Tuesday, February 13, 2007

More Design Excercises with Paper and Paint

Proportions
Mm, well now, what do I mean by proportions? Most of you choose a picture because it inspires you in some way, whether it's colour, texture, shapes, a combination of one, two or all three elements. Whatever is the trigger, it's very often the picture or section as a whole that is pleasing to the eye.
So if we look at just two of the elements, colour and texture, and work out the proportions of these, and if we stick to those proportions in weaving, knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc. we will have a very pleasing end product, whether we worked in stripes, checks, blocks or pictorally.

Stripes
Once we've worked out the proportions of texture and colour from out chosen photograph or painting, we can work on producing stripes. A series of stripe sequences can trigger all sorts of ideas in weaving, knitting and crochet, not to mention all the other textile crafts.

This series of stripes can be developed into a collage of stripes with texture as well as colour and even wrapping.












Opposite you will see a page from my sketch book. I have developed a series of stripes from the New York Skyline photograph. By working out the proportions of colour and texture I have produced a series of stripes, the last one has been developed into a yarn wrapping from the yarns (on the right) that I chose to match the colours in the original painting I did.

The yarn wrapping can be used as it is, as a stripe sequence for a piece of weaving or, if turned vertically, as a design for a scarf to knit or crochet, for example.

Those spinners amongst you, could try blending the basic colours, blue, yellow and red with black and white to spin a series of yarns which have much more life than those dyed the exact colour you want! More about this later!

Why not have a go.


4 comments:

Leigh said...

Hi Alison! I just found your blog after reading Kaz's report. Your blog is great!

Where did the Fibre Geek Questionaire come from???

Kathleen said...

As a spinner, I prefer spinning handpaintsand love the addition of a bit of sparkle every so often. I haven't taken the time to choose different colors of strands to spin together...oddly, it's a new idea for me. Strange that I haven't done that before. Thanks for the ideas!

Willington Weaver said...

Hello Kathleen, so glad you have found some new ideas. One of the reasons I started my blog was to encourage everyone, spinners, weavers, knitters, crocheters, etc, etc to try new ideas and to prove that design can be really simple, but it makes you look at your work and inspiration in a different way.

Alison

Willington Weaver said...

Hi Leigh, so glad you like the blog. The fibre geek questionaire came from the Fibre Femmes web ring opposite.

Alison

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