St Dwynwen part 10

Last week I calculated and submitted the class grades for all my students from the fall semester.  Over the weekend I evaluated the Student Learning Outcomes, 12 categories for each student, and submitted those.  One last task for over the break is to produce my spring syllabus and submit it for approval by the end of this week. That meant that today I could spend a little time working on art.

I completed my piece for the upcoming LOL show and delivered it last week, so next up is to continue work on my East Meets West piece, which will be the St Dwynwen project, which started as an idea almost a year ago.  I pulled a proof back in December, then set things aside to deal with Christmas cards, the end of the semester stuff, the LOL show, and many other things.  But I knew the ink on that proof would be dry enough now to experiment with colors, so late this morning I took a ride up to the Studio play with color.

When I arrived, I had a an idea of where I wanted to go.  Red for the hearts, wood colors for the spoons, the wheel, and the tool handles, and metal colors for the ferrules and blades.  All my watercolors were up at the Studio already, as was my proof. I had some tools in the car, and brought them inside with me to be a color guide.  I tried various combinations for the wood handles, including some already mixed things I had,  but in the end what I liked best was naples yellow with white, what you see in the top three tools.  The brass ferrules are made from burgundy yellow ochre, charcoal gray, and cadmium yellow, among other things.  The blades are mostly charcoal gray.  I wanted these to be accurate to the actual tools I use.  I have options with everything else.  For example, these spoons are raw sienna and white, and I've seen wooden spoons like this, but they could be changed.  The dark parts of the wheel are a burnt sienna, and the light one of my mystery old paint mixes, could stay, could change.  The one thing I hadn't planned from the beginning was the blue bar with the saint name in it, top and bottom, a mix of indigo and ultramarine blue.   I just felt like I needed to have something to go against all the warm colors, and deep blues are common on face cards.  Usually darker than this, but I wanted to keep the saint name easy to read, and made the blue a little lighter.

I'll spend some time considering this version, and soon will print a new proof, a little more carefully this time, one suitable for the upcoming show.  Got time to figure this out.