Creating a colour palette and playing with paper

I decided to finalise my colour palettes; I will use the pantone decade colours, and colours extracted from my MMU photos. This means the colours used will span the entire post war modern era.

Left - pantone colours, trying to match materials. Right - final material selection.

In order to maintain a playful vibe in my work, I thought about materials that a child might have available - things that could be found around the house. So, I went through my pens, pencils, make up, pastels, threads, wool, fine liners, crayons and oil pastels to select out colours that match my palette. This means that in order to complete a decade several different materials must be used. This means that I will be able to offer people a defined selection of materials to use, sorted by colour, decade of colour or type of material in order to contribute to a collaborative colour stripe.

I also started to play with paper, using some packaging from a parcel to make different textures and shapes.

 

The above shape was made by placing several sheets of scrunched paper together and simply folding them and holding them in the middle; on the left is a front view, and on the right an aerial view. If different colours of paper were used, this would create a kind of 3D colour stripe. I like the movement from this shape and the shadows formed within it. It could be hung, mounted on the wall or rested on a surface, and it could be easily repeated.

 I'll continue to try out different ways of working with paper, and see how the colours work together. Whilst browsing in hobbycraft I saw some plain wooden matchsticks that just looked interesting, so I bought them in order to investigate how they could be put together, dyed or coloured.