I want you to steal this color way. Yep. Use it for what ever you need, dyeing yarn, dyeing roving, color work for your knitting, yarn for a new weaving. Whatever you need. But here is the catch, I want you to make it your own somehow.
The one question I get asked the most is where do I find my color inspirations. In fact just a couple of weeks ago my friend Elizabeth asked that very question in the Fiber Arts Collective. Inspiration is so hard to really nail down if you are using your creative right brain. Inspirations show up subconsciously when you are just not thinking about it, and reappear when you approach your work with creative play.
So, inspired by Aston Kleon’s Book Steal Like an Artist, I am asking you to take this colorway, work with it, and figure out what you would change about it to make it look better TO YOU. What could you tweak to the shades, values, saturations, or even adding or subtracting would make your heart sing when you look at you new color way.
When I created this colorway I took the 3 primary colors with black and a touch of white. I tend to not go for true primary colors because I feel like they are so very overused and boring. I love the deep rich RED. I shifted the blue towards teal, and deepened the yellow to a deep golden color. I then squinted my eyes to check if I had a good representation in values.
Squinting your eyes shifts the color out of your vision making everything appear as shades of gray. Having a range of values from dark to light gives your work depth, and your eyes time to drink in different parts of your work. When the colors are all the same value, they fight for your attention.
I think it is also important to know, I usually name my color ways AFTER I dye them. I like to keep the subconscious inspirations flowing without the constrictions of trying to match anything. This one was called Playing With Matches.
So how would you work with this color way? What would you change? Leave me a comment below, on the FB page, or join us in the UrbanGypZ Fiber Art Collective and start a discussion. I am blown away by all the wonderful discussions sharing and interaction we have had over the last few weeks.
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Fiber artist Stacey Budge-Kamison AKA UrbanGypZ lives and works in Cary NC. She can also be found knitting in public, hammering out her latest e-course at local cafés and spinning yarns in her booth at her favorite arts festivals. A designer at heart, Stacey has decided that her mission is to help fellow knitters, crocheters, weavers and felters embrace their own style and creativity by exploring fiber art as it is a part of their everyday life and helping them embrace the title of artist no matter where they are in their journey. 
I went far afield in staying with this colorway…I had SO much fun with it though! I usually just go in and start pulling colors, 800 colors, and my yarns end up looking all similar. It was really helpful to stay within the confines of pinks/reds, blues, and yellows/golds. With black and white thrown in. Thanks again!
OMG that is awesome. Hmm…maybe this should be a regular thing in the group…what cha think?
Yes please! I would spin every day if I had a challenge like that!
Yes please! I would spin every day if I had a challenge like that!
We go sailing in the summer, so I would brighten up the red to match the stripe on our boat, I would probably darken the blue a little since Lake Michigan is pretty deep and being fresh water, it gets to be a pretty dark blue pretty quickly. It’s often cloudy here, so I would add a little more white and change the yellow to more of a sandy light brown to reflect the beach sand along the lake shore.
I like that! I bet it would look awesome