Group Embroidery Project – Summer Creativity Challenge, Coloring the Marigold Part 5

Time for some crayons!

Yesterday the flowers ironed on fairly well with the iron on transfer pencil that I found.

Now, the creative challenge is to figure out the colors for the Marigold. Let’s tint this felt flower with some crayons. ( I use Crayola regular crayons )

My inspiration for the Marigold was this photo online: found at: http://desktoppub.about.com/library/photos/blflower3.htm

Image courtesy of Jacci Howard Bear http://desktoppub.about.com/

From this photo, select a few crayons that may be representative of the petal colors. Here you can see a deep red, an orange, a brighter orange, a yellow and a purple for shading. Scribble a few samples until you are happy with the color combinations.

Color the petals. Here I’ve used the crayons to gradually move from the darker tones in the center of the petals to the lighter tones toward the edge of the petals.

I couldn’t see with just the red transfer outline, so I gave up and lightly relined the iron on with a Micron Pigma Pen .005 in black.

Here are all the petals colored with crayon. You also see, circled, the scribble for the stamen colors. Try out a few choices on paper then select one you like.

Here are the colors for the stamen; a bright light yellow, medium yellow, a brown and purple again for shading. Circle above on the paper is the selection for the petal colors.

Here is the entire Marigold flower head, colored. Both the circled selections show the choices for the petals and the stamen.

Here are a few selections for the leaves. They are “warm greens” to match the oranges and yellows of the Marigold. You see a light, medium and dark green here.

Here is the colored Marigold. Purple is the shade color, not black. When I learned to paint, I learned that shadows are really a mixture of 2 neighboring colors. The best choice, when that is not available, is purple. Black, they say, doesn’t really exist in nature and a purple hue is really perceived as ‘darker’ than a black shade. So, I use purple for shading. It seems to work well. 😉

Here is the Marigold in all it’s color glory. On the left you can see where I’ve added pure white highlights to the petals and just a touch on the one leaf. The white is really bright right now, but when you iron the crayon to create the tint, the white will soften.