On the wall

March 30, 2016

Studio work has seemed very stop-start recently. I’m finding it difficult to settle down to work consistently. When I am working I seem to jump from one activity to another and keep thinking of other things I need to do. It’s making me feel restless and a little dissatisfied.

However … I am fairly happy with the results of my latest round of dyeing. I pinned everything up to have a good look. Lots of small scraps because I don’t like to waste offcuts of antique linen. I over dyed some rejected screen prints too.

Technically, all shades of brown. But one of the browns had quite a strong green tone and there was blue and black dye on some of the offcuts. As I pinned things up I enjoyed playing with some of the colour and texture combinations. I particularly like some of the pales ... though they are tough to photograph.

Then I added some scraps from a different dye session - shades of dark blue. By now it was getting harder to find space to pin anything new, but the blues combine well with the browns and creams.

I’m leaving everything up for a while so that I can keep looking and consider the possibilities.

Colour study: neutrals

October 12, 2014

The last colour study gave me an idea. But before I can try it, I need a selection of browns and greys I can use. Because previous studies have focused on over-dyeing, I needed to do some colour mixing.

I looked at previous studies, both those done with thickened dye and in the bucket, and selected nine different ratios of red : yellow : blue that showed the potential to result in a neutral. I knew that different combinations of primaries would give different kinds of neutrals. I also knew that some ratios would be more likely to result in a neutral than others.

Once I started, I also became fascinated by the effect of changing the relative strength of the dye concentrates themselves. This is something I've experimented with before but this was an opportunity to explore it more thoroughly. Sometimes this could make the difference in whether I achieved any neutrals at all.

Above is an example of what I mean. These three sets all used the same primaries (scarlet, golden yellow, royal blue in this case). In the one on the left the relative strength of the dyes was 1:2:3 (weak red, strong blue); the middle set is 2:2:3 (strong blue); and on the right, 2:3:2 (strong yellow). Not in this picture, I also did a set of 1:1:1 (equal strength) for each set of primaries. The same dyes, the same mixing ratio in each row, different relative dye strengths. Once I'd finished, I found that the ratio of dye strength most likely to give neutrals, for any combination of primaries, was either 1:1:1 or 2:3:2.

In the picture above, each row represents a different mixing ratio of red : yellow : blue. In this case, the primaries were scarlet, lemon yellow and royal blue. I started with nine different ratios but gradually eliminated those that rarely resulted in a good neutral so that by the end I was using just six. In the best cases, any of these six could give a neutral. But across all the combinations of primaries I tried (six in all), the most reliable mixing ratios proved to be 3:2:1, 2:3:1 or 3:3:2 - i.e. the third, fifth and seventh rows in the picture above.

And the best combination of primaries? Scarlet / Golden Yellow / Royal Blue produced warm neutrals and has a bias towards green. Or Scarlet / Lemon Yellow / Royal Blue, which gives much cooler neutrals and has a bias towards blue. Magenta or Scarlet / Golden Yellow / Turquoise were also good, but only if you strengthened the yellow so that it could stand up to the turquoise.

Unsurprisingly, the worst combination from this point of view was Magenta / Lemon Yellow and either Turquoise or Royal Blue - which both yielded a lovely range of violet (above). So the next time someone tells you that mixing all three primaries together will result in "mud", challenge them to try it with those three. And if they challenge you, strengthen the yellow and mix in a ratio of either 2:3:1 or 3:3:2 and it's possible to get a grey - a blue-grey but still grey.

Colour study phase two: colour families

August 31, 2014

After my last post, of course I got back to work. I still feel I'm avoiding something - dyeing is very much in my comfort zone - but work is work.

The main activity has been dyeing colour families based on the complementary pairs I developed in June's colour study. There are different systems for doing this - the one I use is based on Leslie Morgan's - we share a fascination with this kind of study. The basic principle is that you dye three (or more) strengths of one colour and then over-dye the results with three (or more) strengths of a second, distributing the different values from the first round between the vats for the second. The outcome is twelve different values and hues out of three dye vats. This is the system I use for shibori-dyeing. It means I get a palette of shibori-dyed cloth in different colours that are all related to each other.

