Watercolour Studies

I was excited to try watercolours as it is a medium I don’t have very much experience of. I gathered a variety of glass bottles and jars with different shapes, colours and textures and started to play around with the composition.  I opted to have a totally white background for the objects so that I could focus entirely on the colours coming from the glass.  I took photographs of the different layouts, but I feel that they don’t really look the same as they did whilst looking at them due to the shadows cast by indoor lighting at this time of year!  I’m not going to post any photos yet as I am waiting to mount my work inside my colour resource book so will add some images then.

I found it quite easy to achieve the colours I needed by colour mixing, I played around with the paints a little first to get used to the medium.  I found it more tricky to be accurate with the composition of my stripe designs – where there was colour and where there was not.  In retrospect I think I have included too much colour in some places, and an absence of colour or space is needed.  I’m pleased with the designs though, and I have tried to be creative using different layouts for the stripes by looking at the composition in different ways.  The overall colour palette that the glass compositions created was pleasing so I am going to produce some colour chips to go alongside my designs in my colour resource book.

Creating Colour swatches for line designs

Still Life Glass Composition

Getting used to using watercolours!

Yarn Wraps – Colour Studies

My brief was to find an Old Masters painting and create a series of yarn wraps to convey the balance of colours in different sections of the piece and their relationships with one another.

I was quite excited to start this piece of work and get my hands on some fabrics again. I trawled the internet to try and find a painting that I found interesting in both colour and composition.  The term ‘Old Master’ is generally attributed to artists that were significant before the start of the 1800’s and although I appreciated the beauty and technical abilities of many of the paintings I couldn’t find anything that was right for me to use in this project.  Then I came across Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Strictly speaking he is not pre 1800 but from what I can gather he is classed as an Old Master.  I thought his paintings had a purity to them but also quite a Bohemian feel.  The vibrancy of his use of colours and the composition of his paintings connected with me. There were a few paintings that I shortlisted before making my final choice.

The Roman Widow

Monna Vanna

A Christmas Carol

Persephone

I finally made the decision to use ‘A Christmas Carol’ as I felt it had a nice mix of colours and I liked the rich regal tones.  It felt a bit odd working on something festive in January but I thought I would be able to produce some beautiful yarn wraps from it.

I went to my local art and craft shop with my printed copy of the painting and chose several different yarns, ribbons and cords that I thought matched the colours and qualities in the picture. I came out with a very big bag full, some were the same colour but different thicknesses, textures and opacity, as I wasn’t sure which would ultimately be the best so I experimented with different combinations before I completed each wrap.

 

I decided to start with a yarn wrap that represented the whole painting so thought the best way was to slowly work my way from the bottom of the picture to the top so I could get all the colours in.  As with all of the yarn wraps I have done, I tried different thicknesses and textures of yarns and ribbons and did little practice runs before securing them down to the card.  My other yarn wraps are based on the face and neck, the woman’s coat, the musical instrument and the wallcovering in the background.

Looking at the picture this closely has really opened my eyes to the different depths of colour in each little area, trying to recreate these small but important details was challenging. In some cases I used very fine thread to add a little colour to try and recreate the effect in the painting, whilst still keeping the overall balance of colours correct.  I’m pleased with the results and think the richness of colours comes across well.