testing the conductive thread. it's conductive, hurrah
I left the hoop on to stabilise it a bit whilst I had it connected to the computer. it's the tutorial on adafruit site, though I modified their circuit pattern into the circles & didn't have the clips to test it. checked it with my multimetre instead after stitching. one thing to remember is once the usb cable's connected it tends to flip the fabric. I need to play more & see if it really is now 'programmed' (I think so) ie will it run without the computer if I power it by battery/something else. but yeah, no soldering, only stitching. have to think of something else besides leds now - they seem to be the "hello world" of wearable tech
it's an adafruit flora processor + neo pixel v2 led & conductive thread. I bought some other things like a light/colour detector & flexible solar panel & more leds. will think of something to try them out
When I was in my early 20s I used to read many books about Andy Warhol. One is "Warhol" by David Bourdon. I picked it up again today and started reading / flipping through it again. I love Warhol's early commercial work — he developed a technique called "blottled line" printing. so, wanting to know more about it, I searched the net and found the following links:
"Choose a background fabric – white, black or a primary colour. Choose threads – perhaps primary colours of equal intensity. If possible find the same colour in different yarns or ribbons – matt, shiny and textured. Try working them together, mixing them and separating them. Make the knots very dense so that the background is not visible. Then work further apart so the background has its own effect on the colours. Add a third colour (different from the background or yarn), maybe a secondary colour."
This time we had to use pastel colours and "[m]ix the colours so that a gradual colour movement occurs across the sample".
I don't really like pastel colours much, but I was happy with the final piece / sample.
the photo shows both exercises:
review were you able to mix and match colours accurately?
yes, I think I was able to colour match the original colours after mixing the paints. I enjoyed the colour mixing and colour exploration exercises. it was great to see how the combinations of colours created other colours, and the variations you can create by changing the quantities of the source colours.
this exercise is to discover my "intuitive responses to colour, [my] likes and dislikes, [my] personal colour 'feel'". in exercise 1, I had to paint colours to match 3 pairs of words.
this exercise involved colour mixing and matching of real objects.
the first one I did was (half of) a pair of pliers, using watercolours:
a photo of the original
watercolours painting
the second one was a lemon, using guache paints:
months later (in August 2014), after doing a couple of short online classes with Carla Sonheim and in this case Fred Lisaius, and after doing many more paint and colour exercises in my sketch book / work book, I had painted "A pair of pears" which I think is a similar exercise to this one. I think this is much improved — I'm finally getting the hang of watercolours.
this is the original picture:
and this is the watercolour painting I made. I used new Schmincke and Winsor & Newton pan watercolours and mixed the colours. Fred explained how to do the colours in layers and had use use "wet on wet" technique. at times this was causing me problems, so I returned to Carla's "wet on dry" technique and then I found a way of getting more control of the blending once the paint had dried a bit. I like the painting so much I've dropped it off at the framers to be framed.
This exercise was similar to the previous one, though we used a postcard (or image) instead of a piece of fabric. we had to mix the colours and paint them to record the colours used in the image/postcard
this was done using watercolours also, as it's all I had with me at the time:
For this exercise, we had to find a piece of fabric, stick it to a piece of paper, then mix colours to match the fabric border and paint next to the fabric to try extend the fabric colours onto the page, seamlessly.
I enjoyed this exercise. though the hardest part was mixing enough colour to use on the whole border. I found that I had to mix some of them more than once and then ran out of paint. so, it's not perfect. but it was a good exercise to try an match the colours as closely as possible
here's the fabric and painted border. I used watercolours at first as this is all I had with me
here's the paper I used to test the colour mixing:
This exercise involved mixing colours—from page 62 of class notes:
You can dilute colours with white to obtain paler tints.
You can mix colours with black, which will take the light out of them and make them
much duller.
You can mix colours with grey which will make them less intense.
You can mix pure colours with their complementary colour to make all the darker,
duller tones of a particular colour. It is often better to mix these darker in-between colours in this way rather than using black. Black seems to deaden colour, whereas colours toned down by their complementary seem to have much more life about them.mixing colours — watercolours
I spent a while on this exercise.
initially I used watercolours as this is all I had available to me at the time.
mixing colours — guache
then, later I repeated the exercise with gouche paints.
for some of them I mixed the colours directly onto the paper:
In this exercise we had to cut different coloured squares and put smaller squares of a single colour in the centre of each larger square. to see how placing one colour against another can change the perception of the colours.
Assignment 2: Stage 1 Introduction and preparation
In this exercise we were introduced to the colour wheel as well as tone and saturation. We had to paint / create colour wheels. it was a good chance to practice mixing primary colours to make secondary colours.
A Creative Approach — Project 2 Developing your marks — Stage 6 — Using thread and yarns to create textures
In this exercise we had to use different threads and yarns to create textures.
front side:
rear side:
I tried another - with different layers of fabric, different stitches and different/multiple threads of varying weights.
close ups:
rear side:
I had made some small sketches (finding I like the A5 size, small but handy to carry around), so the stitching above is based on some of the shapes in these sketches.
Reflection:
• Can you begin to see the relationship between stitching and drawing?
yes, definitely. I can see it more and more since working on these exercises. I think I have even started to draw/sketch with stitching in mind.
• Were you able to choose stitches which expressed the marks and lines of your drawings?
yes, I learnt a few stitches including running stitch, back stitch, blanket stitch, stem stitch, chain stitch, cretan stitch, satin stitch and was able to adapt some of these to match the marks in some of my sketches.