My colour studies are not usually about producing exact recipes for individual colours. They are more about finding sets of colour relationships. Because that is how I think about colour - no colour occurs in isolation, it has a "family" of related colours and it will look different depending on the colours you see it with. Often when I see a colour I like, it is as much about the context - the background or associated colours that set it off.

If I use a photograph or an image as a design source for a colour scheme, I don't necessarily try to match the individual colours in it. I will do some colour mixing and compare the colours in the image to the swatches in my dye book but what I'm looking for is the family (or families) of colours that will create a similar effect. There was a period when most of my work was based on the colours of a favourite painting by John Piper and for several months I worked predominantly with the family of colours I could generate from just two - Royal Blue and a rust orange that I mixed myself - extended with some Black and Dark Brown.

So the point of this latest colour study was to test the potential of the pairs of complementaries I had found in the last to produce interesting neutrals and semi-neutrals. I started with the warm primaries (Scarlet / Golden Yellow / Royal Blue), which had demonstrated the greatest potential for producing brown. Then for the sake of comparison, I moved on to the cold primaries (Magenta / Lemon Yellow / Turquoise), not expecting them to produce many neutrals, but was pleasantly surprised by the range of cool greys and blues that did result. The combined results are pinned to my studio wall in the photo at the top of this post. I love how each family has its own personality colour-wise. In the second row are six versions of the same family, as I experimented with the effect of changing the relative strength of the primaries.

When you arrange the results in a grid, the neutrals (if there are any) are almost always along the diagonal - where the "parent colours" are equal in strength and cancel each other out. Either side of that diagonal are subtle semi-neutrals - colours that are definitely blue or green or red rather than neutral, but muted, softer versions of the pure hues. If one of the "parent" colours is stronger than the other, sometimes the neutrals are shifted to a different diagonal, nearer to the weaker "parent".

I extracted the neutrals and semi-neutrals and arranged them into palettes as above. This was when I could really see and appreciate these subtle colour combinations. This is what I would be likely to work from in future. In principle I could reproduce individual shades, but in practice I'm more likely to use them as a basis for decisions on which combination, strength and ratio of dyes to use and tweak the results according to what I need.

As is the way, doing this prompted some small eureka moments and further ideas to explore. So, while I thought this would be the last major colour exercise for this year, I have an idea for a third ...

Five hundred colours on my studio wall

July 6, 2014

I finally completed this colour study this week. I had planned five variations (out of a possible eight) and ended up doing six. That's eighteen rounds of dyeing with twelve dye baths to set up and rinse out each time. Even by my standards that is a mammoth commitment. I definitely need a break and to do something else for a while now.

What I learned

This was all about dye colour theory. The point of the exercise was to explore what neutrals and semi-neutrals could be achieved by over-dyeing each colour with its complementary. I also tried this with the two split complementaries.

I learned that:

The three warm primaries (scarlet, golden yellow, royal blue) are the most likely to generate neutrals (top row, middle card in the image above). You also get some lovely earthy greens.
The three cold primaries (magenta, lemon yellow, turquoise - bottom row, middle card) are the least likely to neutralise - hardly any in fact. But replacing the turquoise with royal blue (bottom, left) resulted in some interesting blue-greys.
Green over-dyed with red or red violet was more likely to result in a neutral than other combinations.
If you only over-dye once, using the complementary is the most effective way to neutralise a colour. If you over-dye twice, the results achieved using the split complementaries are richer, more interesting and you generally get more neutrals.

Testing the effect of changing the dye strength

Following my last post, where I noted there seemed to be a bias towards green, I also tested the effect of changing the strengths of each dye concentrate. This confirmed that changing the strength of each dye in relation to the others would alter the colour. I know that sounds obvious but it was fascinating to see the effect of actually doing this. Basically, if I had mixed the yellow dye stronger and kept the red and blue equal, I would probably have had less greens and more browns. And if I had mixed the blue stronger instead, I might have seen more greys and blues.

