Swirly Rainbow

Swirly Rainbow

Ann’s daughter went into labour yesterday, so I’m doing a quick post to fill in. Thinking about the first quarter challenge on colour, I remembered a swirly rainbow piece I made a couple of months ago. I started it the same way I usually make my rainbow pieces, but instead of just adding wisps of the colours from adjacent rows to blend them together, I blended the wisps roughly by hand, then fluffed them up before adding them. I realised this might look a bit odd once it was felted, so I fluffed up wisps of all the colours and added them to the top before felting.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMostly the wisps/rows all blended together nicely. I don’t know whether I used too much yellow here blended with orange or if maybe a few wisps wafted out of place.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can see the texture of the swirls on this close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHave you done anything for the challenge yet?

22 thoughts on “Swirly Rainbow

  1. I actually like the more uneven line between colors that you got with this technique. Beautiful blending of colors and perfect for the color challenge. I still want to work on blending some colors of wool together to see the different effects.

    1. Thanks, Ruth 🙂
      Yeah, me too. From when I blended by hand, to using the drum carder, I’ve usually aimed for a ‘rough’ blend, more just a combining of colours, but we could massively increase our supply of colours just by making some tones and shades.

  2. I think the swirly bits make for a pretty blending between colours!

    I was chuffed today. My grand-daughter showed me her art homework and she was impressed that I knew the difference between a tint and a shade (thanks Ruth – I wouldn’t have known that before the start of the challenge!)

    1. Thanks, Lyn 🙂
      She’ll be asking for your help all the time now, Lyn, a good opportunity to create a new fibre addict 🙂

  3. Yummy blends and nice texture Zed! I agree with Ruth the blurred distribution is a nice effect.

  4. I like the texture and blended colors in your piece, and now realize a mistake I made in my recent color blending experiment (shadowing) experiment. I did not add the wisps of wool and I do think that would have helped.

    As for the color challenge, so far I have only played with gouache. However, I recently purchased some 100% wool tapestry thread and will try to make a color wheel this weekend.

    1. Thanks, Cathy 🙂
      This was harder than when I usually just add wisps, but also the ‘design’ of it makes it more forgiving too. I had to do a bit of extra work on the texturey one I did at the same time, too, because the ‘bands’ seemed more obvious through the surface texture.

    1. No worries, Ann 🙂
      Enjoy the baby before he’s climbing into all your felting stuff!

  5. I really like the blending effect, Zed. It’s so amazing how our eyes deceive us and do the optical blending for us as well 🙂

    To answer your question about the challenge: no I haven’t, and I’m hoping I might still!

    1. Thanks, Karen 🙂
      I have so many ideas I want to try, just for blending, that I don’t know where to start!

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