Color Inspiration

I've been thinking about color in my environment more than usual for two reasons. First, I'm trying to figure out what colors to paint the rooms in my house. Second, I'm attempting to change up my usual color schemes in my quilts. Below are a three artists I recently discovered who work with colors that I'm drawn to but don't normally use. Sometimes the things I make are not the things I like. From a logical point of view this doesn't make much sense. I would like to being to bridge the gap.

Derick Melander

semi monochromatic gradations with pops of color

 

Flesh of My Flesh

 The Ocean is the Underlying Basis for Every Wave

Michael Johansson

I would probably call these vintage colors

 

 He Was Packing All Night

 

 Rubik's Kitchen

Nancy Herman

Complimentary colors without being garish

(complimentary means opposite on the color wheel, 

i.e. blue and orange, yellow and violet, red and green)

Forsythia

In and Out of orange

orange you glad I didn't say...I can't remember the rest.

A lot of unproductive things have been going on in my studio lately. I feel all fired up about working, but whenever I actually get in my studio my brain poops out on me.

Today was so bad that I didn't even bother to take photos. I had this idea that I would coat string in thickened dye, then stitch into fabric with it and let the dye bleed into the fabric. I set up a whole experiment with wet string in wet fabric, dry string in wet fabric, wet string in dry fabric and dry string in dry fabric. Then I started on the wet on wet sample. For anyone that has sewn before, you know where this is going. It is painfully difficult to sew into wet fabric. Not to mention that my string was coated with wet dye so I had to wear my rubber gloves. I gave up after about 2 minutes.

Here is the rest of the not so great stuff I've been doing lately. I have to keep faith that it will all make sense soon if I can just keep showing up.

orange color studies

hand-printed yardage, overdyed different colors

An attempt at using up old fabric to save money. These are some of the left over reject fabrics from past quilts that I cut into strips and then sewed into mini log cabins.

 

Then overdyed them (this is them waiting to be dyed)

They are still heedious but will get better. They've been overdyed again since this picture was taken and are now a dark gray color. Much better.

On a high note, there was a decent turnout for my open studio last friday night. I think I'll go plant some onions.