The disadvantage of this exercise was that it was not logistically possible to try out different values of these colours at the same time. So I am planning a phase two, which will involve selecting some of the colours from these results and using them as the basis for dyeing a "family" of lights and darks. Not yet though ... I need to do something different for a while!

So, why?

Effectively I have dedicated three weeks of precious studio time to this exercise. I had plenty of opportunity while dyeing, rinsing, cutting and mounting swatches ... to contemplate why on earth I was doing this. Was it the best use of my time? I could have been drawing, making new work, preparing cloth for shibori, mark-making with thickened dye, experimenting with wax resist ... all on my studio to do list.

Part of it is just that obsessive wanting to know "what will happen if ...?" - that itch to resolve the tension between knowing the theory and not knowing what will happen in practice. The reward is all those surprise results - seeing two colours mixed together result in some gorgeous, unexpected new shade. That's the playful, self-indulgent motivation behind this exercise.

But I came to the conclusion that there is a more serious purpose. I realised last year, when I did a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell, that colour is as important to my work as mark-making. And the kind of colours I want to achieve are the subtle, hard to define ones. Which means I do need to thoroughly understand how my dyes behave and how to mix those difficult colours. So the real reward for all that labour and studio time is the learning and the mountain of information I now have that I can draw upon in all my future dyeing. It's part of the underpinning research that will help me make better work.

I'm also starting to think about developing a workshop based on this. Or maybe an ebook. I'm thinking not so much of an introduction to dyeing, but more of a colour theory for dyers course. Is there a demand for this? Would people prefer a course or some kind of online option? Leave a comment or email me via the contact form - I'd love to know what others think.

Colour study progress

June 22, 2014

A short hiatus. I went on holiday - and flooded Instagram with photos of Norfolk skies and tide lines and sunsets - and then lost three days of studio time, waiting for dye supplies to arrive. I wish I could say I made good use of the lost time but it seems I don't respond well to my plans being thwarted!

However, I've been making maximum use of studio time since to progress this colour study. At any one time, there has been one batch of cloth in rinse buckets and another batch sitting in dye, while I'm trimming and sticking swatches into my dye books. I'm now about half way through and am starting to see results.

The aim of the exercise is to explore over dyeing of complementary colours - which should yield some neutrals. There are some good, rich browns but overall I seem to be getting a bias towards green. I think this is because I have increased the strength of the yellow and blue dyes to stand up better to the red. I've decided to stick with this for the remainder of the exercise to maintain consistency of the results. Of course it helps that I like green - if I was getting loads of purple, I would probably be changing the recipe. I think it is interesting in itself to see how I can influence the colour by doing this.

My dye book is starting to look exciting. It's worth remembering that the product of this exercise will be the sample swatches in this book. All the dyed cloth is simply a by-product. Albeit one that will leave me with a glorious range of colours to use as needed. Although people who love bright colours would probably weep to see me turn them into sludgy browns and greens ...

The importance of losing pieces

April 17, 2014

“It’s important that we lose pieces. You get there faster, I think, by losing pieces, because you’re pushing yourself and you know how far to come back.”

— Dale Chihuly

I have that quote pinned to my studio wall to remind me not to be afraid of mistakes and to counter my inner control freak. Although it is possible to exercise a lot of control over the dye process, that's not the kind of dyeing I'm interested in. What I like about dye are the surprises - when you finish the drudgery of rinsing and remove the resists to see what you have. Sometimes it's not what you expected (although I can usually figure out why "that" happened these days); sometimes it's a disappointment; but sometimes it's more than you were hoping for - and that's the dance around the studio moment.

There were several things that didn't work for me in the last batch of dyeing. I felt the dye was too strong and too red. I don't think I used enough soda. And, for the effect I was after, the resists needed to be tighter. I still ended up with some lovely pieces but for the second batch, I adjusted what I was doing accordingly.

