First Quarter Challenge 2015 - Color

[MTRuth]

The first quarter challenge is all about color. The post is here for more information. Simply put, take a look at a color wheel and make one for yourself. You could do this with paint, dye, colored pencils, colored markers, crayons or whatever you have. I will be posting more information soon for more resources. Or you could just tear out colors from a magazine and paste them into a color wheel. Or use fabric or fiber or whatever works for you. 

I noticed that there was a bit of hesitance about "color theory" but don't let any of the words scare you. It's just about playing with color and seeing how colors work together or not. If you have any questions about color, please ask here. We can have a discussion about what the terms mean or whatever we want to talk about in regards to color. Maybe you have a piece that you don't like the color scheme. You could post it and we could discuss what works and what doesn't about the color scheme. Maybe a different color could be added to make the entire scheme "pop". 

With this discussion, I think everyone could learn a lot about color and new ways to try out different colors.



This is a page that I did for level 1 color studies at the Gail Harker Creative Arts Center.  It shows mixing yellow to red, yellow to blue and red to blue. Those are the "scales" at the top of the page. Then I used those color scales to pick out what colors to paint on to the color wheel in the bottom right corner. You could do the same with dyes. It won't take much dye so if you have some dyes already mixed up, try painting them on paper and see what the color looks like on the paper.  You could paint a dye color wheel with colors that you already have mixed. If you don't have dyes mixed up, save a bit the next time you dye and give it a try. Or use paints or whatever you have.

I made a color wheel today with colored markers. You'll see more about that in my next post. So let's play with some color

[zed]

I know I'm not alone in feeling like it is hard to understand. As much as I like colour, I think like you said to Lyn, I use it intuitively. And as much as you say it doesn't matter if I (we) know or use the words, it'd be nice to use this challenge to put words/names to techniques etc.

Do you have any quick exercises we could all try with wool/fabric etc which would demonstrate something simply, just to start us off, a kind of 'oh! I see' thing?

[Teri Berry]

Reading through Ann's post I kept finding myself thinking about these pieces which are essentially colour wheels arranged in concentric circles instead of wedges and shapes of complimentary colours were arranged over the top. Using complimentary colours makes them "pop".

If you are interested in having a go, this is the method I used to dye the prefelt (it involves finger painting so it's a lot of fun):
teriberrycreations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/blending-dyes-on-wool.html

[MTRuth]

Teri - can you show the dyed piece before it has the top bits added?

Zed, on my next post, I am going to show making a color wheel and I hope it will give you some more ideas. But I will keep thinking of quick exercises to practice with.

I would suggest first to separate your wool into colors. Put all your yellow together, all your blues etc. Then we can talk about the differences in the colors. Not all yellows are the same, right? Some lean towards orange and some lean towards green. So take a photo of all the yellows you have so we can compare the colors.

As I told Lyn on the blog, it is how we perceive colors. Your brain has a tendency to tell you that an apple is red. But if you really look at an apple, it has many more colors than just red.

[zed]

Those pieces are gorgeous, Teri
I do have some thick prefelt so might try that.

I do keep all my colours separate actually, though I tend to have Reds, blues, greens, purples, pinks and rusts/browns/oranges. I do have 3 yellows-yellow, pale yellow and Mustard, and have some in with the browns and greens. A few colours cross over actually (spearmint/turquoise)

[koffipot]

Two beautiful pieces Teri.

[Teri Berry]

Thanks guys

Ruth, I'm afraid I didn't take pictures of these prefelts before laying the shapes but there is one at the bottom of the tutorial and this is another one waiting to be made into another wall hanging. This photo was taken under artificial light, hence the colours aren't that true.
feltingandfiberstudio.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/tt1d7i9pv0nt50hiip3h.jpg

[Teri Berry]

Zed, not sure if this is what you have in mind but I did an interesting exercise on a course once, the tutor emptied a huge sack of wool roving on the floor and had us organise it into a colour wheel. You might think that sounds easy but where do you place tints and shades of the same colours? What about browns and greys? This probably worked best with more than one person as we ended up having some quite heated debate about whether a colour was a greeny-blue or a bluey-green!

Perhaps you could try something similar with your own stash and post a picture?

[MTRuth]

Great idea Teri. Pick the yellow that you think is the "primary" yellow. Then put the others on either side either leaning more towards green or more towards orange. The keep going around the wheel putting the colors in order like you think they would go. Take a photo and post it here.

You can just use little pieces from each color, it won't take up much room. Find a color wheel online to follow along with as you figure out which colors go where on the wheel.

[Frances]

Color wheel from HGTV site - I guess I will call this Step 1

[Shepherdess]

I keep bins of small bits for embellishments. Sometime when I resort after I teach a class its hard to tell where to put some colours. when you toss it in the blue box it turns green then you toss it in to the green box and now its blue. in the class I took we had to go to the DYI store and collect up paint chips to use in class. We had fun with them. Not sure I retained much.

[lyn]

It's not just me then Ann! When I sorted out my threads into my new set of drawers, there were several that gave me trouble. Not only is it blue or green, but is it pink or red, and don't get me started with the pinky-mauvey-purples!

[koffipot]

I try to organise my threads and fibres, but usually end up with some rogues. I try to keep the neutrals separate from the colours - but then there's that pinky grey...........

[lyn]

I also try to keep 'neutrals' separate Judith, but as you say there are lots of greys that could be pinky, bluey, greeney, and when exactly does orange turn to an earthy bronze? And then there's the question of is it cream or is it off-white?

I'd better stop here...I could go on for ages...sorting my threads was a nightmare...and I know I've mis-filed several!

[zed]

I actually have a thread drawer for pinky-mauvey-purples, Lyn!

I have no problem seeing colours, I did a test not so long ago about distinguishing shades and didn't do too badly:

www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge

that sounds like a fun thing to do though, arranging tufts of wool by colour