It is such a joy working with color swatches for latex
paint as they provide an exact idea of which colors will combine well for a custom job. The challenge for a current order
is to replicate this in acrylic for painted canvas pillow covers.
Frances created her beautiful bedroom
in pale blue with light lavender closets. The effect is calm and airy with an entire window wall letting in light diffused
by pine trees. The bed linens are pale cream; when we started to work on designs for the pillow covers and rugs we decided
to add some bold colors to liven the room up...just a little.
Preferably,
I use a light weight canvas for the pillow covers; it holds the color beautifully, washes to a soft "hand" and lasts
forever. The natural canvas color was too dark for Frances so we are going to bleach it out a bit. This will make the bold
colors we chose even more striking.
Using the color swatch for Sherwin
Williams paints, we chose Purple, Burnt Orange, Tomato Red, and Lilac for designs on the four pillows; two will incorporate
the Damask Stencil design, the same as the rug, and the other two will have the Designer Stencil. Of course the colors
have these wonderful names like, Determined Orange, Dahlia and Grandeur Plum, and Red Tomato. What fun it must be to have
a job to name the colors!
Once the colors and design were decided
upon, the challenge remained to replicate these colors in Acrylics to apply to the canvas. After 25 years of mixing paints
I seem to have the knack and all colors have been approved by the client so we are a go.
For the canvas rug I suggested a contrasting color, to "pop" out from the pale blue room.
So we went with a toned down version of the deep orange used in the Damask design we used for March House . I actually used the same orange, but again, mixed some other colors to make it more of a burnt orange.
It's reminiscent of pumpkin pie. Then we decided to go with the Purple called Dahlia for the Damask design, which will
compliment the lavender closet doors, and stand out at the same time.
At
the time of installation, the closet doors had been removed for repainting, but you can see how well the custom painted pillow
covers and the painted canvas rug work within the room. It was a delight to work with Frances, a ceramic artist in her own right, who inspired
me with her inventive use of color.
Thanks for reading!
Laurel Anderson
http://www.laurelsoriginals.com
