Design 1: Painting with Color
Since completing the second major assignment for my design class, a value study in grayscale, I have been working on creating a twenty-four step color wheel.
This is both surprisingly difficult and oddly informative. Instead of starting with "pure" red, blue, and yellow, we were told to purchase Winsor & Newton Peacock Blue, Cadmium Yellow, and Bengal Rose. These cutely named colors are very similar to the three used by inkjet printers and are a terrible pain to work with The Bengal Rose is strong magenta color while the Peacock Blue starts out a little green. This means that instead of aiming for the Platonic ideal of orange, I am literally trying to eyeball an orange, a green, and a purple that represents the respective middles between my starting colors.
| Bengal Rose (note how not red this is) |
| Red (see how red this is) |
The point of this exercise is to pay attention to the subtle ways that hue changes and to learn to see colors as created from other colors. Knowing that a particular orange has more or less red in it and how to see this fact can be handy when finding complements and creating color schemes. The point is to be able to know the subtleties of color so well that I can choose the one I want without difficulty.
At least this what I tell myself.
For now the exercise seems torturous. The subtle differences in light between the "white" desk lamp in my apartment and the lights of my classroom are plaguing my work. Yet I realize that this is how color works in the world. If you look at a building carefully you will notice radical changes in the color throughout the day or in different weather. I was at my neighborhood Apple Store earlier and was struck by how different the whole place looked bathed in the intense morning sunlight beaming through the skylight than it did last time I was there at night.
The artist James Turrell has used this effect in some of his indoor installations with inspiring results.
I hadn't realized how flexible color can really be before having to work with it in this intimate way. I just hope that this revelation will keep me from going batty as I struggle to make the rest of my color wheel.
As I proceed, I'm also matching the hues to the values I used in my value study for my next major assignment: painting another version of my grayscale value study in color with exactly the same values. This means that my teacher should be able to take a black and white photograph of my second painting that appears exactly the same as my original value study.
Wish me luck!
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Who is this guy?
luck luck luck!
Maybe print this post and keep it next to you while you're working. It's a good reminder of why you're working with these damned paints.
Just remember, what doesn't kill you makes you... better at understanding color???? ;)