This is one of my favorite color schemes. I love the rich jewel tones and the way the yellow pops against the red and the purple. Do you have a favorite color scheme that you like to use in your work? What do you like about it? Where do you get your inspiration for your color choices?

 I get most of my inspiration from nature. I love to take photos in the garden, on my walks in the woods and when we visit the beautiful places in Northwest Montana like Glacier National Park.

You can always find wonderful colors if you look closely. It always amazes the number of colors you see in tree bark. I have so many photos of tree bark that I have found with different color palettes. I could work from those photos as sources of inspiration for years to come. Where do you find your color inspirations? I’d love to see some of your favorite color choices. Leave a comment and share your favorite color palettes.

Next month we’ll be talking about value!

Here are the two I did when I had my local group over. I used the differing primaries for each sheet. And I added some black and white for shades and tints. There is so much experimentation you can do with color, isn’t there?

 I thought I’d also show you what else I’ve been doing with color lately. Here is the scarf that I screen printed over oatmeal. I really like how this one turned out. It’s a deep orange over a “fall” multicolored scarf which was mainly yellow but also had reds, browns and oranges. This one is going into the shop.

 Here is the screen print through the blue school glue screen. This is after the screen had already been used about 8-9 times. Do you like the mix of colors?

 I probably wouldn’t have chosen these colors but Louise was mixing so she picked the colors. This is the screen that was done over loose shredded paper. It is interesting how the colors moved around as I kept moving the screen and adding different colors at different points. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this fabric but I’m sure something will come up.

This month we’re going to focus on color. Don’t you just love to play with color? I think though that sometimes you might shy away from learning about color theory. It just sounds too technical and too much work. Many artists have spent a lifetime learning about color theory but you don’t need to get overwhelmed. Just jump in and start trying some of the ideas suggested here. It will be fun – I promise!

There are three properties of color which are hue, value and intensity. Hue refers to the color itself. Each different hue is a different reflected wavelength of light. White light broken in a prism has seven hues: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Remember Roy G. Biv? White light occurs when all the wavelengths are reflected back to your eye, and black light occurs when no light is reflected to your eye. This is the physics of light.

Color value refers to the lightness or darkness of the hue. Adding white to a hue produces a high-value color, often called a tint. Adding black to a hue produces a low-value color, often called a shade. Value can be used for emphasis. Variations in value are used to create a focal point for the design of a piece.

Intensity, also called chroma or saturation, refers to the brightness of a color. A color is at full intensity when not mixed with black or white – a pure hue. You can change the intensity of a color, making it duller or more neutral by adding gray to the color. You can also change the intensity of a color by adding its complement (this is the color found directly opposite on the traditional color wheel). When changing colors this way, the color produced is called a tone.

Certain colors have an advancing or receding quality, based on how our eye has to adjust to see them. Warm colors such as red, orange or yellow seem to come forward while cool colors such as blue and green seem to recede slightly. In the atmosphere, distant objects appear bluish and the further away an object appears, the less colorful and distinct it becomes. You can use this tendency to give an illusion of depth, by using more neutral and grayish colors in the background. 

Various color schemes can be used in your work. A monochromatic color scheme involves the use of only one hue. The hue can vary in value, and black or white may be added to create various shades or tints.

An analogous color scheme involves the use of colors that are located adjacent on the color wheel. The hues may vary in value.

A complementary color scheme involves the use of colors that are located opposite on the color wheel such as red and green, yellow and purple, or orange and blue. Complementary colors produce a very exciting, dynamic pattern. 

Or how about triadic? This color scheme involves the use of colors that are equally spaced on the color wheel. The primary colors of yellow, red and blue could be used together in a color scheme to produce a lively result. 

I am certainly not a color expert. (Most of this information came from this website.) That’s one of the reasons I’m doing these design focused posts, to help me learn more about color as well as design. One of the things I try to do is when I get new painting/color supplies, is to make a color wheel and mix the different colors together. I am always surprised by what comes out. One yellow is not the same as another yellow. One yellow may tend more toward the orange/red side of the color wheel, while another may tend toward green/blue. These different yellows will yield absolutely different results when mixed with other colors. I recently got some Golden acrylics. I mixed green and red and got purple. It wasn’t the color I was expecting. Try mixing your colors beforehand and making a sample of each mixture in your journal. If  you don’t keep a journal, just use a sheet of paper and keep it with your paints.

