The blue is rather light and warm – a hint of red might be part of it, and there is also white. If you know violets, you might think of them. The blue colour is well mixed, but sometimes the original colours might show in small spots. Off-white for the ground.
description:
Make stripes with a width of slightly broad tagliatelle noodles. The distance between the stripes is around 1.5 times the stripe’s width.
accuracy:
Whenever necessary, you can make just a part of your stripe and then resume the other part. There is no need to hide this process.
tool:
Your tool should allow for pastose, but not neccessarily always continuous colour application.
Checkerboard Pattern, Formed by Groups of Grey Lines Horizontal or Vertical, on White Ground
colours:
Dark grey (think of a whale). Plain white (you won’t see much of it).
description:
In this checkerboard pattern, the squares are not black and white as they often are, but are formed through three grey parallel lines, horizontal or vertical. The lines get slightly thinner towards the ends.
(Note: A checkerboard pattern consists of two different kinds of squares. They are equal in size, but differ in appearance: often, half of the squares are white, the others are black. Squares of the same appearance only touch at their corners, while squares of different appearance share their sides. Start with one square and put on all it’s four sides a square of the other appearance. You get a cross form. Fill the remaining spaces with squares of the first appearance. Continue the pattern in all directions, alternating squares with different appearance.)
accuracy:
The distribution of the three lines is not very even, and there is some variation in their length. Rather than drawing a grid first and filling it meticulously, you might want to start making one square, adding the next, and so on, growing the pattern in all directions.
tool:
Your tool should allow continuous color application.
Randomly Distributed Spots of Colour
colours:
The brightest and therefore most obvious colour is a warm yellow. Spots of brownish orange-red. Patches of lighter and darker somehow greyish brown (think of the fur of an animal living in the woods). The overall appearance is automnal.
description:
Randomly make spots of the different colours. The shades of brown might rather be bigger and on the background, the yellow and reddish smaller and superposed.
accuracy:
No colour spot is like the other, their shapes have very different forms which derive from the tool you chose.
tool:
Your tool should allow making different forms very naturally. Also it should allow a pastose colour application.
Regular Repetition of a Big Spinose Animal
colours:
An olive hue, in two different brightnesses: a darker one for the animals, a brighter one for the space between them. Plus some very dark colour, maybe grey.
description:
An animal standing on it’s four legs. It is two times as big as an adult’s hand. The head points to the left. It has a heavy body. On it’s back, from the head to where the behind legs begin there are some twelve large spikes. Repeat this animal vertically at rather close intervals. With an offset of half an animal’s height, the vertical iteration is repeated horizontally. Imagine that if the animal would lengthen its neck it might, with it’s muzzle, be able to touch the animals in front of it as well above as below.
accuracy:
Each animal is made individually.
tool:
You might need two tools. One to make a darker outline, one to cover the plane of the animal’s body.
Big Dark Dots on Light Ground
colours:
Almost black. Cream white.
description:
A row of big dots with a distance of a bit more than the radius. The dots are lined up on a ribbon which is only slightly larger than the dots.
accuracy:
Make the dots by hand, as round as possible and as evenly dispersed as possible. However, the liveliness of the pattern arises from the hand-made character.
tool:
Your tool should allow for a continuous colour application. You could also think of some homogeniously coloured material you would cut.
This website describes tissue patterns in artworks. You might make them on your own.
Albert Anker, Les Petites Brodeuses, 1875
Lubaina Himid, Accidental Encounter, 2021
Édouard Vuillard, Madame Hessel et Lulu à la porte-fenêtre, ca. 1932
Eugène Grasset, Le Saint Pleur. Adoubement du damoisel, 1891