Green Piece

Despite this piece having the working title of 'Green Piece', I started it when I was on the 'Gorgeous Grey' course. It is inspired by a photograph I took of a barge, one misty morning on the Rhine.  I have used various strengths of grey and also a black mixed with yellow to create the green colour.   

I've lost count of how many layers of the grey dye I painted on, to get the effect I was looking for. The problem was, I was never happy with the boat. I considered cutting out a panel of fabric to remove the boat but I would have also lost some of the colour gradation that I worked so hard to achieve. Another idea I considered was painting over the boat with screen inks. I did some trials with acrylic paint, which proved it was possible to achieve but risky.

So on Saturday,  I asked the group at C2C to give me some feedback. They didn't seem to have the same issue that I did with the shape of the boat but did suggest that it was too bright , too well defined if it was indeed in fog... and they were right. I was guilty of not looking properly!  I used the colours I thought the boat was not the colours I could see.

The original colours of my boat

The suggested solution was to work on the back of the fabric, where the boat did indeed look misty. The problem was that I didn't have the same background definition I had on the front and although I added some more grey to the back it was clear it was going to take some time and effort to get it where I wanted it to be. I wasn't sure I could face all those dyeing sessions in the garage to bring the back up to the front's standard - what if I never achieved the same effect on the back? Besides, I had hoped to include it with my Lago Maggiore in an exhibition in April and time is running out.

 

Another plan was required so I got out these.....

 

...my box of Markal Stiks and used the beigey one over the boat to knock back the colours and make it appear more like it was in the mist. As you can see by the length of my stiks, I don't use them very much but I'm usually pleased when I do.

 

So now I need to layer up the fabric, and get stitching. I plan to do simple machine quilting and then to add hand stitch to the boat.  I'll let you know how I get on but I'm feeling a lot more positive about where it's going and that I will have it finished in time for the exhibition at the start of April.

Gorgeous Grey

A couple of weeks ago I attended the 'Gorgeous Grey' course run by Claire Benn at Committed to Cloth. A couple of foggy mornings on my recent cruise down the Rhine provided inspiration for the course and my favourite 'grey' photo was taken when a passing barge became visible through the fog. I wasn't happy with my representations of the barge, and so I decided to concentrate on printing simple shapes but then they started to look like buildings.....

 



So more experimenting with barges is required and when I (hopefully) achieve the look I am seeking, I may even cut off the right hand side of this piece and print my barge on the left hand side. 

But before any printing started we experimented with making different shades of grey (and before you say it, it was more than 50!). I experimented by adding small amounts of colours to black and then reducing the value to see the different greys that could be created. 

And I had some happy accidents. An over generous addition of scarlet, created just the dusky pink I was looking for in another piece, which you can see on the right hand side of the cloth below.

And I was rather pleased with the beigey colours I created  here. Could be very useful in landscapes.

 

Another trial looked at what would happen when different values of rust orange were overlaid on different values of grey. I know all of these are going to provide useful references for future work.

Here's an 'action shot' of me printing and my grey trial pieces at hand for easy reference. 

I printed quite a lot of fabric during the course and although I didn't print anything that I absolutely loved, I learnt a lot and came away with loads of ideas to follow-up on and I'm sure you'll see more of these in time but here's one other experiment. After I created the fabric background I wet the cloth, added liquid orange dye and tilted the fabric so it ran.  

This reminded me of the reflections on the Rhine. The orange on the horizon line needs beefing up to give the colour some more depth or maybe I could enhance it with stitch? Whatever I do to it, I doubt that I am ever going to really love it. But I do want to experiment with creating pieces where I embellish just the horizon line.  How would this impact the feeling of distance? This could be the piece to experiment on.