Colour Prompts

OUT & ABOUT (2015) by Anna Scott

A few years ago I came across the art of Esté MacLeod on (I think) Instagram.

Esté’s organic, colourful and playful art caught my eye so I started scrolling around and jumping along links until I found myself on her website. That is where I found #coloricombo.

'Sunday morning' by Esté MacLeod.

Starting back in 2022, Esté has been curating a swatch of four colours each week as a prompt for people to play with and discover different colour combinations. Up until last year, the colours each week were taken from a particular artwork and were complemented by the backstory of that artist.

I don’t paint or draw but the idea intrigued me, so I decided to give it a go using my threads instead of paint and stitched a couple of little pieces of embroidery. It was a lot of fun and a nice way to play with stitches and colour combinations I would not necessarily pick out myself.

‘Winter Trees’ (8cm square). Landscape with hills and trees stitched in shades of baby blue, golden yellow, khaki and dark brown inspired by colour prompt by Esté MacLeod.

The idea of Stitching a Collection

I have often thought how much fun it would be to do a series of small, stitched pieces based on the Este’s weekly prompts. - I think this year is the year. Now, I am not going to be completely crazy and attempt to stitch a piece each week - that would be slightly nuts! Instead, I will try to create twelve pieces, using the first prompt of each month.

The basic colour prompts are Free. You can find them here and follow along on Instragram with the #colouricombo to see what clever creatives from everywhere create inspired by the weekly colour prompts.

The format of the colour prompts have changed a little bit is year, with the weekly prompts being based on various sources instead of an individual artist but still followed up with an interesting back story to add to the inspiration.

#ColoriCombo

Week 1

Imagination is ancient!

2025 starts with a gentle combo of earthy tones.

Rust, Peach, Mocha Mousse & Dark Chocolate

Esté’s introduction reads: “…Prehistoric art is utterly fascinating, I fell into a virtual rabbit hole whilst looking for an image for this week’s prompt and stumbled across info about a fairly recent discovery of a long wall of rock art in the Chiribiquete National Park in the Colombian Amazon.”

The rock art of La Lindosa Guavire in Colombia's Chiribiquete National Park. | Image: Judith Trujillo Téllez, Investigador Gipri, Colombia.

There is similar art on rocks and in caves all around Australia with the oldest estimated to being 17,500 - 17,100 years old.

In 2020 Adrian and I went to Kakadu National Park on a road trip in the Northern Territory. I remember it being completely humbling, standing in the shadow of a cave wall decorated with images painted by people thousands of years ago.

I will not try to imitate or depict indigenous art in stitches – that would be strange.

One thing a lot of rock art has in common is that there often are marks or tracks between the figures and animals, which gave me the idea to draw a meandering trail of some kind…

As with other small pieces of ‘doodle stitching’ I have done in the past, I challenge myself not to overthink the design.

I simply draw the first thing that comes to mind straight onto a piece of fabric.

After rummaging through my stash for a bit, I picked a small handful of different threads – two shades for each colour.

Linen, soft cotton, stranded cotton and fine wool. I like to play with the difference in weight and texture each type of thread has to offer.

Meanderings

I have no plans for the stitches or how the colours will be used. When stitching like this, I enjoy letting the embroidery develop and come to life as I go.

I will be sharing pictures of the progress on Instagram and Facebook and (if all goes to plan) have the finished result by the end of January – Ready to start again in February.

Let’s see what happens…