And So It Continues

Onto my second Color Theory project! And if you don't know what the first project was, where have you been? Nah, I kid. But seriously, I posted it just yesterday so feel free to browse that. Or not. I wouldn't.

Well then, for project two, our assignment was to create three pieces of art using ANY medium our hearts so desired. The only real criteria was that we had color schemes of sorts to stick to. The first piece would be highly saturated colors and their tints. Simply put, you could only use colors in their purest forms, plus the different tints they have when white is added. The second piece was to be done in tones and shades. Here you want to have impure colors, which you get when you mix a hue and its complement. In other words, if I have a bright, pure red and I add its complement - green - I get a red tone. It becomes 'muddier' in a sense. And then to get shades you add black to that tone. The last piece would actually get its colors from an inspirational painting, something from before the 1960's. My painting, here, is Ladies in the Rain. I used the different blues and tans, with the tiny hint of pink that is found if you look closely at the painting.

Now, being that we were given the freedom to choose any medium known to man, I decided why not knit? So I made three different hats, each with hand dyed yarn. I wanted to make them each special, with rather original designs relative to what the color scheme was.

And this is what I came up with!

To the far left is my saturated color scheme, and I decided to go with something very youthful and silly to reflect the bright colors. In the middle is my Ladies in the Rain pattern, where I wanted to keep it sophisticated and romantic, so I made a beret of sorts. And on the right is my tones hat, which I kept a little silly, but slightly more plain than the other two.

In case you are curious as to my methods of madness, I shall fill you in!

So the first thing I did was go out and get myself some 100% cotton yarn. Acrylics won't do because they don't absorb dye, so only the most unnecessarily expensive yarn from a hipster retailer would do. Or any pure cotton yarn. Actually, wool will work as well (that was some exciting alliteration, no?) Anything natural. Just no acrylic or polyester type of things.

Then I got a ton of dye. Just really simple, cheap stuff. RIT dye, to be specific. And if you're worried about the quality of it because it's cheap, don't. I saw them use this stuff on Project Runway, so I figure it's fool proof. And it's great; these little boxes dye up to one pound of fabric which is more than enough for three little hats, considering I bought 16 colors (Joann fabrics had a great sale.)


As you can see, I put each color in its own clear plastic cup, and I proceeded to label each cup with the name of the color inside. This was especially handy in distinguishing between things like orange and yellow, or the lovely denim blue, royal blue, and navy blue. Yes, that was really a thing.






The next step was to follow the instructions which were inconveniently printed on the inside of the box... But I altered them a little, pouring about half of the dye powder into less than a cup full of hot water. This was my first dye project, so work with me.

The next step was to get the yarn into a state where it could be dyed. I simply took my folding step ladder and wrapped the yarn under the top step until I liked the size of it, then folded the ladder and pulled off my yarn. I used some thick sewing thread and tied the yarn in sections so it wouldn't fall apart, and laid my big loops out on the floor, on top of a piece of plastic so as not to dye the linoleum tiles. Note that the loops in the photo below are all one skein of yarn, so they're attached to each other by a strand running between them.

Then I took the whole loops, one at a time, and soaked them in a bowl of room temperature water help them absorb the dye properly. The last thing I did was pick up sections of each loop and, again, one section at a time, dipped it into a cup of dye for a few minutes (not nearly as long as I ought have, but it worked) and then squeezed it out before laying it back down and moving on to the next piece. When a whole yarn loop was sufficiently dyed, I took it to the sink and ran it under the water until it was almost clear - I say almost because I'm an impatient procrastinator who was working on a very short time schedule. The only thing left to do was leave it on a drying rack over night and then knit the heck out of it! As for the patterns, I genuinely googled knit hat patterns and combined a little of everything. Don't ask me how I did any of them because it was a nightmare I don't care to remember.

Oh, I almost forgot! It should be noted that for the beret, I knit it first and then took one of those sponge brush things -you know, the kind with the black pentagonal sponge head on top of a wood dowel- and sort of painted the dye onto the hat.

I hope you enjoyed my lengthy tutorial! Let me know what you come up with.

Year Round School

Well I seem to have been off my game lately, haven't I?

School really kept me busy this past quarter. There were a few days there where I wasn't entirely sure I'd make it through. But here I am! Ever prevailing. And, alas, I am home relaxing - enjoying a short but sweet Spring Break.

Now that I have some free time on my hands, I thought I'd go ahead and update this here blog, which would otherwise be collecting virtual dust. And where better to start than with an actual project I was assigned for my Color Theory class? (As long this isn't meant to be some kind of top secret, paying student information...)

So, this was the first project assigned to the class and let me tell you, it was no small feat.

What we had to do was choose a photo that met the standards of our hard to please aesthetic standards - to which I immediately chose Disney, what else? The image had to be printed to at least 6" x 8". Also, this couldn't be just some plain animated image because it had to have some level of challenge to it. This being said, I had my work cut out for me, finding a relatively large scale picture of a non-animated Disney subject. And after several painful hours of googling, I came upon this beautiful image of some Disney characters in costume from the theme park in front of what seems to be Cinderella's Castle.



The next step in this painful journey was to choose four sections of the image to be dissected. These sections were to be either 1" x 6" or 1.5" x 4", and I chose the latter for all of my sections. The idea for each section was to recreate the values in different color schemes using a construction paper of sorts - if I've lost you already, don't worry. We'll find each other again in a moment.




The first section was to be done in black and white, or achromatic in the art world. Basically, I had about 20 available shades of grey, and I had to match up the shades to their equivalent colors in the image, then meticulously cut them out with an exacto knife and glue them down ever so carefully.


After the achromatic section came the monochromatic section. In other words, you choose one color and find all of its shades and tints (which is what you get
when you add black and white respectively.) This becomes your new grey scale.










The third section from there is the complementary color scheme. Here you choose a color plus it's shades and tints again, and do the same for the color opposite it on the color wheel. I chose blue and orange for mine, taking note that of the two, blue is a cool color and orange is a warm color. Now, the warm color should be applied to the area physically closest to the viewer and the cool color on the further back area.

 



Last is the actual color section. This is just how it sounds. The goal was to match the colors in the image as closely as possible to the colored paper.

And thus...the final product!