Zen and the Art of Pattern Making

Pumpkin Detail

This is my latest entry in my journal, again I have had a lovely time playing with pattern.  I am surprised about my patience in the repetitive pattern making, but I have realised that I find it very meditative and calming.  I also am very run down at the moment and the chronic fatigue is turning my brain to a pea soup fog, so the gentle repetition is very soothing.

Pumpkin, journal page. Watercolour pencils and ink.

Not to worry as I have finally got my holiday and I have three, wonderful, fantastic and much-anticipated weeks off, where I can just relax and make all kinds of art.  How fabulous is that, I can’t think of the last time I had three weeks just to chill out.  You will be getting a lot of posts from me during this time as I share all the things I will be doing.

I saw this great picture of a pumpkin with this wild twisty stem and just had to draw it and then matched it to this fabulous pattern, I love the autumn colours and the country feel to this picture.

I found them all on Pinterest where I am collecting the best array of pictures and pins.  See me there under Karen Bailey.

Karen

Seasons of Colour – March, Autumn

I am up in my house in Castlemaine, enjoying the lovely autumn weather, this in the best time of year in Central Victoria. I am having a lazy afternoon drawing in the sun on my bed with the French windows open. It really doesn’t get better than this.

Doing well so far and have already completed March’s drawing.

All at once the seasons have turned. Autumn arrived almost instantly. The weather cooled, the nights became almost frosty and the clear sunny days of autumn are here. This is my favourite time of year. It is still warm and sunny, but the burning heat is gone. We have a long, slow descent into winter. Everything seems to relax and breath a sigh of relief to have the heat of February behind us.

I saw this pea vine wrapping around and through an old palling fence. The bright orange flowers against the weathered grey was such a striking colour combination. The leaves have not turned yet, but here is a splash of autumn orange.

Karen

Playing with Colour

Colour Swatch 1 Orignal Image

I am painting a picture for a close friend for her birthday and it is causing me a great deal of concern as it is not my usual style.  I have this vague idea in my head but it is not coming out on paper and I am having to do something I do not normally do, a lot of preliminary drawings and computer work.  I am usually really good and working things out in my head, I am lucky to be able to picture how things will look and fiddle with them without having to put them down on paper.  But this is not one of them.  (As the painting is a surprise and my friend reads this blog I cannot give too much away).

But I have persevered and after five attempts I have a rough sketch done and am now working on the colours.  These have to be right as she is an interior designer with very highly trained colour sense. No pressure at all!!!!

I want to use some paisley patterns in the picture and the lovely turquoise colours that she loves so much, but my first efforts did not work.  So I decided to break out all the colour design theory that I have learnt over the years and do some swatches.

I used pictures of paisley patterns that I had found on line that I liked the colours of and went into photo shop and made some swatches of the colours.

Colour Swatch 2

Colour Swatch 3

Colour Swatch 4

I also found this great web site that lets you play on the colour wheel with the different colour combinations, didn’t that take up a great deal of time playing.  Here are some of the results.  For those of you not familiar with some of this theory there are groups on the colour wheel that go together and have different names.  See the dots on wheel, they show you the groups and you can slide these around to find the different colour combinations you can make, while the box of colours puts them together and gives you the different values and saturations of the colours you can use.

Colour Wheel triad

Colour Wheel tetrad

Colour Wheel anologic

Colour Wheel accented anologic

Colour Wheel accented anologic 2

It is so interesting to look at the colour wheel colours and the swatches above, you can see that they match up to  certain extent, did they now the theory or was it instinctual?

Wish me luck, it is a stylised portrait and I don’t do figures that much.  I think I know my friend’s face better than my own right now and I don’t think that is quite right.

Karen

PS.  I would love to recognise where the other paisley pattern pictures came from, but I can’t find them again on the web, and I saved the images a few years ago before I was blogging and more careful to save the origins of pictures taken from the web.  Apologies if I have not credited your design.