Paisleys

Paisley - Everyone would have had a dress, shirt or bag in this classic tear-drop design. I did some digging online and found that this design originated in Persia (now Iran), but its name comes from the Scottish textile-producing town of ... yup, Paisley. 

I bought the book Peaceful Paisleys a while back, but had so far colored only one or two pages, and didn't complete either. It couldn't seem to hold my attention. 

Fast forward to this month, when the dratted Covid-19 virus had me working from home from Feb 7... Without the need to get dressed or commute to work, I suddenly had a bit more free time, so this book got dusted off. 

In the space of six weeks, I did four pages of paisleys (and some mandalas), the result of which you see here. Doing these was an exercise in choosing a color palette. I have a colleague who does this "by feels", so her paisleys' color palettes are pretty random, more freewheeling. I am more persnickety... or particular, though I don't necessarily think this is the better way. 

When coloring first took off among adults, much was said about it being an exercise in "mindfulness". I can see how my colleague and friend Adeline is being mindful, being present - by letting herself be carried on a feeling, not overthinking it when she picks one color over another. Then again, am I also not being mindful when I think very deliberately which six or seven colors might "go" well together?  

The first paisley is a medley in purple, my favorite color. I went for a mix of bluish/royal purple and reddish purples, and leavened it with grey as a neutral color, and some pops of blue and hot pink. 

The second palette has a more interesting back story to it.  I was reading a New York Times online interactive piece on Christian Louboutin, who told how he came to design a pair of boots featuring embroidered silk motifs. He had met some Bhutanese craftsmen, who showed him silk scarves in these colors. The resulting boot, which he has named Entre Ciel et Terre (Between Sky and Earth) has swirls of clouds and flowers. I drew my color palette from those boots.  

The third paisley... I'm rather unhappy with this. The greens are fine, and although I chose red for the alternate color because green and red are opposing colors on the color wheel, the result isn't that pleasing to me. Quite jarring, in fact. I tried to tone down the red by going over it with brown, but it didn't quite work. I'm thinking that the it would look more cohesive if the green paisleys bore some red in them as well. But I finished the green ones first and hadn't thought of using a second color then. 

Is planning ahead "mindfulness"? 

The fourth paisley was an exercise in using a pastel palette, over my seeming preference for stronger colors. Adeline had done a mandala in pastels, so I thought I'd go through the same exercise with paisleys to see how it turns out. 

Also, spring (and Easter) is around the corner, so you can call this my ode to spring, if you like. For this one, I had about half a dozen pastel shades from my Prismacolor set and didn't overthink choosing the colors. The idea of using a strong green (pea green, from my box of Derwent pencils) was an inspiration, and I think it kind of "wakes up" the page with punchy color. Green being the color of freshness, spring, rebirth, fresh starts... you get the picture.