Colour titrations

When my gal was at college doing chemistry, one of the bits of lab work she really enjoyed was titrations "the process of determining the quantity of a substance A by adding measured increments of substance B". It appealed to her sense of order and her enjoyment of methodical process, a thing she has inherited from me (though you might not think so looking at our housekeeping skills!!)

I have been doing a year's course with Christine in Studio 11 looking at colour: how colours react with each other; how to mix colours; tone, shade, saturation (intensity); all of those things that help one understand why colours do or don't work together and what their impact is on each other. It has been a very rewarding year. Our most recent exercise was looking at how mixing complimentary colours affects the saturation of the starting colour, using pre mixed liquid dye paints. I began with a vibrant green and used scarlet in various quantities to modify. It was intentionally rather unscientific, simply starting with a pure colour and mixing in small amounts of the complimentary to see where it went. We tried to keep all the mixes very close in tone, so the square looked homogenous, not entirely successful in my case as some are too dark. We created three 4x4 grids with our colour mixes, using the same pattern on each grid and leaving one square uncoloured. In this we painted a fully saturated, full strength patch of our starting colour, a much paler version of this and a full strength patch of the contrast colour. This gave us an idea of how the pure colours contrasted with those we had mixed; whether that contrast was harmonious, quiet or dynamic. 

A cool green modified with warm scarlet

Since then, I have been doing more experiments with this idea; creating greens with the warm and cool blues and yellows (royal blue/golden yellow and turquoise/acid yellow), then modifying these with warm (scarlet) and cool (magenta) reds. The warmer blue and yellow make a pretty muddy looking green, almost brown before one even starts, so there is much more brown in the top two sets, mixed with scarlet (warmest) and magenta. The cool blue and cool red sends the blends a little bit more towards grey (third mix down), a devilishly elusive colour to find. Every painted square taught me a little bit more.

Then I got into "titrating" experimentation mode. I have a wonderful little set of measuring spoons, which give me a dash, a pinch and a smidgen; respectively 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32 of a teaspoon each: brilliant for measuring out small portions of dye powder when mixing up dyes. I used the smidgen and spooned out tiny quantities of liquid dye into a mixing pot, so I knew what proportions of primaries I was mixing to get the tertiary colours

First the greens, using turquoise, royal, acid and golden. You can see the proportions carefully recorded so I know what I did in future.

Then purples

and finally the oranges

So I now have a wonderful rainbow of colours to give me at least some idea how those dyes will mix with each other. The process is, of course, dependent on my always mixing up the pure dyes with the same proportion of dye powder to liquid, but this is a pretty good guide to how they all work together, and gives me huge pleasure too. I shall take it along to my next Studio 11 class to get Christine's comments about the primary colours and what proportion of dye to liquid she uses for each. Different colours tend to be more or less dominant, so one has to adjust one's teaspoons (or smidgens) to suit.

All this mixing was, of course, much helped by music, in this case several playlists of early music and folk, set to shuffle on the iPad, singing out through my Bluetooth speaker, so I could listen for as long as the process took.

Having my converted garage space for these experiments is an enormous boon and one I am endlessly grateful for.

My "Water Music"

I was reminded of this today, because I have been playing the piano just a little bit recently, revisiting a simple Bach prelude which remains in my fingers. 

This piece is not Bach, but Chopin, Nocturne in E Minor, and has never been in my fingers. It is something my beloved Mum used to play, when I was a small child and we had moved "back" to Ganna's house in Hastings, after Dad died. I called it "Water Music" because of that wonderful flowing rippling line in the left hand.

So imagine, if you will, this little girl, twirling and swirling, arms outflung, toes pointing, using all her best ballet steps, round and round on the carpet in the drawing room, with its centre medallion,  knowing the music so well that her final dying swan was always at the heart of the motif. 

The pianist here plays it just as Mum used to - with my eyes closed, I could feel myself there.

a musical interlude

Woodstock, hippies, peace and love - you've got to be a certain generation to even know what I'm talking about. I remember commenting on a "hippie bus" some years ago and my dear heart's older grandson asked "what's a hippie?" How do you answer that one?

