Primary Colors

My last month's challenge for my color and design class was using triads on the color wheel. At first I thought I'd do tertiary colors, but kept coming back to the primaries: red, yellow, blue. I did some researching. My first thoughts went to kids and crayola crayons, then cartoons - like looking at Dick Tracy. But then one of my art books, Itten - The Elements of Color, had a chapter titled "Form and Color", saying colors and forms have expressive values. I guess somewhere in time past the three primary colors were given three primary forms - square, triangle, and circle.

Itten said, the square, characterized by horizontals and verticals includes the cross, the rectangle and their derivatives. It corresponds to red. It symbolizes matter. The triangle owes its nature to three intersecting diagonals, including the rhombus, trapezoid, zig-zag, and their derivatives. It is the symbol of thought. The circle and it's derivatives generate a feeling of relaxation and smooth motion. It is the symbol of the spirit. Reading that made me think of the Trinity. Anyway I mulled over design compositions all month.

My teacher had said at the first class that once a student brought a basket of produce for her show-and-tell. Well it was one of those months! what with gardening demands and company, I was just about to bring a basket of produce, or something. The last day, I pulled out all my craft felt three primary color possibilities and started cutting out varieties of the three primary shapes and started machine needle felting ... something. I put a shiny stripy material over it and the machine did not like that - it shredded the material and broke some of the needles, but I liked the effect it added. I put some blue tulle over all that and needled it in too.

It's ok ... a study. It kinda created itself as I got going and just let it take shape. Kinda the way life feels at times ... things happen at the last moments, not within my control and my timing of how I want it to be.