Recently in Art Category

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.

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!

Gray
Originally uploaded by Sam Felder.

I've spent the last two weeks mixing black and white gouache paint in an attempt to create a perfect nine-step scale from white to black.

The technique is to aim for the mid-point. You start with white and then black. Once those have dried you start mixing to get a perfect halfway point. This is surprisingly difficult. Fifty-percent black in Illustrator and what the eye perceives as halfway are two different things. For the purpose of this class, the latter is all that matters. What I am trying to create are color squares that are so perfectly between their neighbors that a human observer will experience the illusion of simultaneous contrast.

To help us think about the illusions we can experience when looking at color, our professor pointed us to some examples at Edward Adelson's site at MIT. This checkerboard example was the hardest for me to accept but it does work. The same color can appear to be completely different from itself in the same design if the context changes.

These illusions are what we are trying to learn how to control. The hard part is reproducing the color correctly. I must say that as frustrating an experience as this assignment is becoming, I find that my eye is getting better. I've now painted almost a hundred swatches. At the beginning I didn't really know what to look for and now I think that I'm really getting somewhere.

Precision
Originally uploaded by feministjulie.

I turned in my first homework assignment yesterday and, thanks to many hours of careful work, earned a perfect score.

It's nice to be a student again in some sense. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the pressure to complete homework. This last assignment was profoundly frustrating. Yet I found the whole experience incredibly rewarding.

These projects are teaching me to slow down. To be patient.

Anyone who knows me realizes that this doesn't come easily. I get frustrated easily but it's high time I got over this. My work will improve dramatically by developing a little patience.

Like many web designers, I came into this field via a long and meandering path. Now that I know it's what I want to be doing I really should get better at it.

I've diligently attended many conferences, read blogs, and experiment with the latest stuff. I know all about Ajax, Web 2.0, CSS, web standards, and all the rest. What I lack is a strong foundation in the core principles of design.

Yeah I've read a few color theory books. I've learned to pay attention to everything around me for inspiration. And yet as I look at the designed world we live in, I feel that I can only pick out bits and pieces to use in my own work; a typeface here, a color combination there. What I want to is truly master the processes that undergird what I'm looking at.

A core assumption of mine is that I need to learn to work with my hands. This led to my taking a drawing class last semester. I spent the fall smearing charcoal on paper. Drawing lines and blending them until my hands were black and I had an image that reasonably approximated three-dimension. I tried working with pencils and I've tinkered with ink but nothing is quite as pliant as that charcoal. It moves with your hands. It smudges and blends into itself. You can erase it and put it back. You can darken it to jet black and lighten it to a muted gray.

But drawing is almost too advanced. You make decisions before you even start drawing. You choose to crop the image a certain way or highlight particular aspects over others. What I need is a foundations class. I need some discipline.

And that's just what I'm getting this semester. I am enrolled in Design 1: Element and Form. I've attended one class and am intimidated and excited. By the end of the semester I will have created a textbook for the course. I can do the layout and typesetting digitally but all the examples, of color wheels, gradients, etc. must be painted.

Let me add here that I have never, at least not since I was a kid, painted anything.

In this class I won't learn to paint per se. Instead, I will master color. I will understand how to make precise colors and how they work together. I will understand the fundamental concepts of form.

For my first assignment I must precisely cut out a series of shapes twelve times. I must then arrange each set on a piece of paper (that I have also hand-cut) to express each of the following twelve concepts:

1. Figure on ground
2. Figure/ground ambiguity
3. Order
4. Randomness
5. Symmetrical balance
6. Asymmetrical balance
7. Horizontal
8. Vertical
9. Emphasis
10. Movement

This sounds easy but the assignment is graded on two levels. First I get a grade for the concepts. Each tableaux must represent one, and only one, of these concepts. The second part of the grade is for my hand work.

Today I've already gone through four or five sets of shapes trying to figure out how to use the OLFA circle cutter.

This device is handy but a little unweildy.

As frustrating as it is, this is the point. I can make circles all day long in Photoshop but I don't really understand a circle, I haven't mastered it, I haven't earned it. Cutting twelve perfect circles, keeping the square I cut them out of, and cutting the rest of my shapes before I can design with them is part of the process.

This exercise, and the rest that will be expected of me this semester, will teach me patience, a patience that casually creating shapes and textures out of thin air can never create. This is the whole point for me.

The whole thing is more than a little terrifying but I trust that my instructor will teach me what I need to know when I need to know it.

Update: Julie took this picture of me working on my homework that seemed worth adding to the post.