Reality versus Perception

In cosmic harmony with my sister, I too will write a blog about perception this week.

I have a program called Corel Painter X.  This is a digital art program which allows the user to create art either with a mouse or a pen tablet, using your choice of media such as Conte crayons, watercolors, oil pastels, pencils, whatever.  I bought it with the high hopes of becoming a better artist.  This has not happened.

What this program does superlatively, at least for me, is allow me to open a photo file of some yarn, and use the Digital Watercolor settings to approximate what this yarn would look like if I overdyed it with various colors.  It’s a fun thing to do, especially when I have some yarn that’s not up to the mark, and almost always comes out pretty accurately.

Today I took a closeup of one of the skeins of orange/pink/red from yesterday and messed around with various Painter X colors that could be approximated with dye that is on hand here.

This is the closeup of yesterday's yarn.

 

Here is the same picture, after I used Painter X to ‘overdye’ it with turquoise.  This was probably the tenth color I tried, and it was SO AWESOME…I stopped messing around with Painter X and took 2 skeins up to the dye pot immediately.  The blue areas have a neat blue/purple gradation, and the center green section runs from chartreuse through to kelly green.  You might be able to see it better by clicking on the picture.

Same image doctored with Painter X.

 

And then I dyed the actual yarn, and this is what I got.  The real problem here is that my dye solution was too weak.  That’s why the pink areas are still pinkish.  I don’t think this yarn will be happy if I try dyeing it again, so I’m stuck with this zombie barf yarn.  It may yet be pretty cool for something, but it is not quite what I’d been hoping for.

Very little actual turquoise.

 What do you suppose this yarn might be good for?  The suggestion box is open.