Feedback from my tutor!

I received feedback from my tutor :)

I'm pretty happy with the feedback, there was a lot of encouragement and assurance that I was on the right track - I'm really glad! There were suggestions on what I can do to improve that I extracted and rather than post the whole thing up I'll extract what I think I should work on:

• Try techniques on a bigger scale e.g. large paintbrush to show effect of different surface textures
• Utilise skills learnt and continue to be experimental
• Consider looking at the works of Audrey Walker and Alice Kettle who both use stitch in their artwork, hand stitching and machine stitching respectively. From this I also feel perhaps I should explore textile artists further.
• MORE MIXED MEDIA, not just pen and pencil. Try collage, wax resist & painting more
• Try working larger, try out A3 size sketchbooks

So to summarise... 

BIGGER

MORE MIXED MEDIA

RESEARCH CONTEMPORARY TEXTILE ARTISTS

Book Thoughts - Color Index 2 by Jim Krause

So this book was part of a three book set all to do with design. It came in an orange box and I think the others were about typography and design basics. I've had the set for years as one of my mums cast offs but never really sat down to read them. I read this one since I was on the colour chapter and I'm so glad I did. Jim Krause explains the basics really well and has some beautiful crystal clear diagrams to show what he's talking about. He doesn't just talk about the fundamentals but explains how to use them in design. I especially liked his section on Value vs colour and I pretty much copied his examples into my sketchbook/workbook.

Here are a few pictures but at a low resolution as I don't want to discredit him!

After the short but learning filled intro you have hundreds of pages with tons of colour combinations. They are sorted first by main colour and then by the type of colour scheme i.e. monochromatic, triadic, analogous & complementary. A beautiful book which I have found SO helpful now that I appreciate it.

Each colour scheme is presented in a page wide vectorised image or pattern - great for comparisons, but also varied enough that you don't get bored of the same image repeated so many times over.

p.s. did I mention he gives CMYK and RGB codes for each colour? Its also worth properly reading the intro and 'how to use this book' section because it explains about expansion palettes, observing colour as an artist and how the colours are laid out to show which colours 'belong' to that section.

p.p.s. I believe Color Index 1 is similar but with schemes made up of 2 & 3 colours where as this is 3,4 & 5 colours.

Project 3 Exercise 5

Back to stitching! Heres Exercise 5 - an exploration into coloured stitches using two primary colours. Again with the brightness! In varying proportions and distances to show the different effects. I made notes of observations on paper and they are included in the last post 'Sketchbook Pages'

One of the things I did try to do was blend the two colours somehow to make a third. My weaving stitching at the bottom right was a somewhat unsuccessful attempt - even looking from far away! I guess too much contrast just does not work for blending.

By far my favourite section was the colour wheel which used varying tones of the primary colours. When placing the colours I tried to put saturated yellows next to desaturated blues and vice versa, as well as try the desaturated colours together and the saturated colours together. In this way I feel like the stitching started to look realistic and almost 3d - like the wheel of colour 'shone'. I was going for an almost coppery metallic effect and I think it was successful. Very happy with this.

Sketchbook pages

 Notes on colour schemes and planning out Stage 5's embroidery. I'm also really thinking about going to the Tate Modern's Lichtenstein exhibition!

Here I've been pretty inspired by the views from my work (I'm an air traffic controller and sit in a tower, looking out of windows all day). My colours were mainly decided by the pens I had brought to London with me! A repeating theme in my sketches has been tall thin evergreen trees which were a large feature in our honeymoon to Finland. I used to think that fat wide christmas trees were the best proportions but our week in the arctic circle surrounded by such beauty changed that! On the right are emerging observations from my blue and yellow stitching I'm working on for Stage 5. I'm really not loving working with primary colours as I find it hard to look through the brightness to properly see the effects! 

This is some sketches from visiting the South Bank Centre where I became a member. The theme of the month was the 'Alchemy' festival which was celebrating South African culture. Again, bright bright, primary colours which were deliberately being clashed..! But lovely watching some traditional dyeing, looking at the patterns and admiring the quilting.

 Starting to become more and more tree obsessed and even more looking forward to Lichtenstein...

 I went to see the light show at the Southbank Centre and was absolutely mesmerised by some of the exhibits. This page was however showing some sketches of the side exhibition: Aura Satz: Impulsive Synchronisation. It was a projector on a screen which had morse code/computer code holes punched in it. The projector pulsed an image on it in a pattern which was also mesmerising. I loved the light and the layers building up a 4d texture. I also started planning a massive day trekking around 4 museums in a day (I only managed 3)

And this was the result of some of that museum filled day. Not much sketching to show for it all but I was certainly inspired!

Some recent visit photos

South Bank Centre, dyer and printer stand:

British Museum

Project 3 Stage 4

This stage was all about associating colours with moods or emotions - studying colour psychologically. I'm definitely of the opinion that everyone is different! Where I see muted colours as calming and restful, many see them as depressing! For example I've chosen a muted green as 'happy' where I'm sure most would associate yellow or pink or purple as 'happy'. I've used pattern as well, revisiting some of the very first exercises of the course!

Exercise 2 was to identify a colour mood or theme that I feel really drawn to - I chose a stormy sky and tried to figure out the things I was supposed to notice...

Close tones within any one colour - teal/turquoise/blue/green colours all range from darks to lights but I guess I could pick out the dark tone group as one set and the light tone group as another - the mid tones are kind of seperate perhaps!

Complementary and contrasting colours - Yes, where as the majority of the colour theme is blue/green, I am drawn to the flash of amber and the wooden colours - all tones/saturations of orange which is the contrasting. The blue moving through to green is complementary also. So I guess this is a triadic scheme.

Saturated and unsaturated - There are flashes of saturated teal and I would also say the amber. The unsaturated are all the wooden/slate colours - lots of greyed tones!

Project 3 Stage 3

Matching colour time:

Lots of testing and getting used to the paint mixing... I definitely get a bit better later on! I tried to keep notes but I found it hard to make it so scientific! I tried to at least note the base colours I used.

 camera work flattened out the shadows a bit...!

I'm pretty happy with all these! I liked the fact I was just trying to focus on colours and not copy shape or form - they turned out pretty nice anyway!