Textiles 1 Stage 3 Exercise 3

This is another colour-matching exercise, this time to a postcard that is 'particularly rich in colour.' I had a few to choose from, but most of the really richly coloured ones had a rather limited range of colours. I think I must go for that, seeing it as harmonious.

What I chose in the end was this cut out piece from a magazine, which has some tricky features in the skin in and out of shadow, transparent brown skirt, and a variety of different colours in the embroidery.

This is as far as I got with this exercise today

I found this exercise difficult.

The brown was more purple than brown, and just wouldn't look the same on the page as it did on the brush. The effect of the light on it in the top right hand corner was unexpected - that it didn't look brown/purple at all but a sort of cream. And the gouache wouldn't spread for the large area of brown, so I added some water which inevitably changed the colour. I was quite pleased with the colour of the transparent section of skirt at the bottom, but then I found I had put my brush in the wrong part of the palette, and ruined the subtle colour. And the brown section I painted between her legs under the embroidery has dried looking as if there are red blotches in it.

I had particular difficulty with the blue colour. Nothing I could add to either blue would make it look like this, and I cannot tell (as I usually can) whether it needs more green, or red, or yellow. I am stuck.

This shows how many different blues I have made to try to match the light blue embroidery.

So at this point I stopped trying to do this exercise today. Next time I will decide whether to persevere with this one, or pick a different postcard.

Looking on the bright side, the colour exercises I have done so far gave me the confidence to try to paint the autumn colours of a huge rhubarb leaf, and this is how it turned out.

Rhubarb leaf
Pencil and inks

My colour mixing page for the inks I used