Is There More Than One Shade of Gray?

     Are you tired of hearing about the shades of gray yet? I guess it depends on the context. I needed a sitting human figure for one of my quilts and I needed it to be a gray. But I needed it to be a greenish blue gray. The only college art class I got to take was Painting 101 and I took it only a few years ago. It was a very useful class for my art quilts. We spent a huge amount of time studying gray. We had to mix our own. The teacher could tell if we made our gray by mixing white paint with black paint. That was a big no no. We had to make our grays by mixing cadmium red light with ultra marine blue and then add white. Sometimes you need to throw in a little cadmium yellow if it has a purple tinge. We could make warm grays by having more cad red or make cool grays by having more of the blue. I learned to love all the hues of gray. I actually got (and still do) very excited when I mix a particularly wonderful hue of gray.
     One of the assignments was to paint a color wheel. It took hours and hours to get it right. It was a major homework assignment. I refer to it often to choose colors and to figure out how to mix colors. What a great class to take even though it was nothing about quilts or fiber.

my color wheel from class

      Today, I got out my paints, GAC 900, my gelli plate, some white cotton muslin, and various texture tools.

paints I used today

Notice that I used all sorts of brands of paints. I use whatever is on sale. I do mix them with GAC 900 fabric medium from Golden so that they play well with fabric, though. My first prints were a little greenish, but soon I had the right fabric.

one fabric

another fabric

Then I cut out the figure that I needed and tried it out on my quilt. It looked exactly the right color and texture.

Sitting on white paper

I won't show it yet on the quilt until the quilt is finished. The answer to the question is that yes, there is more than one shade of gray. And it is fun to mix gray. I strongly advise you to buy some cadmium red light, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow light, titanium white, fabric medium, and play. For fabric, you can use old bed sheets, old shirts, or you can buy white muslin or any other white fabric. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Gelatin Monoprinting

     I'm getting my fabrics painted for the rocks for my art quilt. To paint the fabric, I used the technique of gelatin monoprinting. Here are some photos that show the process and tools I used.

water in spray bottles, sponge brush, spoon and palette knife for mixing paints
brayer for spreading paint on gelatin plate
acrylic paints in cup, textile paints, toilet paper rolls and cardboard to add patterns to gelatin plate,
plates on which to mix paints

     I used mostly white cotton muslin. I also had some loosely woven white fabric.
     I mixed my own gray using Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Red Light and Titanium White acrylic paints. That way I can control how cool or warm the gray is. (I learned that in the only college art class I got to take ... Painting 1.) I used various other browns, some yellow, some blues to make the other colors (acrylic paints and textile paints).
    I have the gelatin in a cookie sheet (dedicated for this use only) and I made a cover for it by cutting a sheet of plastic I had from something (sorry I can't remember where it originally came from) and then I put duct tape around the sharp edges. The duct tape also acts as a nice seal against the cookie sheet. My gelatin plate is over a month old and has several spots of mold growing on it even though it has been stored in the refrigerator. But the mold spots can be a good thing, and in the case of getting fabric for rocks, it's a very good thing. The spots add a perfect texture that mimics rock textures.

The gelatin plate with the cover on it

The gelatin plate without the cover

The plastic cover with the duct tape edges

Here is a photo showing a piece of fabric getting pulled off as it is being printed.

Doesn't look so great at this stage? Just wait...

To show you some finished pieces of fabrics, I decided to "frame" parts of them up for you rather than show just the raw whole pieces. I used some L-frame pieces of white mat that another artist gave me.

This fabric will be great for rocks

I put two fabrics in this frame

Can you make out the toilet paper roll shapes?

And finally, here are Opus's and Rosie's reaction to be locked out on the screened-in patio for a few hours so that I didn't get any paw prints on the gelatin or the wet fabrics. The squirrels, birds, and lizards didn't get any attention this day.

They know how to tug at my heart strings.