After multiple attempts I am now happy with my new colour family. I am calling it 'traces' as I'm hoping to use it to create a new body of work based on iconic industrial buildings that no longer exist. I spent my childhood summers staying with my grandparents in a small village north of Nottingham. The area was criss-crossed with coal seams and every journey took us past pit heads. These buildings don't exist anymore but I bet most people my age who spent time in the north of England know exactly what I am thinking off.

I used magenta dye as one of the starting colours as an ironic reference to the way we tend to look at the past through 'rose tinted glasses'. Although many people mourned the loss of community when the coal industry declined I don't think anybody could remember working conditions in the pits or the polution in the surrounding areas through rose tinted glasses hence I have blended the magenta with black to the point where the colour just tips over from pink to purple. I particularly like the paler colours in the family.

Now that the colour family is fixed I've started work on creating the palette of fabrics. This could take several months as my ideas tend to evolve gradually as I work at the bench. However the way I used breakdown printing in my Still / Storm series gave results that were similar to what I have in mind for this new series. So this is where I'm starting.