extracting colour

After the colour workshop, I've been going through my research photos and pulling out the colours to make some more palette arrangements linking to my project.

Seeing as the Tanzanian landscape had quite a busy feel, with many different materials and surfaces being recycled and reclaimed, and being reused in a multitude of ways, I like the idea of using found objects in my colour work...it's like the 'fabric' of the environment there was very responsive, in flux, and cultivated collectively by all the people living there...so I want my work to have a similar feel...a bit of a jumble...collections and arrangements of colour that evoke the lively, quirkiness of the place....a sense of rawness and imperfect human touch....a realness and an immediacy....

colour play

Last week we had a fun workshop with Phillipa Wagner, all about exploring colour. I found her theory on 'natural palettes' (the idea that we all have colours we are comfortable working with, and naturally gravitate towards) really interesting- and quite a useful thing to consciously understand, as a designer! Plus, it was a great way to get excited about the idea of arranging colours, considering our current project brief.

We were instructed to grab 6-8 objects the bring along to the workshop, and then worked in groups of 3 to arrange our collective chosen objects into a 'colour matrix'. It's useful to see colour spread in this way, in order to recognise the balance of the colour you're working with. Funnily enough, in our group, the colour range was perfectly proportioned- Heather had bought all neutral, natural coloured objects, Lisa's were all light and white coloured, and my objects were all bright colours! So our matrix covered all the bases:

Then we composed a set of different colour palettes using our collection of colours from the matrix. I loved doing this as a group - we took it in turns to each add a colour to the palette, discussing how it would change the overall effect in combination with the other colours that were being added. It was fascinating to share our different approaches to colour as a group! 

Here were our palettes. First up we made a mini collection of the objects we wanted to dicate the colours for each palette...then, we searched for fabric swatches to translate the palette into a textile story:

 set of objects, then swatches for our second palette:

 3rd collection/palette:

 Our final group palette. For this one, Philippa challenged us to work with a gradiating move of colour across the palette, as all our previous combinations had a good spread of lights/brights/darks. So here, we went for a neutral flow:

This has definitely made me think about my own attitude to colour...and how my own attraction to brights generally seems to channel it's way into my design work, somehow or other! 

Finally we made up our natural palettes derived from the objects/colours we'd intuitively selected for the workshops as individuals. Here's mine:

And actually, these colours are similar/connected to my project colours right now- the orange, plummy pinks/raspberry, and the bright green. What a co-incidence....!

Now it'll be fun to carry this experimental palette creating approach through to my work. I also like the idea of using objects to original represent/derive colour from. This could be carried further through the design process, and the objects could perhaps feature in the designs somehow themselves? Let's see- it's all to play around with! 

orange in the libary

Seems like I'm tuned in to all things orange at the moment. It started out with being drawn to the arrangement of orange books on the shelves looking at the colour of the spines while I was in the library.

I then started taking some quick snaps for ideas to help develop thinking around proportion and groupings, and just to generally feed into inspiration for my project. Colour is everywhere! It's time to get excited!

block orange

 orange/red/blue- colours found in my research. Interesting seeing them like colour chips represented in strips by these books here. (for project development- think about how I can use found objects to help capture/define/give a sense of colours I want to use...)

 now: within the pages. The following images are from Emil Nolde's 'Radiance  and colour' book I was flicking through. I love the vibrancy of the orange and the blue. The strength of the blue here reminds me of the 'blue room' at the National Gallery's 'Making Colour' exhibition I went to last month. Striking and beautiful.

 Imagery taken from magazine ads that I was then looking at. Blues, oranges, browns and greens.

It's interesting just looking at how colour works in everyday life, the combinations we see around us. It all feeds in to subconscious perception and design choices I think!

exploring the orange cont.

starting to play around with a rather orange moodboard.....

gathering things onto sheets exploring the earthy orange tones...

BAM! powdery orange! this was actually bits of pastel shredded up to roll my paper-bead experiments in, to add texture to the finished surface of the beads (I'll add pictures of the progress of these soon). However- I love the effect of the colour on the shiny silver foil I had to hand as a surface to crumble it on- there's potential explore these colour combos with the contrasting silver sheen, further, I think!

my powdery splats onto foil remind me of these kind of splashes of colour that were dotted around the earthy ground of Tanzania:

now- drawing from my floor silhouette images. just outlining the silhouette shapes on tracing paper with pastel lines, playing around with the dark shadow and bright outlines on tracing paper (the fact that you can see the newspaper I was working onto underneath is not intentional, ha!)

pastel exploration of organic flow of orangey ground, contrasting with the purple/plum/pinky shadows... there is so much to explore from my research! and this has just been with a focus on 'orangey' areas so far!

exploring the orange

Immediately from my research, I am drawn to: the ORANGE.
...powdery orange dirt, red-orange brick, earthy orange tones mixed with vibrant splats of plum - never before have I been so excited about orange!

So I started painting and pasteling up some paper from my imagery, trying to mix the oranges.
and thinking back to how in Tanzania, I was fascinated by all the paper beads made and sold by the local people; I chopped up some of my painted paper into strips to make my own 'beads', as a way of exploring the range of orange colour...

Here's my box of research photos I took in Tanzania- lots of orange to explore here!

here's some of the paper bead necklaces I brought while in Tanzania. The local people make them using strips of magazines/newspapers/leaflets, cut into strips, carefully rolled, then varnished with PVA...I think this coating makes the colours so rich and beautiful (note to self- maybe explore varnishing/adding shine to surfaces as a development to this initial exploration sometime soon...!)

an example strip. I found that cutting the paper at different angles results in different shaped beads, altering the proportions of colour within the strip that are visible in the final bead- could be something to play around further with...

 on a roll here making my beads- literally

 some close ups of one type of my painted paper sheets. Here I am exploring the mottled, dusty, powdery texture of the orange earth. I began with a base of orange oil, then mixed up various shades of gouache to brush over the top, creating a resist against the original vibrant oil. These photos were taken when the paint was still wet, so it has a shine. It could be interesting to take other colours and see how they work against this orange now...