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The First Quarter Color Challenge

The First Quarter Color Challenge

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I’ve been playing with the color wheel in fiber and paints for our first quarter challenge.

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When I made the samples for the fiber color wheel I started out using my fingers to blend them.  It took a while to get them to look like they were supposed to.  (I apologize for the photos and the shadows.)

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Since  I needed more of the secondary colors to make the tertiary colors, I decided to use the dog brushes.  I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.  So, I decided to use the carder to make a bigger amount then to move on to blending tints.

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Secondary orange then on to adding white, then black for tints.

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I stopped with the reds.  You can see the outward progression with each color group blending red with white, then red with black then down the line doing the same.  Some of the colors look a little reddish brown.

Once I finished the red group I wanted to try paints.  It was actually a little harder than I expected.  On the left side is the acrylic, the right is watercolor.

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When I started the project with fiber I was in Florida with my grandson who wanted to help me.  Here is his secondary blending.

2015-03-05 15.56.29Not bad for a five year old!  Had he spent more than five minutes with me, he probably would have done a better job than Grandma.

Have you tried the first quarter challenge?   We’d love to see your results on the forum www.feltandfiberstudio. proboards.com

3rd Quarter Challenge Finished Pieces

3rd Quarter Challenge Finished Pieces

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I worked on my mixed media pieces for Karen’s 3rd Quarter Challenge this week. The first piece I worked on was the smaller board with lots of folded and creased scrim on. I started by painting the background with some blue shades of acrylic paint.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThen I layered lots of shades of blue and white, then finished with some details of black, white, yellow and red. This is the piece just after I finished, while it was still wet.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is it when it is dried. You can’t really see the texture in the photo, but I’ve uploaded it to flickr, so you can see the texture of the scrim and the detail better.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere’s a supermacro of a small part which does show some of the texture.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOften when I work with acrylics, I need to wipe off excess paint, so I keep a spare painting board nearby to wipe the paint on there. It makes a great base for another painting. This isn’t really part of the challenge, but I painted it just after the blue piece. It’s mostly the same colours, but in different amounts.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd a supermacro:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe second piece I worked on was the larger board with 2 layers of scrim. It did turn out the way I’d planned, but didn’t look as good as I’d imagined. I painted a light grey in the centre and dark greys around the edges. Then I covered some laser prints of artwork in Golden gel medium and stuck them face down on the surface. When they were dried the next morning, I wet them and carefully rubbed off the backing paper to reveal the prints. I covered in gel medium then painted reds, oranges, yellows and whites around the edges. I don’t think I got enough paper off the bottom print. I might carry on working on this, I think it needs something else.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASorry, Kaz, I couldn’t think of a way to add metal, there’s a little bit of silver acrylic paint on the blue one, though 🙂  Has anyone else made anything for the challenge?

Third Quarter Challenge – Lyn’s Entry

Third Quarter Challenge – Lyn’s Entry

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Today’s post is by Lyn from rosiepink

Yacht Heeling
Yacht Heeling

I enjoy the Studio Challenges because they encourage me to try different things.  Karen’s challenge for this quarter is ‘Mixed Media’  and after spending a day on Lepe Beach during Cowes Week, I just had to do a yacht.

My husband likes painting so I thought a joint project would be fun.  I gave him a rectangle of machine-made white felt  (45cm x 33cm /18″ x 13″) and asked him to paint a sea/sky background using water colours.  I thought water colours would look good on white felt, sort of fuzzy and pretty, and it did look good … but as it dried the paint sunk right down into the felt!

He painted the background again… then we sadly watched it fade as before.

We stared at the felt, and had a think, then decided to try watered down acrylic paints.  It looked lovely but we weren’t going to stand by and nervously watch.  We decided to be proactive.  Out came two hairdryers and we blow-dried the watery paint on the felt as quickly as possible.  Success!

I cut a hull and sails from beautifully textured, shiny dupion silk then laid the pieces onto the painted background.  Yuk.  It didn’t look good.  So I tried other ideas such as using scraps of handmade felt and various fabrics.  Nothing seemed to work so I pushed it to the edge of the table and even considered abandoning the idea.

My room was a real mess because I’d got out so much of my stash searching in vain for just the right thing.  I took a deep breath and started to tidy, and that’s when serendipity happened.  A scrap of lightweight interfacing material somehow landed on the painted sea.  It looked good.  It wasn’t too heavy, as the other fabrics and felt had been, it would be easy to stitch into place and I could colour it.

yacht spinnaker in the water - small imageI cut out the shapes I needed then ran ‘messy’ free stitching over the interfacing until I was happy that it looked like a yacht heeling.  I considered leaving the interfacing unpainted (and I wish I’d taken a photo at that stage) because it had a delicacy about it that I liked, but I’d planned on having a colourful spinnaker so I applied water colours to the interfacing.  I used an almost dry brush because I thought that if I made the colours too solid they would overpower the background.

When I’d finished, my husband added a little more white acrylic paint to the bottom of the spinnaker and the hull of the boat.

I liked working on the joint project but it wasn’t easy on my ears.  My husband sails so he felt obliged to impart his knowledge by frequently pointing out that my stitching of the yacht wasn’t anywhere near technically correct!

Thank you Karen – I’ve benefited a lot from your challenge.

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