Woo hoo! We move into the forties this week – episode 40!!! Yay!! I love the sound of that. I’m still a couple of episodes behind (6 to be exact) but we’re making progress. So that’s all that counts right now. 🙂 This week I decided to think harmony as I created this piece. So I used very cool colors. Therefore, to achieve this, I chose threads in yellows, greens, and blues.
I chose a couple of shades and tones of each of my three colors. I had both lights and darks in each color. What that did was, to create very beautiful transparent effects in areas where some circles overlapped.
I was especially pleased with how the blue threads worked out. They blended so well in areas where I had yellow fabric as the background. It went to highlight something I’ve talked about before. That is the color
Another thing I did in this series is to return to using mainly threads to color or shade the outlines I drew with my sewing machine needle, rather than fabric.
Harmony With Threads
Coloring with thread means that in areas where I want a solid color, I needed to have my stitch lines close together. And in areas where I wanted light tone/shade, I needed to put some spaces between the stitches.
I found it interesting to work at achieving harmony, though. While some part of me wanted to jump in there with some bright and contrasting thread colors , another part was not in the mood for that. Eventually, by restraining my choice of colors, team harmony won.
It’s fun to color a drawing but a good color scheme is only created by restraint. Often when you throw every color in your toolbox at your project, you find that harmony is lost. But when you select only a few colors and stick to them you rather gain control of the narrative you want to create.
So this piece primarily became an exercise in thread shading or thread coloring as I sometimes call it. Since I had only minimal fabric coloring. As a result, the areas in which I colored with fabric became focal points. They became areas of interest which did not detract from the piece as a whole but added to its overall quality.
In conclusion, I sort of like the horizontal orientation of this piece rather than the vertical. So I’m going to deviate from the vertical presentation this week.
What are your thoughts on “All About Harmony”?
Warmest Regards,
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Love it!!! And I am also pondering your statement about ” throwing every color you have in your tool box at….”; that is a very good point to keep in mind sometimes!!!
I would like to suggest on your new website, that the dates of the original blog posts/ stitch the sketch, etc. be posted so we can reference them accordingly. Thanks again for you wonderful site, Clara!!! Joan
Joan,
The dates of the blog posts can all be found on the summary pages. When you click on Blog (up on the top menu), it gives you a list of the blog posts and their dates. You can scroll through the pages at the bottom. Also, I’ve created an easy access to all the stitch the sketch videos on the top menu under FREE RESOURCES—> Thread Sketching Videos. Here’s the direct link to the videos… http://claranartey.com/thread-sketching-videos/ . Some of the related blog posts can also be found under FREE RESOURCES–> Thread Sketching Techniques. I hope that helps.