I found an excellent resource about color, books about color and just why it is important to learn more about color. Check out Roz Wound Up in this post. Here’s another one that has tons of information and links about color. There’s enough information there to keep you busy for a while.

When you’re thinking about color this month, ask yourself a few of these questions:

• How can you use color to evoke different emotions? Do you connect certain emotions to certain colors?

• What does using a monochromatic color scheme do to your composition? Complementary? Analogous? Or Triadic?

• How do you choose your color scheme? Is it affected by the subject of your composition? The mood you want to achieve? What is the impact of choosing a color scheme that is the opposite of your normal choice?

• What would your composition look like with all the same values? How can you use value changes to improve your focal point?

• Have you tried mixing various fabric paints to see what colors you can achieve? What colors do you achieve when you mix two colors together? What happens if you add black to your colors?

I’d love to hear what you’re working on and how you use color theory in your work. Leave a comment and give us a link to your favorite colors. Next week, I’ll hopefully have some thread color studies completed to show you.

 When my local group met last Friday, we tried a texture exercise that I read about in Creative Embroidery by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. You take white paper and make different textures by various methods such as twisting, crumpling, cutting tearing, curling, braiding etc. Each of us made lots of different textures and then we added them all to the same page. The photo above is a sample I made because I unfortunately forgot to get any photos of the group’s page. The reason that you use white paper is you want to think about texture and not about color. Once color becomes involved, you have a tendency to concentrate on color.

Once you’ve completed your texture sheet, you can scan it into the computer as a grey scale photo. I put this into Photoshop Elements and increased the contrast and decreased the brightness. Now you could take this and look at small portions of the page with a frame, picking out a portion that interested you. Then do sketches from that framed portion using the sketches as a basis for new work. Or you could find one of the textured papers that you really liked and think about making that texture into fabric. How would you get the same texture in fabric? How would you stabilize the texture and attach it to a base? Or do certain of the textures remind you of stitching? How could you stitch to achieve a similar texture and add it to your work? Really quite a simple exercise but one that has many possibilities that could lead you in different directions.

Next Friday, we’ll begin working with the element of color. That should be fun! Please let me know if you have been working with texture in your work, I’d love to hear what you’re doing.

 Last week we talked about visual texture and using pattern in your work to achieve texture on a 2D surface. Today we’re going to talk about tactile texture. This is what I love in fiber art. All that fiber and woolie goodness. This is a French Knot sample that I did for my Level 1 Hand Stitch class. We were supposed to do a square that was 1 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ filled with French knots and “messy” French knots. Mine overflowed a bit. But I had the best time making some of the biggest French knots I’ve ever made from yarn. You can see from this shot that it looks almost like the stitches have been padded underneath. They haven’t. It’s all knots. Now this is my kind of texture.

 The background piece is hand painted felt with sheers, netting and tulle fused on top. I used a variety of yarns, threads and floss to make my knots from tiny ones up to humongous ones. And I love the texture. What do you think? Did I go overboard?

 Here’s another sample from class. It’s satin stitch done with a variety of weight cotton threads as well as some wool threads. Look at how the stitches themselves lend texture to the piece. The different weight fibers also tend to lead your eye through the piece. I hadn’t really thought about using threads in this way before. This is another small piece less than 2 inches square. The design is based on wood grain. I have such a hard time just drawing a design out of my head. We were asked to sit down and draw four different designs and then choose your favorite. I didn’t like any of mine but luckily we had a break after that. I went to break and saw the wood grain design on the break table and oi la! It always helps me to design from an inspirational source. How about you?

 This is one of my pages from our stitch sketchbook. I had never hand stitched on paper before and sometimes felt like I was in Occupational Therapy but I found it enjoyable. Don’t you like the texture of the chain stitch sitting on the surface of the paper? I’m working on more stitches to go into the book and I’ll show you the entire book later when it’s finished. The page is painted with Procion MX dyes. We painted the pages with the same dyes that we used to dye our threads.

When I think of visual texture and patterns, I usually think of commercial fabrics similar to the ones I mentioned in last weeks post. But when I was thinking about what I do with texture, I realized that the flour paste resist technique on this scarf is visual texture. It is not a repeating pattern but is a pattern and it does give texture to the scarf visually. These natural and organic patterns are my favorites.

The other thing I have a tendency to forget is that texture doesn’t always mean woolie (felting on the brain) but can be smooth. Do you prefer a certain texture in your work? Do you use mainly visual or tactile texture? What could you do differently with texture in your next piece? Let me know what you like about texture. I’d love to hear how you use texture in your work.