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!

We'd love to hear your thoughts!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from Felting and Fiber Studio

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading