For this exercise I chose a piece of furnishing fabric with a range of subtle tones. Matching colours to images and fabrics is one of the main ways I create yarn colourways (although I'm working with dyes rather than paints). For this process I start with the base colours then paint a blob of colour each time I add a new shade/dilute with water etc. I record each step alongside the blob of the new colour. I then keep the swatches so that I have a recipe book of dye shades for future reference.
For this exercise I followed the same process with watercolour paints. As you will see from the pictures, some colours took a while! I didn't always use the final colour as the changes when the paints dried meant that sometimes earlier colours were a better match.
Starting with the base colours...
Building each shade in the fabric....
And the finished piece...
Thoughts:
Overall I think the colour matching was quite successful. What surprised me was that the hardest colour to match was the palest shade, I think because there was so little pigment needed and it had to be just the right colour before adding white/water. I also used more base colours than I anticipated. This would be an interesting exercise to repeat with dyes using the same piece of fabric.
