Did you know that you can make your weaving glow?
By using color patterns that are light in the center, but taper off into darkness at the sides, you can give the impression of a glowing object.
In this draft, the center of the stripe looks like a glowing tube radiating light into a dark background:
You can intensify the feeling of glow with “double glow” (glow in both warp and weft).
In the draft below, I’ve added a second set of glowing stripes in the weft, which creates a more intense glow where the stripes cross. I call this design “Full Moon on a Frosty Night”.
That isn’t all you can do with glow, though. When you combine glow with woven pattern, magical things can happen!
Here is an 8-shaft draft, a diamond pattern:
With a single set of stripes, you can create glowing motifs:
But when you add double glow, magic happens!
The glowing stripes create intense “stars” where light stripes cross light stripes, and make the woven pattern appear where light stripes cross dark stripes. The results can be spectacular.
You can also get radically different results simply by moving the location of the glowing stripes in the woven pattern. Here are two more designs that use exactly the same draft, and the same glowing stripe design, but with the glowing stripes in different locations. Magic!
Glow and double glow will be covered in depth in our upcoming class Color Recipes 2, which also discusses depth and shading, creating and highlighting motifs, and other techniques for spectacular color. Watch for it next week!
From the Course Catalog:
Color Recipes: Plain Weave – Learn some color “recipes”, and how to combine them to create endless options for your weaving.
Color Mixing 1 – Learn about optical mixing, and how to control it in your designs
