leaves are not green

 Frome Beaders and I have been busy doing colour. I remember from my own art school days that one tutor's favourite phrase was 'Shadows are not Grey'... always delivered in what I thought was a rather smirky way, as though all budding young artists revealed their ignorance when reaching for the tubes of ebony and china white. But he had a point, one oft repeated in art and design courses and classes. More recently revisited and explored so accessibly for us all by David Hockney in his recent and fascinating exhibition currently touring.

In another flash back to art school is the vivid memory of one of my friends falling about laughing and declaring that my leaves were 'Heather leaves, nothing like the real thing and always the same.' Fine! huff huff... she had a point but I argue that there's nothing wrong with defining your own style early on.
The reason I'm kind of rambling is that my pocket camera and I are always on the look out for interesting things... and no more so than to prove the point that nature is way more inventive and creative than we ever allow for. I fell in love with these colourful leaves at the garden centre. There will definitely be some beady interpretations, and yes, if leaf shaped, we all know what shape they'll be... Heather leaf shaped, nice pointy ended elispses with a wee stalk and cute veins... spaced at regular intervals of course.













But seriously, I'm loving magenta and chocolate coloured leaves, or raspberry ripple and lime. I also really like the white leaves with dark green sneezes. Or the achingly sombre violet and green with palest cucumber, so 1900's. Go find a leaf and be inspired too.

chasing rainbows

Rainbow swatches colour class

Yesterday we had a great workshop day at StitchnCraft in Dorset. Choosing colours for beading can be really scary, trying to find out about colour to maybe make that job easier can be totally intimidating.
So many theories, colour wheels and horrible words, analogous colours sound like they've congealed on a plate, complementary should mean side by side, shouldn't it?
Then even if you do tippy toe through the minefield of knowledge, or just plain cheat and use one of those websites that make an instant colour palette from your chosen image, oh look! they don't do that colour in glass! Doh!
Thanks to a fabulous group of students willing to laugh at the colour monster... Bahahaha!!!!!! the day wizzed by in a snowstorm of paint chips, followed by the best sound in the world, the rattle of beads in tubes as serious colour selecting took place. We even had time to bead up some test swatches so everyone could leave with the first chapter of her personal colour library beaded up. As always, I learned heaps too and have some new colour mixes to explore next time the beads come out. Thanks to everyone for coming, some of you a long way, thanks for the chocolate sins in a box (you know who you are!), and for everyone who wasn't there, here's one we made earlier...