Color, color, color!

I have to start with a shot of the red door.  If you've read my blog from the past when I've been at Lillian Smith Center you'll maybe recall that I've had a fascination with the red door at the basement of the cottage I've stayed in.  Here's the door in context.  The morning light is particularly beautiful as it falls across the door and the stones of the cottage.

Colors are all around here at the Center and not only on my looms.

My days are being spent with reading, note taking and weaving about color--here are a few of the things I've gotten done in the past week:

These two studies are in two different setts; on the left is 6 epi and on the right is 8 epi.  The wefts are also different weights--the left is four strands of Vevgarn, the right is four strands of 20/2 worsted wool.

Preparing to do a gray gradation for the 6 epi sett.

The gradation of the grays is at the right.  The other gradation is of the 12 colors from the color wheel, blending into each other in increments.

Yesterday I worked with studies of complements using Itten's ideas as starting points.  I began by weaving 1" squares of the intermediate complements, using five strands of weft.  One square at each side was the unmixed color, and the four squares between had the new color added a strand at a time while a strand of the other color was removed.

Here's the start, using red-violet moving to its complement, yellow-green.

The top weaving is of the complementary mixes of the intermediate hues.  The middle sample is of something else--using similar value of gray and a hue in several ways.  Middle value red and gray.  It's amazing how bluish the gray appears.  A bit of effect of simultaneous contrast at work.

So today will again be spent with weaving, reading, note taking.  I've discovered that there's an online version of Betty Edward's book about color and so I have both a print copy and an ebook version.  I'll be working more with the Albers Interaction of Color iPad app this week, too.