Textiles 1 Stage 4 Colour moods and themes Exercise 2

So after doing happy/ sad, bright/dull, male/female, I did the same for some colours signifying 'Peace', and made some peaceful marks. Initially I used watercolours, because they are better at conveying peace. Unfortunately watercolours don't really show up when I try to transfer them to the computer. I did some others in gouache, so that I could do some printing and here's the result.

Peaceful marks in peaceful colours.
Well,  some more peaceful than others.
The paper came out all blue in the photo, and the colours less clean and calm.

Then I chose some colours that seemed to demonstrate the feeling of 'Dancing', and made some dancing marks.

Dancing marks in dancing colours.
This is marked as exercise 4 but it should of course read exercise 1.

Then I moved on to exercise 2 - finding pictures of colour moods or themes I am drawn to, and collecting yarns and fabrics in those colours. I found this a very engaging exercise, and spent a lot of time enjoyably sorting out bags for two colour themes. They don't have words attached to them in my head, and I am a little reluctant to give them words because I think that will make me narrow my view of the range of colours in them.

The first one is very complex, and has a large number of different colours in it, so it took me a long time to get them all together. The Klimt colours were particularly tricky because he used colours together in a way that makes them appear to be other colours unless you concentrate carefully.

Colour bag 1

I loved the way there were some very bright colours in there (orange, purple and blue) but the overall feeling was rather mysterious and slightly gloomy but rich. Like an eccentric old house that has a lot of history.

Colour bag 2

The second colour bag was more comfortable to sit with. The colours haven't come out so well in this photo (again) - they are generally richer and more glowing than they appear here. I found it difficult to match some of the colours from my cupboard and went out and bought some knitting cotton for the mustard yellow and the paler turquoise.

What I notice about this exercise is that
1. I do have very distinctive preferences for colour moods.
2. Despite this I have not always collected the colours I prefer.
3. Working out the colours by doing this exercise has led to a much richer and complex colour palette and is inevitably going to make my stuff more interesting to look at.
3. So perhaps leaving it up to my 'intuition' isn't so effective after all!

'If you are unable to create masterpieces in colour out of your unknowledge then you ought to look for knowledge.' Johannes Itten