Op Art Apples

Creative Sketchbook, Module 1,

Chapter 2, Activity 2.2

 

Paint simple shapes with differing proportions of complementary colours to create optical colour mixing 

 

Many, many years ago, I had a black and white ‘op art’ dress in a squashed rectangle design, which looked uniformly grey from a distance, but made my eyes go googly if I looked at it too closely!  

I expected this exercise would produce a similar effect as far as colour concerned, but I don’t think it has. Nor do my paintings give any sense of movement like the ‘op art’ designs I remember from my youth. Perhaps I should have painted an apple with smaller shapes, but my eyes (by which I really mean the varifocals) aren’t up to coping with anything much smaller! I wish now I’d tried to experiment more with mixing different shapes and sizes, like I did on apple 3. It was an interesting activity, but I’m not sure I like it!

Warhol Apples Take Two...

Creative Sketchbook, Module 1

Chapter 2,
Extra Activity 1

Andy Warhol style repeating pattern of fruit/veg in pairs of complementary colours, using tints and shades in addition to hues

 

This carries the previous exercise forward a stage by introducing tints and shades, and I’m fascinated to see how complementary colours work together. I look at the colours I mix and am convinced they will clash, but once they're together they each seem to make the other look brighter. I couldn't live with that kind of design though. And my brushwork still needs attention.

Warhol Apples Take One...

Creative Sketchbook, Module 1,

Chapter 2,
Activity 2.1.

Andy Warhol style painting of fruit/veg

Complementary colours are the ‘pairs’ found on opposite sides of the colour wheel, eg yellow/purple, green/red, blue /orange. A primary colour is always opposite the secondary colour which doesn’t contain that primary colour, and complementary colours intensify each other.Using solid blocks of colour in this way made me feel like a small child again, filling in the pictures in a colouring book! I thought the patterns produced were very striking – I’d usually opt for something much less bold. It was fun to do (even if I don’t like Andy Warhol) and interesting to see just how vibrant complementary colours can look alongside each other.

 

However, it did seem to use a lot of paint (especially the green/red version, where I used the paints straight from the tubes).  And  my surface isn’t very uniform surface.

 

 

Notes to Self:

·         Never, ever, ever paint all around the edge of a shape, then try to infill, because it produces a nasty, hard line of paint which doesn’t blend in with the centre – presumably because it’s dried as you work!

·         Make sure you mix enough paint – I ran out of purple half-way through, and it was jolly difficult trying to match the colour and hide the ‘join’.

·         Painting a solid block of colour every which way looks messy. For the purposes of this exercise I guess it doesn’t matter, but for a proper painting it might. 
 

 

 

 

 

Colour Wheels

Creative Sketchbooks

Module 1, Chapter 1
Activity 1.5

Paint a Colour Wheel
 

This was interesting, building on what we’ve already done, and looking at the theory of colour on slightly more formal way, and see their relationship with each other.

To remind myself of what I have learned so far, there are: 

 

Primary Colours	Red, Yellow Blue
Secondary Colours created by mixing any two Primary Colours in equal quantities	Orange, Green, Violet
Tertiary Colours created by mixing any two Primary Colours in varying quantities	Blue Green, Yellow Green, Yellow Orange, Red Orange, Red Violet, Blue Violet

 Then there are:

Hues	The 12 base colours – three primary, three secondary and six tertiary, These are pure base colours used to make every other colour.
Tints	Paler colour created by adding white
Shades	Darker colour created by adding black

 And also:

Saturated Colours	Colour used from tube with very little water
Colour Washes	Paint mixed with water – varying amounts give different strengths of colour

 And let's not forget this (I think it's right):

Warm Colours	Have a lot of red or yellow in them, like reddish violet, or a yellowish green
Cold Colours	Have a lot of blue in them, like bluish violet, or a bluish green

 But cool and warm colours are very confusing, because the three primary colours can be warm or cool:

Colour	Warm	Cold
Blue	Prussian Ultramarine	Turquoise Cerlean Phthalo
Red	Alizarin Crimson Primary Red	Magenta Quinacrdone
Yellow	Cadmium Yellow	Cadmium Lemon

So, on the Colour Wheel we have the 12 hues around the edge, tints in the middle, and shades in the inmost circle. Each radiating strip of three colours should therefore be in the same family (I’m sure there is a name for this) and they ought to harmonise, but there’s lots more about this in the next chapter. I notice that primary colours are opposite secondary colours, but there's more about this in the next chapter as well.

The results of my colour mixing weren’t always quite what I expected, but I’m beginning to feel more confident (and competent) and the more I do, the more fascinating I think this is! 

Anyway, I did two colour wheels, one in cool colours, and the other warm, so I could see the difference between them. I wanted them to  be in the sketchbook, not in a separate container, and I didn’t want to spoil them by folding them in half, so I put each one in a plastic wallet, and threaded the holes in the wallet through the spiral of the sketchbook. It looks a bit weird, because they stick out, but it keeps them in place. There was a lot of reflection off them when I photographed them, so I've done a photo of each of them, out of the plastic wallet.

 

 

 

More Colour Magic...

Creative Sketchbooks

Module 1, Chapter 1
Activity 1.4

Mixing a Primary Colour with Black and White

 

I can only repeat what I said for Activity 1.3! There’s even more colours to be made by adding white  or black to a primary colour, and I am totally amazed at how many colours can be created from a very few tunes of paint. Anyway, if you add white to a colour it gets lighter and lighter and lighter in the most wonderful way,creating tints. I found I needed to add more white than I did previously with colours, as some of the changes were not noticeable.

