Chapter Three – Colour study

When trying to match the colours in the stone with water colours I was surprised at how bright the colours actually are.  I mixed numerous shades and held them against the stone to find the best matches.  I wasn’t particularly pleased with the water colour versions…the colours matched well but were not capable of showing the granularity of the stone.

Adding a layer of oil pastel over the top over the water colour helped to give a more grainy appearance which better represented the texture of the stone and the mixture of colours.

Image 3.1 – water colour and water colour/oil pastel colour matches

A better representation of the colours was achieved by using layers of oil pastel.

Image 3.2 – Layered oil pastels

Chapter Two – Observations of the wall

I used dark tissue paper and a white oil pastel to take rubbings of the stone to illustrate the areas of relief.  I think that the ridges on the stone have produced marks which are distinct enough to be interpreted as stitches.

Image 2.1 – Oil pastel rubbing of the stonework

Chapter One – Choose a wall to study

Having looked at lots of stone and brickwork locally I decided to use one of the stones in the front of my house for this study.  Most of the stone buildings in this area (West Somerset) are a rich red colour but when I looked at the stone in more detail I noticed that there was a wide range of colours from rust to slate, lilac and dark purple. I thought that this would make an interesting study to try to replicate in threads.

 

Image 1.1 – Page from my sketchbook

Image 1.2 – Page from my sketchbook