One of my favourite songs, and the source of one of my favourite quotes “life is for learning” is Joni Mitchell's Woodstock. I love it for its sense of celebration and idealism (though in the real world, I’m not sure butterflies would have been much use against the Luftwaffe) but which version?

Joni’s – she wrote it, though I didn't hear this version until I sought it out on YouTube some years ago

CSN&Y – she wrote it for them, and theirs was the first version I knew on their wonderful album Deja Vu - here accompanied by hippies and hippie buses

Or Richie Havens' lovely mellow version

Which is your favourite?

a day of contrasts

Yesterday was a day of wonderful contrasts. In the morning, the sun was shining in amongst the clouds and spring breezes and during a quick wander in the garden I saw the first bumble bee of this year. He was bumbling busily, and buzzily  about the early blooms, particularly taken by a hellebore we planted last year. I had hoped to catch him as he rummaged about it but he flitted off before I could take my picture. I love the way these rather shy, delicately coloured flowers are complemented by the steely silver, prickly leaves.

Two more hellebores are currently in pots on the patio, this one with it's bashful yet incredibly vivid rich pinky purple flower heads is another bought one; the one below comes as a seedling collected either from my dear one's daughter's garden, or from Cecil's cottage;

we have about 15 seedlings in various stages of growth, destined to be dotted through the garden in friendly groups to enjoy themselves and mix their genes with those we have bought. As ever, I love the idea that plants in our garden will speak to use both of themselves and of the people with whom they are associated - the garden as memory.



The crocuses were shining like golden stars in the grass, nestled at the feet of these daffodil stems, which have buds but not quite flowers as yet

Then there were the snowdrops. This one, with a tiny cyclamen just visible in the background, lives in a bed that I'm hoping to plant with a woodland feel. It's near the house, and I'm also planting primulas in a variety of colours, again in the hope they will self seed and interbreed, both with each other, and with the native primroses that are dotted about. I also have some snowdrops taken from Cecil's front garden, which I thought I'd lost, but which have overwintered in their pot, carefully husbanded down in the kitchen garden and are now nodding their heads on the patio along with the hellebores. They will be planted beneath a maple that Mum bought for me years and years ago, which has lived in a pot until now. I wanted to keep it with me through all of my house moves until I found the place where I knew I was going to stop. Last year it was given it's home in the soil.


So, a peaceful interlude in my morning's work.

Then, in the evening, we went to an event at the De La Warr Pavilion. We were given membership of this for Christmas and the tickets were offered free to members. It was a live performance of ISAM by Amon Tobin. I'd not heard of him before; it was not the sort of thing we'd have risked paying for as it was very much outside the good man's musical taste, though I had an idea what to expect, and expected it to be enjoyable. My dear daughter, rather indulgently, offered me ear plugs because - "it's going to be loud Mum" .... "yes dear"

It was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing gigs I've ever been to. A completely mesmerizing combination of sound, light and image, I cannot begin to describe it, but was on the edge of my seat almost the entire time. All I can suggest, is that you pop over to his website, or check out some of the clips on YouTube to get a brief taste of what it was all about. The music was the sort of sound that lodges deep in your chest, vibrates through your body and sends a shiver right through you from head to toes, and the images, projected onto a structure of white cubes, one of which housed him, took us through galaxies, past spaceships, firestorms, rippling water and tumbling blocks of colour and light. It was astonishing!

And some lovely music

Blue blue blue

I have been waiting years to have a meconopsis, the wonderful blue Himalayan Poppy, in my garden. The pics above were taken yesterday evening and this morning. The colour just sings, so fragile, so vivid, so so very cool, yet not chilly. The tulip, part of a gift from Brodie's Mum last weekend, they have been giving me pleasure all week.


And to continue with the blue theme, one of my all time favourite songs

... blue blue windows behind the stars ....