Part two: Project 3 - Stage 3: Exercise 2

Recording Colours Accurately:
The last exercise was gentle, to sit and mix colours slowly and carefully; just make sure that there are no big jumps in colour..... now we have to find a brightly patterned piece of fabric and reproduce the colours at the side.

Well it sounds interesting, surely the hardest part is going to be finding a piece of fabric with a suitable scale for the design?

Exercise 2:
I went through my shelves of fabrics and narrowed the choice down.

My selection of fabrics

If the pattern was too small I felt the exercise would not work - the design at the edges of the piece of fabric would be too complicated.
If the pattern was too big, the finished result would not show enough changes in colour.

I finally found a piece of fabric, from my collection that I was happy with.
The pattern was interesting, not too big, not too small and it had some interesting colours.
I cut it into an 8cm square, glued it down onto a sheet of paper and looked hard at the colours around the edge.

My final selection

At the edge I could see blue, green, orange, brown - and all the shades of each colour.

Using gouache paint I practised mixing my colours and once I was happy with them I proceeded to paint.

As shown in the picture below I continued the colours and patterns produced at the edge of the fabric.

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Conclusion:
The gouache paint produces a flat, matt finish, whereas the fabric has a sheen to it - this didn't matter as it was only apparent once the paint had dried.

The hardest colours to mix and get right were the browns.

I was happy with the final result - you have to look hard to find the fabric in the middle of the painting. 
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Finished Page:

Mixing and matching colours to fabric