Enjoying the process

Today's post was supposed to be composed of photos I had taken of my indigo-inspired 'project'...but it seems this was simply not to be. Yesterday I found myself wondering how I would get from where I was then to the position of having everything finished and ready to photograph—and today I realized that, as usual, I imagined there were more hours in the day than there actually are. I feel so very behind with the dozen different projects I am trying to complete (which is one reason the blog posts have been so few in the last several months), but it has been fun to have this indigo diversion.





I must admit that I find the idea of a lot of indigo rather overwhelming. Although indigo is one of the shades of blue that I do like, as I'd mentioned in the 'Surrounded by blue' post last month, blue is still my least favorite color. So, while collecting supplies and materials for October's challenge, I've also been thinking about which other colors indigo pairs well with. After realizing that I wasn't going to have my original project ready by tonight's ROY G BIV deadline, I decided to capture some of these 'pairings' with my camera this afternoon instead. In fact, I barely caught a few images in time (still getting used to the effects of the sun's post-autumn solstice trajectory).

The jacket of Gayle Brandeis' Fruitflesh, with that luscious deep red pomegranate, is among my all-time favorite book covers and it occurred to me that it would go well with my daughter's best-loved blue jeans (first image below). I also find the deep blue and rusty-orange of Sue Bender's cover for Everyday Sacred very striking (second image). I had intended to photograph some of my past play with indigo & olive green, but only managed to get the fresh smudge of it on the palette (last image) this afternoon. Interestingly enough, those two brands of indigo watercolors next to the olive are very different from one another. I'm not sure yet if this is going to open up more possibilities or complicate things!

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On the whole 'color' topic, my sister-in-law told me about an app—Color Vacuum—which uses the camera of handheld Apple devices to collect colors. The app is aimed at kids, but I think it sounds like a lot of fun (how useful it would have been this month!). I'm not very gadget-crazy/savvy, but this is the kind of thing that makes me sort of want an iPhone/iPod with a camera. Click here for details on how it works & to check out the very appealing interface. One of the promotional images even fits in with the indigo theme:

This month I also discovered, in the 'Utilities' folder on my mac, the DigitalColor Meter. It isolates the color of anything that the mouse hovers over + shows the RGB composition. I have been creating a few calendars for the shop, and it's been helpful to be able to pull colors from the calendar images and use them for the fonts as well.

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May you all have a colorful weekend! I hope to be back with the results of my indigo explorations very soon...