Salt Cones

On our latest trip we visited the Atacama desert and the salt flats of Uyuni in Bolivia.  This salt lake is about the size of Belgium.  Salt cones are scraped up and left to dry before being trucked off to be cleaned and marketed.  There is residual water that surrounds the cones and at sunset the colours are quite brilliant, both in the sky and on the ground.

and the real thing.

Next colour!

After an exhaustive random process (Mick picked a number) the person to decide the next colour for our challenge is................

Linda Bilsborrow

Have fun!

That perfect colour

I am so impressed with Heather's attempt's to obtain the right colour. I think for the next round we should commission her to dye enough fabric for all of us!!!!
But that's just my way of deflecting attention from my confession - I have strayed away from the original colour palette. Linda's flower reminded me of events from the past that I wanted to capture and in an attempt to avoid a pictorial representation I decided that I would create a collage. In auditioning additional fabrics I moved on from my original selection. So whilst I was very much inspired by the original there is not a lot of connection with my finished piece!

Capturing the Elusive Periwinkle

It worked! I went back to the dyeing table, and I repeated the same ratio (1 part Boysenberry to 3 parts Turquoise) but this time with very hot water. The turquoise stuck around through the "fixing" process and the result is a really good match.

It's so perplexing, Helena. Your instructor, Ann Johnston, told you to stay away from Turquoise. When I took Elizabeth Barton's course, Dyeing to Design, she specified Turquoise as one of the six primary colours we were to use to create all other colours. It was to be used with the two other cool primaries, Fuchsia and Lemon Yellow.

Time to move on, I guess?

My beautiful obsession

Okay, okay, I realize I have been a little relentless about my pursuit of the "elusive periwinkle".

Here are my latest results. I promise to drop the whole thing now. But I am by no means satisfied, and I'm wondering if those of you with more experience with dyeing might have some insight into this.

The cloth with the splotches was my experiment, mixing up various proportions of boysenberry and turquoise and applying it to white cotton with a paintbrush. The ratio I settled on, the column of splotches in the centre of the photo, was 1 part boysenberry to 3 parts turquoise. You can see how the turquoise migrated away from the boysenberry.

The nicely pressed and folded results are nowhere near as blue as they should have been. In fact they pretty much look like pure boysenberry. Is this because I didn't use extra hot water (125 degrees), which is recommended for turquoise? It looked quite blue until I added the soda ash. I am chagrined.

Advice from PRO Chemical & Dye

Vicki Jensen, Lab Manager at PRO Chemical & Dye, has suggested the MX 810 Blue Violet dyed at a 0.25% depth of shade. She added, "If that is too dark, try a 0.1% depth of shade."

You can see my gradation using MX 810 Blue Violet below.  I guess it's just impossible to capture the luminosity of that bloom in cotton!

Blue-violet, standard strength

Latest dye batch

It's definitely greyer than the colour that Linda has proposed, but I might just go with it anyway. I used 2 parts Ultra Violet and 1 part Indigo. Perhaps there's a little black in the Indigo, and it would have been a brighter result if I'd used a different blue. Linda's colour choice is beautiful, but it's tricky to reproduce! I do think my results match the "Victoria" swatch on Linda B's computer-generated palette.

That Challenging Colour

Eggplant, double strength

Spent much of yesterday dyeing gradations of fat-eighths, trying to match the colour for our next challenge.

Half blue-violet, half indigo,
standard strength

I haven't tried to find the colour in a local shop, because there aren't any local shops to speak of, and because it's such an unusual colour I decided that would be a waste of time.  

Blue-violet, standard strength

No satisfactory results so far, so will have another go at it today. Any ideas? Paint?

Have written e-mail to Pro-Chem with photo of that #@*! blossom. Will let you know if they respond.

Meanwhile, Helena, if you see something promising at Houston, please buy a little for me!

Late contribution to the - May 31st 2013 deadline - colour challenge - EGGPLANT!

‘Miniature chupah.’

In this new series using ‘color’ as a subject, I was the one to choose the first color.

I chose ‘eggplant.’

A few weeks later, our daughter became engaged and she chose eggplant as the color scheme for her wedding. 

I made the chupah (bridal canopy) .  I used their monogram which is the Hebrew letter F (Fried is our son in law’s last name) with both of their names in Hebrew within the F.

This is a miniature of the actual chupah. 

Big apologies for the lengthy delay.  

Now onto green............

Busy weekend!

Two vernissages in 48 hours. Here's a photo of Michele and me, taken in front of our side-by-side boards during a quiet moment at the Hudson Artists show.

The vernissage at Stewart Hall was great fun, with opportunities to chat with many of the other 79 artists. It was just too crowded to take any photos, but here's one taken yesterday when the gallery was quiet. That's Helena's "colour explosion" on the far left, and my two Cityscapes on the far right, with Linda Creasey Brown's two urban landscapes in the centre.

As always, the curators of the Stewart Hall show chose well from a wide variety of media, and managed to group the pieces by theme or palette, making for an effective display.

Hudson Artists Fall show

Michele Meredith and Heather Dubreuil are delighted to show their work at the annual Fall show of the Hudson Artists. More than 30 artists will be represented, and about 200 works in various media will be on display. Unframed work and greeting cards will also be available. A lovely watercolour painting by Ginette Parizeau will be raffled off in support of NOVA, a local home-nursing charity, and a tea room will be available to welcome visitors.

If you're in the area, we hope you will join us. We'll both be at the vernissage on Friday evening, and staffing the sales desk on Sunday morning.

Yay! Three members in Stewart Hall show

Every fall, Stewart Hall in Pointe-Claire puts out a call to Montreal-area artists, asking for works in a variety of media to include in their art rental collection. The standard of work chosen is always impressive, and the show always well worth a visit.

This year Heather Dubreuil, Michele Meredith and Helena Scheffer were pleased to have pieces juried into the show.  Their work will be on display in Stewart Hall's beautiful, brick-walled gallery from October 19 to December 1, 2013. Afterwards, the art will be available for rental for one year through the Art Rental and Sale Service.

The vernissage for the show is on Sunday, October 20, at 2 pm, 176 Lakeshore Road, Pointe-Claire QC.

Gallery hours are Monday through Sunday 1 pm to 5 pm and Wednesday 1 pm to 9 pm.