GPP Street Team - Crusade No. 52

The lovely Michelle Ward continues her evidence series with her latest Crusade “Seasonal Wardrobe”. She poses the question “Do you change the colors of your work palette with the seasons?”

It's an interesting thought, but I haven’t been doing this long enough to notice a pattern. I started thinking about my clothes and the palette shifts from winter to summer.

There are certainly consistencies – I wear a lot of black year round. I never wear red. I do not own a single pastel color. One thing I noticed is that my winter clothes are all solid colors and my summer clothes have more patterns. The cold New England winters (and my cold New England office) mean bulky sweaters October-April. I loathe patterned sweaters. I lived through the “Cosby” era and have had enough thank you very much.

So my winter palette tends to be shades of green with denim. Shades of black and grey, with denim. Maybe some rusty orange, or deep plum – with denim. Since I wear jeans almost exclusively these days, I don’t own any blue tops. (one of my rules – can’t wear blue with denim).

(winter uniform)

The hot, muggy New England summers (and lack of air conditioning at work) bring out the floaty skirts and light tops. I wear more hot pink in the summer. Pants are light colored, so I might sneak in a blue shirt once in a while. Skirts can and should be patterned, but pants can NEVER be patterned. (another of my many fashion rules!).

(summer uniform)

Does any of this carry over into my artwork? I don’t know yet, but in the spirit of collecting evidence for future study, I took a closer look.

My work table is always covered by paper. I work on it until it’s so covered in paint it’s distracting, and then roll another sheet of paper right over it.

I excavated through a few layers of paper to see what I could learn. I saw evidence of specific projects or temporary trends (i.e. I used that stamp on everything for about 2 weeks), but what drew my eye was the common color combinations. By looking at my blotter papers it’s clear I combine orange and pink a lot. I also use blue and black, and shades of green, sometimes mixed with yellow.

I cut pieces of blotter paper and glued them to "evidence tags" then went digging through my scrap pile for further evidence. I absolutely LOVE to paint papers. I have stacks and stacks of my experiments with marbling, paste papers, gelatin printing, acrylic inks, etc. The color trend continued here and I punched circles from the abundance of supporting evidence.

Here's the 2 page spread, followed by the details of each section.

It will be fun to look back at my journals in a few years to see how my palette shifts.