I'm very happy with these. I used the same pleat and stitch technique as before but added clamps and / or binding to preserve more white. This means you can see the under-painting, which was lost on some of the previous samples. Some of the clamps were shorter than the cloth, so I experimented with only partially clamping some samples (not shown). The results were interesting so I'm going to play with this further. The dye colours were exactly the same as the first batch, but I halved the strength and altered the brown I mixed by skimping the red and being very generous with the yellow and blue - this seemed to work and gave me an almost perfect neutral.

The disappointments in this batch were some of the over-dyed samples. This time the dye was too weak to have enough impact on some of these. Lesson learned - strong dye works better here. The "failures" are going back into the over-dye pile - if all else fails, I'll scrape a dark, thickened dye over them to get some interesting darks.

These were some of the more interesting of the rest. Some of these were over-dyed. The resists were a mixture of clamp (itajime), sticks and pole wrap.

I'm now preparing more cloth for the next batch. I have some new ideas I want to try and I'm thinking about altering the colours to get some grey-greens. I'm preparing lots of pieces because then I won't worry if some don't work out and I can be braver with the ideas I want to try - you have to be prepared to lose some.

Soft greys

April 13, 2014

Cley Beach

A short visit to Norfolk yesterday. A bright day but a band of cloud hung over the coast, filtering the light. All the colours were muted to these soft greys. We walked around Cley Marsh. The reeds, bleached by sun, wind and sea. Marsh harriers in the sky, lapwings on the field, avocets on the scrapes. The North Sea at low tide, quiet and subdued.

Arnold's Marsh

Cley Marsh

barred

reed lines

reed lines

mud lines

sand lines

and I know these colours ...

Brown ... again

January 13, 2014

I was going to call a halt to this colour study but, having gone so far, it seemed a waste not to see it through. So it was back to colour mixing again this weekend. I abbreviated the system I had devised but even so, by the last few rounds I was losing the will to live. The constant repetition of measure, mix, test, clean tools, repeat. Concentrating so as to avoid mistakes - did I just measure two parts or three? If in doubt, scrap that one and start again.

So, why was I doing this again?

The original aim was to work out my own recipes for brown. Well, I achieved that. I now have 5 different standard mixes worked out. Two cool browns, two warm red browns and a kind of brown ochre.

As a bonus, I also mixed some lovely greys. ... And who would guess that the difference between a warm grey and a cool grey would be magenta . Now I've done it, of course I can see how that would work - but I don't think I'd have figured it out in advance.

And I think that was the larger benefit of doing this. Learning to understand my dyes better and reinforce my grasp of colour theory. To mix brown and grey I had to master how to balance the relative value and hue of those bright primaries so that they would literally neutralise each other.

For light relief, I used up left over dye as I went along, making marks on linen. I don't normally use linen but I'm interested in working with more textured cloth and I think the results have possibilities ...

Mark-making on linen

All about … brown

January 8, 2014

Brown is the colour you don't want when you're colour mixing, right? Mix three primaries together and you end up with "mud". But … adding brown is also a good way to neutralise bright primary dyes to get subtle, earthy colours. I've always used a pre-mixed black and a dark brown dye alongside my six primaries to tone things down.

Until last summer I was happy to just use the dark brown I buy straight from the jar. But then I had a defective batch … and of course I only realised after I'd dyed several metres of cloth the wrong colours. So, I decided it was time to learn to mix my own.

Well. There are 21 possible combinations of six primaries (if you use both the reds, yellows and blues together as well as separately). And then there are several possible ratios of each possible combination that could result in something brownish … But after a lot of experimenting I ended up with some really interesting … greens, reds, plum, violet … amazing how often you can mix all three primaries and not get "mud". But there were also lots of browns.

Which was great, but now I need to narrow that selection down to two or three that I can use regularly.

So I spent Christmas playing with dye. Not unusual in my household. I chose a few candidates from my now vast selection of browns and tried mixing them with blue or black. I was looking for the ones that would give me a palette with lots of cool toned neutrals (and not too much red or green).

It was hard to mix consistent shades when the combination required several dyes so, now I know that for practical purposes I need mixes that use no more than four.

These are the results. I was really pleased with the palette I mixed from the last batch - some lovely greys and cool toned browns.