour. Remember when everyone was using the "piece of red acetate to look at their quilts, the colour red was not magical, you could do it with any colour, the exercise was simply to get the quilters to look at value. Now with digital cameras its much easier to look at pictures on the computer and remove the colour in order to see the "value" of the quilt!Try it with some of your quilts.

Here's the colour study I did of the lily picture:

Tomorrow, some more ideas about colour.

Who is ROY G BIV and why does he need to be on my quilt??

Without ROY you would have a white or black quilt, that's why!

ROY G BIV is an acronym for:
Red OrangeYellow Green Blue Indigo and Violet

For many quilters, colour can be the most challenging decisions in making a quilt. We have chosen the blocks, know what size we want, and are ready to hit the quilt shop, but where do we begin?
Take heart..... and look around you. You wear clothes that work well together, you decorate your home and enjoy what you have? Trust your instincts and use these easy tips:

• Pick a colour and use a bit of its complement. Choose blue and add a touch of yellow, purple with some orange. Don't like orange? Then move towards a peach, rust or salmon.

• Pick up some samples or booklets at your local paint store. See how colours are grouped together. Cut up the samples and rearrange them, try different groupings. Talk about what you like and dislike.

• Try a colour study. Find a picture you like and make a study of ALL the colours you can identify in the picture. See if you can determine the relative quantities of each. Here's an example:

Here's another example:

I've tried to put the colours in approximate proportion to one another and found there was more brown/taupe/grey than I had seen in the picture.

Here another study I made from the same photograph, but this time I played with the colour proportions. I reduced the quantity of pinks and greatly increased the greens. I used papers that I had painted.

Tomorrow I'll do a colour study of one of my art quilts and we can look at colour, and value....another critical element of design.