Understanding the potential of a technique and colour decision making
My friend and I wanted to make some crochet turtles. Neither of us followed a pattern we just made it up. There are some techniques that I have learnt using crochet to manipulate the form that were useful here. We swapped ideas along the way, discussing what could be best. I'm always ready for a crochet problem solving related conversation!
This way of working is very relaxed. More often than not when I am making a piece that doesn't involve a pattern but is influenced by techniques that I have learnt, I don't have to unravel any errors. This can be because there are no real expectations, and a smaller project like this has no pressures like wasting yarn, (by the way I personally don't believe yarn can ever be wasted!) or making it look like the image.
What I like the most about projects like these, is they really aid the understanding of a technique. Knowing the details of a craft is the first step to being able to then input your own artistic license. After practise I have master the art of making circular forms, this is from pure practise and remembering to sometimes look at crochet with logic and creativity simultaneously. When I want to achieve a circular shape, I often create a hexagon and increase on each round, then to make a 3D form I stop the increase and continue for X rows. Here in the body and the head I have used this technique but been able to create to different looking shapes.
COLOURS! When I choose colours randomly from my stash like I did here, on reflection I feel like even though I put little consideration into them, they naturally seem to complement one another. Maybe this is just in my eyes, but I've come across this before, when I put no mindful thought into the colour, I find them pleasing to look at, maybe because I know I chose them, I wasn't influenced by an image I'd seen on a pattern. Or perhaps because they do reflect an emotion for me. This project was particularly pleasing, so happiness.
I used to think that one colour represented one emotion for someone, or influenced that emotion, and there are a lot of theories out there suggesting this. Now I am starting to think, from personal experience, that maybe it's neither colour nor emotion solely that is pleasing, but the two working together. The freedom to emotively choose a colour without influence, or without aim to create something artificially 'commercial', leaves me with a true representation of myself at that time. I don't feel that this representation can be as simple as yellow=happiness, but more as an ensemble of colour that was chosen subconsciously by freedom of preference. Sometimes if I put too much thought into my choice of colours I tend not to like them after a while, it doesn't feel natural. What I am trying to say is I think happiness can be influenced by whether or not we listen to ourselves and give ourselves what we need, regardless of a norm or emotion, there is no right or wrong, no need for comparison with others, no formula, no corresponding colour and emotion, only instinct.
Now I'm thinking about it, is this not how we used to be when we were children?
As arts and crafts relies a lot on being visual, (visual in the moment or forward thinking visions) does the memory of the process and the imprint of the colour on your mind create something post project? The instinctual choice of colour reminds me of how this project had no pressure.
No pressure, let's just make stuff :)
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