tapestry

Avoiding the Easter Bunny Look: Shading with Pastels

| ellenanneeddy

Anatomy of a Color Scheme

There’s no help for it. If you are shading a pink bird, you’ll need to use pastels at some point. I’m not a fan. But you don’t get to throw out a section on the color wheel. Eventually, you’ll need all the values: tones, jewels, and pastels. Tones and jewels. Yes! Pastels. not that much.

Let me break down the color scheme for you.

There are six color zones, in the feathers of this bird, and then a zone for the neck and thighs, the feet, the head and the bill.

There are two progressive color themes going on. The pink under body and feathers, and the green overstitching. Both progress from dark to light.

Where did it go wrong? I chose the wrong yellow.

White objects are rarely pure white, unless you want a posterized deco look. They’re made up of other colors pale enough to be perceived as white. The bird itself is pink. I pulled in bits of lavender and yellow to blend it and to create a shadowed projection. I chose the wrong yellow. If you look at the top feather, you can see a strip of yellow that’s pretty loud.

You know that kind of Easterbunny pastel. Yellow, pink, blue, purple, and maybe green. It’s only appealing if you’re under the age of five. It missed here. I stitched some cream and natural white thread all over it.

Then I added the overstitching. The overstitching takes center stage, and the yellower bits back off. I think I’ve saved it. It also browns out the pinks a bit. They’re all there, but quieter for the green.

What should I have done? I should have lined up that yellow in a row with the other colors and taken a black and white picture of it. I would have known right there. But I’m happy with it now.

I’m ready for the next step, which is the background. And I think it needs yellow fish and birds.

The Next Piece: What is the Next Passion?

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve just finished two pieces I started earlier this year. It’s a good thing because the show at the Peoria Art Guild hangs next Saturday. I’m fighting off a summer cold and feeling drained. Except that I wish my nose would drain.

Endings are hard for me. It’s hard for me to finish a quilt. All that passion, all that energy stopped. It feels wrong in some ways. I’m a bit like the artist who is done when someone takes the piece away from them.

Except that at some point, you really are done.

So this is why I almost always have a number of pieces in process. I still need to work through the last of Great Blue. I’m lost after I finish a major piece. I’m hunting for the next passion. And it needs to be a passion. To go through the drawing, the stitching, the dyeing, the quilting, and the embellishment is an immense amount of work. That takes endless energy, which is fueled by passion.

What am I looking for? What is it that I need?

color

Amazing color is always a draw! It can come through the dyed background or from my subject, but I can’t work without color. The images have their own color, but the light of the piece is the fabric background itself. Like a colored lense it sets the tone of the art. Everything is seen through that lense.

Form

The shape of things is incredibly exciting! Bird wings, frogs jumping, the intricacy bugs, the Fibonnacci progression numbers in space and time leave me breatheless.

Movement

The way those forms move. To see them in flight, in water, in repose, in play. I want to play with them.

Memory

Some moments change your life. Watching a heron land on a friend’s pond. Standing eye to eye with a Komodo dragon at the National Zoo. Standing in a training pond with dolphins. Watching the sun rise over a little waterfall at Spring Lake, through a fringe of wildflowers. I am imprinted with memories that always call me back to that point of wonder.

A Male Cassowari watching me …

So what do I do, when a piece finishes? I wander through books looking for the color, the form and the movement for the passion for the next piece. Do I know what’s next? I’m finding Cassowaries interesting. It’s like a thug dressed up for the ball. How dare you be that blue, that red with that yellow? Maybe.