High Minor

Our tapestry group met today and I started the actual weaving of another little tapestry - this time it is in the value key of High Minor. That means it uses only those colors with light values. It will be the tapestry that is in the lower right hand corner of the final composition.

I spent some time last week re-evaluating my yarn selection for this project. I decided I lacked purples and whites as well as some reds. So I added these. I also re-evaluated the value categories since I found it quite confusing to use numbers or percentages to refer to different value categories. I switched from an 11 step scale to a 9 step scale which was developed by Denman Ross in 1907. Hey - why re-invent the wheel?

He used the following terms to describe the different value categories - -

White
High light
Light
Low light
Mid-value
High dark
Dark
Low dark
Black

This is way easier and way more useful. You can actually talk to others using these terms and not have to really define them very much.

So for my High Minor tapestry I only used yarn from the white, high light and light categories. This would limit the actual difference between value to two steps.

The High Minor is supposed to evoke something peaceful, subtle, delicate and/or fragile. Here are the pictures of the piece in High Minor that I finished this afternoon. Seem peaceful to you? I do like how the only real contrast is between the White yarns and the High Light yarns - not too much between the Light and High Light.

I do like the contrast between the White and the High Light yarns in the lower right corner. That is what I call a two step value contrast. The one step contrasts are far more subtle. And that is good. This tells me for at least these yarns I have the three lightest categories I have separated them into fairly good value categories.

Part of my value study is to develop the actual scale for the yarns I use in my tapestries. For more information - click here.