 

With black, on the other hand, I found a very little goes a long, long way. You need the merest speck of black to make a darker shade (and you can always add another speck if it’s not dark enough). And black has a tendency to produce different colours, rather than simply making things darker or duller, which surprised me.

 

I have to admit, my samples look a little scruffy, but I don't suppose that matters in this context, though I could definitely improve my brush strokes.

And finally, a picture of my 'mood board' with a variety  of photos to inspire me for Activity 1.3 and 1.4. To start with, everything I put up seemed to be modern (well, modernish - not traditional at any rate) and geometric, which is odd, because I'm not a great lover of modern art (apart from Paul Klee). Possibly having to work in little squares gave me a rather skewed vision when I was looking for inspiration on colour merging and mixing! I think I'd overlooked the fact that colour is such an essential part of any painting, whether it's a conventional landscape, naturalistic portrait, or abstract. So I added some more conventional pictures, including a  photocopy of one of my mother's painted roses (because I think she's good at getting her colours just right).

 

 

 

The Magic of Mixing Colours

Creative Sketchbooks

Module 1, Chapter 1
Activity 1.3

Combine two Primary Colours to create a range of secondary colours

Oh wow, what I can say about this... I loved, loved, loved mixing colours... This was absolutely magical, like a form of alchemy - you take a colour, add a second, mix well and, abracadabra, you’ve transformed them into something different. Keep adding the second colour, drip by drip, and you create the hugest range of colours imaginable.  And there’s even more variation, depending, for example, on which tube of blue you select: ultramarine mixed with lemon yellow gives a different colour to ceruleum mixed with the same yellow. Dark and light colours give quite different results, as do cool and warm.

 

 Do all these new colours have names I wonder? Or could I give them names myself?

I played around a little with mixing colours for my wall, when I did the Embroidery Taster Module, but nothing on this scale. At that point I was inspired by Paul Klee, because I love his work, and I’d been to see the exhibition at Tate Modern, which was amazing. At the moment I’ve got pictures of some of my favourites pinned up on my ‘Ideas Board’. I keep looking at the gradations of colour in his paintings and wondering: “How did he do that?” 

 

I'm not absolutely sure if there are recommended tools for adding and mixing colours - I tried cotton wool buds (hopeless, they soak the paint up); cocktail sticks and lollypop sticks, which weren’t too bad; straws, which were a bit unwieldy; and a children's paintbrush, which was the best of all, so that’s what I used. 

I was looking for gentle transitions of colour, but I didn’t always achieve it – it was tricky controlling the drops of paint, and my colours were a bit unpredictable. Sometimes I didn’t add enough colour, so there was virtually no change, and sometimes I overdid it, and the change was quite startling, but I got better as I went along. However, I’m not sure I could reproduce the colours I made, although I suppose they act as a kind of pattern, because as long as you keep notes on what you do, you should be able to match the colours. That’s the theory anyway! I forget to make proper notes on some bits, but I should be able to work it out, because I can check the base colours with tubes of paint.

 

So, Note to Self for future... Always keep a record of what you've done, however rough itmay be, because you won’t remember it later on, and this is what happens....

I think I was playing around with madder and lemon yellow, and white... but maybe it was something completely different. So, I shall get my paints out, and hold them against the sample, and see which ones look the most similar!

And another Note to Self... Keep cleaning your painting brush thoroughly as you go along, because if you don’t it can affect your new colour. And lots of clean water is essential – dirty water affects the colours as well.

Mellow Yellow

CREATIVE SKETCHBOOKS LEVEL 2

MODULE 1, CHAPTER 1

Activity 1.2

 

Painting the surface of a cut lemon, using only one tube of yellow paint

 

This was actually quite scary! I took a photograph of my half a lemon, which was easy peasy, but then things got tricky. I sat and looked at the blank page in my sketchbook, and looked at my tubes of paints, and looked at my brushes and markers, and couldn’t pluck up the courage to put paint to paper.

Sadly, I've mislaid the photo of my lemon, but I have the notes I wrote when I looked at the cut surface as carefully as I could. 

  

I did samples of the various yellow paints I have, including a couple of acrylics and a gouache, but they handle a bit differently to water colours, and I wasn’t confident about using them. Consequently, I decided to stick with water colours.

In addition, I tried out some little sample marks, to see what would give the effect I wanted. I thought natural sponge might be good for the lines on the fleshy segments – the sponge looked a bit frondy, like the lemon pieces, but the painted effect was much too random and splodgy. So I tried painting lines to look like the ones on the lemon, using the point of a very fine brush, and the end of a small, flat brush. The lines on the real lemon seem to be slightly lighter than the surround, but I made them darker to make them stand out. 

First Effort: I worked from centre out because I thought it would be easier, but painting a colour wash circle first might have been better. I lost the pithy white bit in the centre, and ended up with seven segments instead of nine, and they look a bit seaweedy or leafy. This was a rubbish image, but I quite like the edging!

 Second Effort: Happier with this – I got the right number of segments, but they needed more colour, and the markings, created with the edge of a small flat brush are better. I built up colour on the pips and the edge of the lemon, which is darker where the zest is, and I tried to get the effect of the little dots that are there – when you look closely it’s not a solid block of colour. 

Third Effort: Disaster! Tried painting over a colour wash, but the base colour was too dark, even after I blotted it, and things just went downhill from there.

 

Overview: It’s actually quite difficult trying to reproduce something in just one colour – I found I could water the paint down to make it paler, and build up layer by layer (either with the wash or with the stronger, original colour) to get darker yellows for the rind around the edge and the pips. So even with just one tube of paint you can produce different colours, which is pretty amazing – it’s knowing how to do it that’s the problem!

 

And finally, just to show that the blog notes are more or less the same as the ones I stick into the sketchbook (although I do change the odd word here and there!)