Cath Bond - Art Online

December 9th - reflection on course exercises (colour)

Friday, 09 December, 2005 - 21:28

I really enjoyed working with colour, especially because it gave me permission to focus just on colour itself rather than using colour as a tool for effect in my work. I have a general understanding of how colour works, how to mix it and what combinations work well together, but I hadn’t connected this with the colour circle before. I now understand why my intuition often tells me to put this colour with that colour. It makes them sing together, vibrate, bring the colours out more etc.

Stage 2 - Colour Squares
I noticed that some colours act in different ways when put together – they vibrate, or they remain flat, they merge with the other colour or seem to grapple with it. For instance, pink vibrates against green. Purple is flat on orange, pink merges into orange.

By placing grey squares onto different colours I could see that other colours emerged. For instance, blue seems to appear around the edge of grey on a pink box. Green after-effect appears around grey on a yellow box. The exercises show how important choice of colour combination is in creating a piece of work.

I am building up a sketch book which experiments with colour, and am enjoying putting contrasting colours together to reflect on the kinds of moods and effects they create. I am naturally more attracted to pastel colours, so it’s important for me to branch out into bright and discordant colours to expand my horizons and enjoyment of colour. It will help me tune in more to other colours and how I can use them.

Stage 3 – Recording colours accurately

This exercise forced me to look much more closely at the items and consider why those colours were chosen e.g. for the fabrics red and green need each other, blue, red and yellow are primary colours. In Monet’s painting, he has chosen to use a seemingly wide variety of colours, but many of them are from the same section of the colour spectrum i.e. green, blue, purple. I noticed that there were small areas of bright pink, and strong streaks of yellow. These colours compliment the rest of the colours e.g. yellow brings out the colour purple better than if the purple was on its own.

Stage 4 – Colour moods and themes

This was my favourite exercise, as I really enjoyed exploring colour in relation to mood, and thinking about the colours that I really enjoy and why I enjoy them. I have now started building a sketch book around the colours that have meaning in my life. At the moment, those colours are aqua/duck egg blue, and the combination of light blue/green with pink. I hadn’t realised that this colour was a major feature in my life until I really started observing things around me e.g. the colours on my walls, the yarns I am attracted to, the themes I focus on in my sketch books etc. What I notice is that the more I explore this colour theme, the more I realise that other colours tag along! I don’t just enjoy aqua/duck egg blue; I like the pink that sometimes appears with it, or the yellow. I like the way it changes character with various colours.

Stage 5 – Coloured stitches

I chose to stitch in blue and yellow. I found that the more I stitched, the more I became in tune with blue needing a bit of yellow and yellow needing a bit of blue! When a tiny dot of yellow is added to a large piece of blue, the yellow immediately stands out and the blue immediately becomes ‘the background’. In other stitches, I can’t distinguish which colour is more domineering. They work against each other and seem to be equally matched.

Stage 6 – to be done!



Answers to questions

I am able to use colours expressively, and this is something I want to continue exploring in my sketchbooks. I am finding more and more that certain colours benefit from another colour appearing nearby, and so this is something I need to become in tune with more over the next couple of months.

The exercises have helped me to really see colour instead of accepting what I think I see. It helps to focus my observations via a window frame, so that I am not distracted by seeing the whole picture. What I am noticing the most is that colours deceive. One colour on its own can be trusted to be that colour, but when colours combine they start to change and create other colours and after-effects.

I have no preference when it comes to gouache or water colour. Water colour doesn’t work well for matt, bright colours because it is see through. But it does work well for merging colours across a page, thereby creating quite muted-non aggressive moods. Gouache is opaque, therefore it can be used to create bright colours in matt, flat chunks. It worked well for my initial experiments in creating mood through colours.

The colour exercises in stage 5 were less interesting than the painting exercises. I was able to work more quickly with paint, and therefore remain clearly in touch with the mood I was conveying. This is much more difficult with hand stitching. After a while I became bored working with just two colours in stitch, and wanted to move onto trying many other things.

What factors made painting more exciting?

The main factor was being able to work spontaneously with the colours through paint, and let the colour speak for itself in the way it wanted to be manipulated in relation to the chosen mood. With chalks, paints, felt tips, paints I can play and experiment so easily. But with stitch I need to plan more. Often I don’t have the colours to hand. If I want to colour combine yarns, I need to re-thread the sewing machine or re-thread the needle… the symbiotic relationship between my intuition and spontaneity is broken by the nature of the medium. This is why I believe that sketch book work and exploration via source material is so essential as a background to creating a final piece of work. The sketch book records the journey. It captures abstract concepts and emotions that could be missed if I tried to work them straight into a textile.

Am I pleased with what I’ve achieved? Is there anything I’d like to change or develop?

I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved, however I feel that there is a whole world of colour out there yet to be explored. I wish I had all the time in the world to explore and become much more in touch with colour, but I am bound by time dedicated to other things such as working for a living! The best thing I can do is to book mark time every day to do a bit of work in my sketch book. Perhaps I could keep a colour mood diary, and write down my daily thoughts with colours rather than writing. I have just started reading poetry again, and that is another way I could start to explore mood and colour e.g. read the poem and translate it into colours. I will give this a go over Christmas.

Author: cath
Categories: colour, textiles,
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