Excercise 3.1

BRIEF

In this first colour exercise you'll explore how colour is used in textiles. First you should source a series of textile samples that you find interesting.  They don't need to be large samples, but need to have enough of the design.

Part 1

Source 1-3 printed samples with 4-6  colours

1 to 3 of natural with interesting construction or surface.

I choose a vintage remnant from my fabric stash for my first sample.
I love the autumnal colours,yellows, mustard, black ,forest green and orange with contrasting white backgrounds in sections.

My second sample is an African wax cloth  I love the plum, browns, gold contrasting with acid green and blue.

My third sample is a cotton lawn ,a modern bold design with shillouettes and shapes with dots and a contrasting white background.

My neutral options are a naturally dyed hand woven pinkish beige textured light cotton fabric. I love the interesting marks and texture, weave and lines in the fabric.

This colour is quite difficult to achieve,  I tried mixing white with a variety of browns and failed to get the shade I wanted. I will let it dry and see how it looks. I'm thinking I'll brew avocado stones to achieve this shade or try more pinks with gouache.

My second option is a beautiful linen with a natural texture.

Red and white mixed over and over to achieve this lilac pink.

I am pretty happy with this result. 

Next I penciled out my 3x3 paper squares  and started to mix my gouache palettes.

I've chosen a different sample fabric 10x10cm for my larger paper sample.  I thought it would be good experience to try more colour mixing with natural colours this time.

Using hibiscus ,tea, coffee, avocado ,camomile ,turmeric.