Tuesday 17 March 2015

favourite colours and holbein

Favourite colours have been on my mind these last few months, from a lovely comment left by Bobbi and also the great chat last month about favourite colours with my friends daughter Amina.  I listed off mine, and she listed hers.  as being 3 years old,  hers predictably were pink and purple but during our chat she acknowledged some other colours weren't so bad either and a few more got added to her list.  (both of us fully agreed on chips being a favourite food - conversations with the under 4s are wonderfully uncomplicated).

Part of all core studies in art college is colour studies and its pretty generic - different colour wheels and varying versions of the same still life, and generally done with about 3-6 tubes of paint.  One of the still-lifes was executed in 'favourite colours' and it was definitely the most interesting one for me and now that I am sewing again, I find I am picking up and sewing these colours.  I was curious to find the colour project notes (I couldn't find it all but found bits of colour wheels) so I thought I would mix them again - I remembered them easily enough as I remember the still life I painted in them, and also that they related to a piece of fabric (a scrap I still have that) I had been sewing at the time.  



As I was mixing, the only trickiest one was a pale yellow pink peach, I couldn't fully remember that exactly (and was a surprised that such a specific came back to me) and in general they began to remind me of the Holbein Palette, and that the tones are all very earthy and organic.



  And speaking of Holbein, I have a doodle below based on Holbein I did as a daily drawing (or doodle) challenge some years ago, and still quite like it!




I digress, the reason I put it this all down, is that I was thinking how I got into some buying habits in the last number of years that related less and less to what I essentially liked, but were based on what was in the shops, and what is in the shops are the results of fashion/trend/ and colour forecasters - and my wardrobe was beginning to accumulate a lot of grey and charcoal, and possibly looking a bit downbeat as a result. I don't know if anyone else has gotten caught in this predicament?  

My colour palette has also become useful in choosing what I buy as I am a bit more focused so my charity shop buying criteria is based on

The colour
The fabric (quality, weight and content)
The seams (less the better)
The price (in general, I like the markdowns as I like to think that this is the stuff no-one else wants so a bit more of a challenge)

I am also looking at my own wardrobe doing a bit of an edit and think my own colours are more appropriate to me and mix in with each other easily.  However, trying to get it all down to 33 pieces.................(into mind blog has rather focused me)................ well there's a real challenge!







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