Month: July 2021

Eye Popping Color: Charting Color in Fantasy Mushrooms

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve written a lot about color because I think a lot about color. I It fascinates me, from dye, to fabric to thread. I’ve been working on a batch of mushrooms for some new quilts and I decided to look at the colors through the color wheel just to codify what I was choosing.’

I’m not going to talk about color theory here, precisely. Instead I’m going to talk about relationships in color. Color theory can be deeply and obscurely discussed in millions of ways. I’ve seen it discussed as building blocks, tonal poems, wave lengths and light waves. I’m not sure how much of that is useful. I thought it might be helpful to simplify instead. I’m not dissing color theory. But I am trying to think about it differently.

I’m also not going to use color names. I want you to look at the relationships of the colors instead. But here’s the distinction I find most helpful. Color harmony has to do with how close colors are on the wheel. Contrast has to do with how far away they are. Harmony is of course beautiful. But contrast is what draws our eyes, It is what makes colors pop.

Contrasts come in several style. The colors themselves are their positions on the wheel. Darkened and lightened colors make the tones and tints. Then there is the clear colors. So for fun, sit back, get drunk on the colors and ignore the names. But look where the contrasts and the harmonies are in these color choices.

Notice the range of purples together that create a smooth section of colors and the yellow and greens that contrast. Notice the differences between the dark blues and purples and the lighter yellow and greens. The further distance colors are from each other, the stronger the contrast. The contrast creates the pop.

It’s not as simple as a recipe. It’s not what I was doing. But I did pick full swaths of colors next to each other with a few colors opposite from them. I also actively chose light/dark ranges for harmony and for contrast. It’s not about what we name colors. It’s about their relationship together. The very light green makes the sparkle on this ‘sroom. It looks white. But the green heightens the contrast.

Shading looks different than colors put side by side, but they still meld into each other. The eye blends thread colors that are sitting side by side.

Where are they going? They’re not in place yet, and I’m hoping for smaller frogs to go with, but bright kick ass mushrooms are exactly what I had in mind. I think I’m going to make it rain.

In process forest floor with mushrooms

I’m going to leave you with a small gift here. There are two color wheels here that I made for this blog, one empty and one fully colored. I invite you to use them to chart your own color on a project as you work. Down load them, print them up and use them to see how the colors you use chart up and relate to each other. And let me know what you find. It can be eye opening.

You are welcome to download these two pictures to chart your own colors!

The Light of the World: Creating a Fabric Universe

| ellenanneeddy
The blue fabric creates the light that shades these flowers with blue, and pale green as well as white

You would think that the light in a quilt begins with the color choices of either thread or fabric. It does, and it doesn’t.

The red/fuchsia/ soft orange shades this white mantis with bits of pink and yellow as well as white.

It comes back to hand dyed fabric. I dye fabric because it creates a world of it’s own. The color of the fabric creates the light of that world.

I’ve been working with an idea of frogs on a false bird of paradise vine. I wanted a daylight background that would bespeak greenery without being strictly green. So I started looking for a piece that create that world.

I did not dye fabric for this specifically. This is what I had in house.

So which will I choose? I pulled out the purple first thinking it would give more contrast. But it was absolutely glum. The blue looked like a good choice but it was in itself too watery and not long enough. I didn’t mean to pull up the piece with the lavenders and greens, but I love what it does with the purple stitching in the frogs.

And look what it does with the red/yellow fabric for the vines. The fabric makes the light of the world I’m building.

Had I dyed fabric for it, I might not have been as pleased. When I do, I dye at least three-five pieces in a range to get one I like. Hopefully.

But all those purples, greens and yellows can’t be too wrong.

I’ll show you more of this piece as it goes along.

Fitting In: The Impossible Dream

| ellenanneeddy
Starry Knight

Being an artist is like being the odd kid in an ordinary classroom. It’s not like you aren’t trying or you didn’t have good ideas. It’s that you put a purple gardenia in your hair and are wearing different unmatched socks to boot. It’s more like you’ve scared your teacher and everyone else, just by doing what comes naturally.

