No Flying Monkeys: Choosing Colors

No Flying Monkeys,
From Point of It All Designs

The first thing I do before I start a canvas is analyze what is in the design.  If you take a good look at the canvas I am going to blog-stitch, you'll see it is mostly black and white and red, with touches of gray (along the stockings and martini glass) and gold (shoe buckles) plus the flesh color of the hand and the green of the martini olives.

The background is nonexistent.  The design is mostly the legs and shoes and hand with the lettering floating in the background.   My first decision is what color to make the background.  With black and white and gray being neutrals, I think my main colors are red and green.  What goes well with red and green?  (I had already decided that using either red or green in the background would make the red shoes or the green olives disappear, so I wanted a third color.)

To answer that, I used Adobe's online color triad tool.  Spin the central arms so that one is on red and one is on green and the answer is medium blue.

http://tinyurl.com/nlneh48

Note that you can change the number of colors you are playing with on the left side of the website, but since I have two colors and want a third, I used the Triad.  

Next I called Lori at The Waste Knot and told her I had a 13 count canvas and wanted 2-3 shades of a medium blue thread for the background.  I sent Lori the picture above and told her to surprise me with the type of thread she sent.  (Hey!  This blog is called the Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure for a reason.  I love to stitch dangerously! LOL)  Lori sent me three shades of blue Splendor silk floss and a cream to match.  I raided my stash and came up with this--

Thread Possibilities for No Flying Monkeys

Lori's blue and cream Splendor cards are on the left side near the red flat backed crystals from The Collection.  Under them on the left is a card of pink Flair, then working to the lower right corner you see green Petite Silk Lame Braid and red Entice, three shades of lovely reds in High Cotton next to red sequins from The Collection, two spools of Kreinik's new quarter inch ribbons in two shades of gold, more High Cotton, this time in black and white, and two spools of Prescencia's gray perle cotton since I'm not certain if I want darker or lighter gray to outline the legs.  I don't know yet what I'll use from this selection or if I'll find another thread,  but it's good to have some choices laid out.  Once you start making decisions for a canvas, it gets easier as the possibilities narrow as you work.  I'm also probably going to use clear Swarovski bicones but they are pretty small and easy to lose and also don't photograph well, so they were not included in the photograph.

Next time I need to talk about all that empty background.  Stay tuned!  

Remember, I'm collecting the links for my blog stitching of this piece on the Chilly Hollow Stitch Guides blog.  As I publish my steps each Friday, I'll put the links there so everything is in one place.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright April 19, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.