Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton

Thursday, March 31, 2011

My Other Art

I don't usually post photos of the yarn I spin because I am never happy with the color quality. I've tried various settings and lighting, but the colors are rarely accurate. I decided to just forget it and throw this one out here. It would have been better to try during the day in natural light, but I didn't feel like waiting. Tomorrow something else will come along to require a goodly portion of my time and I 'll miss the blogging window. Except for being a bit more green and gray than the real stuff, this was the best setting on the camera. Everything else yielded mostly reds and oranges, which was worse than this. Maybe I should have turned off the table lamp and used the ceiling light. It looks a little better when I tilt the screen a bit. I do have a friend who has agreed to photograph my yarn, but there's always the schedule thing to work around. It's kind of hard to believe that my work used to involve photographing artifacts and doing detailed photos for archaeological sites. Oh, heck. Never mind all that. This is the creative medium that I have spent most of the past nine years on. The return to drawing doesn't mean that I will give up spinning. No way! I just feel the need to get back to that other part of myself.




11 comments:

  1. i'll be looking forward to see what your yarn 'becomes'!! :]

    about the picture taking...i agree...if u want a GOOD true picture...best to hold off for the sunlight! when i can't wait 'til daylight...it always seems to come out better with overhead ceiling light rather than desk lamp.

    ooooh...artifacts & archaeological stuff... :]

    ReplyDelete
  2. Even if the colors aren't 100% accurate, they are close enough to give one an idea (and much better than you sometimes see on websites selling yarns). You do what you can with the time you have--perfectionism just makes everyone crazy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That yarn looks positively delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  4. For me they look like soft, muted colors. Very nice!
    Seems like it would be very time consuming.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice looking stuff. Sweater - boat neck - raglan sleeves - large.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Most of the skeins were spun from fiber I dyed. It's fun to see how it turns out. I love to spin, but it can take up a lot of time.

    Clovie Boy: Except for the soft purple turning to gray and the ones that have have washed out because of the lighting, the other colors are not too far off.

    laura k: I knew better than try to photograph under those conditions, but I just gave in to impulse. I did enjoy my years as an archaeologist, especially when we were out surveying or digging, although lab work was interesting, because sometimes we never knew exactly what we had until we got the dirt all washed off.

    FFurs and KarenM: Thanks. Sometimes I think "What time?" I try to pay less attention to detail these days, but old archaeological training dies hard.

    RG: Just don't get in a hurry for it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. What pretty colors! So good to finally be able to breathe long enough to catch up on blogs...really liked your drawings, always liked the look of conte crayons but prismacolors are really just a lot of fun! When it finally does decide to warm up here, I would love to start drawing outside again, rather than just imagining the pretty colors.
    Smile today. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow! They are beautiful! Can i have some? Or can you teach me?
    Wow. You do nice work! I am in awe!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Lovely colours Melissa. Very muted and woody. I hope you find something nice to knit.

    The drawings are great work. Hands are so difficult. Definitely not my strong point. I have to photograph most of the hands I draw and then reduce the size and trace them. It is the only way I can produce anything that looks vaguely human..haha.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Lol! I should get a better camera or not use the cell phone! The yarn is actually pretty nice. Some of us spinners have a joke that we just make it to look at and pet.

    Gloria: good to hear from you again. I'm looking forward to my second class tomorrow morning. All fired up to draw something!

    Daisymum: I'd love to teach you to spin, but when I saw what you'd posted a while back, it looked like you were doing pretty well with your spinning.

    Crafty: they really do look better in person.

    Cathy: Lol! Hands were a challenge. I got some pretty tough comments from my teacher back at UT. My hangup is not being able to draw faces. Another teacher told me to quit saying that. It's true--if it has to look like someone, I can't do it, but I draw a pretty good monkey face from photos. Weird!

    ReplyDelete