It’s the questions artists ask. It’s the things we have to do. It’s the things we are compelled to do while we figure things out.

One of the hardest things for me is to follow other people’s proscriptions and prescriptions. You would like me to make a what? I should be quilting dogs and cats? It needs to be a particular size? Or shape?

That’s how I ended up making this huge ass dragonfly quilt. I was asked, by the Indiana State Museum to make a star quilt of a particular size. I tried. Bless me, I tried. I pieced up samples, played with star imagery. Did not work. Finally I ended up giving them a star. He really is a star, but you could see from their faces that they weren’t expecting anything like that. They weren’t unhappy, but it was clearly the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition. It did end up printed in the newspaper, just for oddness, I believe.

  • Lettuce and Roses
  • Stag Party
  • Mother Toad

Lately I haven’t been able to leave alone these elongated shapes. I Need to fill the shapes and make them dance across the surface. I’ve called them visual paths, because it’s a matter of making the eye travel across the surface of the quilt.

So people want these quilts? Historically, they have. They fill a huge space with a little foot print. Which is always useful. And a neat trick.

Can you put them in a show? Probably not. I tried to put two of them in a project for some folk lately only to have them rejected. They were good quilts. But they were an aggressively odd shape.

Can I make myself fit expectations? Sometimes. On a good day. If I wear my looser big girl panties and stick my tongue out when the going gets tough.

Swoopdive 2

The truth is, I simply have to, to some extent, work on my own obsessions. If I walk too far away from what compels me, I have to fight too hard to do what I do. It’s a good exercise to push against it. But it grinds the art out of me. If we only fit in minimally around the edges, perhaps we fill in the spaces only we can fill.

In Honor of UFO’s

| ellenanneeddy
What I planned

Do you finish everything you start? Star in your crown! Good for you! If it works for you I have no arguments to offer you against your virtue and your tenacity. But for those of us who don’t, I get you. I’m one of you. And I refuse to blame or shame anyone, especially myself about having things that just didn’t get finished.

What happened

I sold two fish this week. Just the fish. The lady getting them is thrilled. She wants to use them in her own work. I trust her not to use them for anything commercial. I find myself a bit lost. I had plans for them. I’d kept the drawings for around 6 years. I found them again, and embroidered them. Somehow I thought my plan for them would work out. Not meant to be. They’re now on to another person, another journey that they, as little fish get to take.

It’s not the first time I haven’t finished a quilt. There are some I will never finish. Some were purchased or given unfinished. Some that people have stolen from me. Some that got lost in odd ways. Some that I didn’t have the right technique for yet. Some that just went wrong.

These quilts were all my teachers. They gave me good information, good help, good company. Some just didn’t need to be finished. I’d learned enough. Sometimes someone else needed them for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they disappeared into the clutter, never to be found again.

My goal is not completion. I’m not a human doing. I am in the process, the continual process of learning my art. My finished quilts are not product, really. They’re a byproduct of learning.

To finish or not to finish?

Do you need it for a show, a space or for a client or yourself?

Do you feel a need for it?

Are you getting learning or enjoyment out of it?

Is it tech you don’t want to explore anymore?

Does it have problems that you can’t fix?

Does it make you feel unhappy/unconfortable, crushingly bored or bad?

Life is short and time is not ever as long as we would like. Ideas are everywhere. and they don’t always stay fresh. New ideas need to be embraced. Petted, fetted, watered, trimmed and sometimes finished. Sometimes not. Sometimes let go of an idea that isn’t working the way you want is better than letting the finishing grind you to a halt.

I challenge you to use your studio/art time to do things that teach you, uplift you, train you, entertain you and help you grow. Finishing everything doesn’t do that for me. What does is the flexibility to follow my art where it needs to go.