harlolearnscolortheory

[harlolearnscolortheory]

This was the piece I made with the most confidence since it was the last from the previous three. I only used gouache for the background, if only to have the acrylics sit well on a matte surface. The hue I used for the background was not so much a high-value yellow -- it was more of a yellow-orange. Therefore, the entire piece feels darker in most areas, although nothing close to tame or unsaturated! 

This may also be the first image I made that does not incorporate any lines made from an outside medium-source, like pencil or ink. I tried to make this best absolutely dedicated to colour in every sense, since I knew it would be the last piece I’d make in this class. I chose a relatively Fauvist colour palette: intense, warm red; saturated pink; bright orange; high-value greens and very dark purple for accenting... and made sure there was no metaphorical room to breathe! Naturally I made this piece about anxiety, which helped me get into a better Fauvist headspace. 

Before I forget, this is the quote by Matisse that I was trying to remember during my presentation:  

“One square centimeter of any blue is not as blue as a square meter of the same blue”

That was the mentality I was trying to use in this image - to demonstrate an understanding of a contemporary/Bauhausian approach to colour relationships. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

This is the racetrack dance. The horses are really riled up, whether for the best or the worst. Each racehorse/jockey as an outrider next to them for comfort who ride bigger and more well-adjusted horses. Before the race begins, the horses walk themselves out to stretch their legs and calm their nerves. They do this in a circle, which I always find harmony in, both in life (in a general sense) and in art (aesthetically). On the track, this is an exciting time and there’s so much to look at. If I was Neil Harbisson, a casino racetrack would sound like an orchestra. 

I did a very saturated, bright-hued-yellow wash for the background of the piece as my first step. I continued using gouache for some time and realised that the bright yellow behind any applied hue was actually far too strong for a background. The background yellow hue changed the overlayed colours so drastically that the piece could’ve only been accomplished with many gruelling, pigmented layers of gouache, which I did not have the time/expertise for. I immediately switched to acrylic and felt near-immediate satisfaction (especially by adding a tiny amount of water to every brushstroke as if trying to emulate gouache). I made the track red and varied the darkness to that red in two or three places, especially around the orange horses which would show up more naturally against it. When this didn’t work, I outlined a couple of those horses with light, high-valued blue afterward. The extra reds added in small amounts to every horse and rider helped tie the image together because it is intensely saturated and it references the space around the subjects (i.e. contrast of intervals). The high-value green horses are an obvious contrast of hue/value against the red which was intentional even from the preliminary sketches. The green horses also guide the eye around to the outskirts of the track, so there’s no part of the image that feels underwhelming. That speaks to Fauvism!

Not surprisingly, I used Le Bonheur de Vivre by Matisse as inspiration, while omitting the colours I didn’t enjoy like some of the washed-out pinks and greens. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Here’s to my last blog update! I’m really happy where I’ve come from in terms of colour. I can understand a variety of new concepts while using the proper vocabulary, and in turn this made me paint so much better. So thank you!

This painting means a lot to me, which I mentioned in class. It’s really hard and uncomfortable to watch a horse collapse on the track. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the world seems to stop moving. The horse named Alice (that was her barn name) had broken one of her back ankles during a sprint down the backstretch, which is a typical injury for racehorses but is generally lethal. When she fell to the ground, a crew was ready to “hide” the scene from the public eye by putting up an earthy-green tarp. The vets put her down behind the tarp but none of it was seen. This “show must go on” mentality prevented anyone from knowing or wanting to remember her. Alice’s death was not mentioned anywhere; social media, public articles, or even barn commemorations. In class I was worried about getting emotional or too concept-based in my discussion of the piece and really wanted to focus on colour. I’m glad you helped me say a bit about the piece in terms of its emotive qualities. 

The colour of the tarp was striking, in that I could only associate it with a horse losing their life behind it. I imagined Alice in a better place, with more grass, trees, flowers; a place to continue to run but at her own will. I pictured a swath of saturated dark and light greens -- including the colour of the tarp itself -- swarming around her as she’s content and peaceful, laying down amongst a patch of soft herbs. Alice also had a saddle blanket with a number 5 on it -- a distinguishing feature for those looking to see racehorses at a considerable distance. (This is important when it comes to betting, which brings up so much more personal bitterness in the piece.)

In relation to Fauvism, I managed to create harmonious chaos by using analogous, pseudo-earthy hues and tones of green, which reflected back from the energetic reds and pinks in the plants surrounding Alice. The reds were used to move the eye around the piece. Of course, the brightness of the hues around Alice -- including Alice herself, being the lightest hue and therefore the focal point -- helped to guide the eye to where it needed to be. With little actual planning involved in this image, I think it helped to create layers of thick, pigmented, and textured weight to the image itself which calls up the intuitive nature of fauvism (i.e. how the paintings were painted, which were with planes and/or strokes/flecks of intense colour around the canvas). The orange surrounding her was added near to last, if only because the white against the light green felt too cold and not contrasted enough. Her silhouette was also outlined with the same orange, as well as a dark reddy-brown from the background. I think some purple behind her figure would’ve helped as well, as you mentioned in class.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Assignment 8 - Op Art

One could argue that all art is optical because it is visual, right? That’s good, because I couldn’t figure out how to actually create any sort of illusion, such as after-images, hallucinogenic/converging lines, etc. I thought a good place to start might be to see how many different kinds of contrast I could place into a single image. So, I gave myself my own criteria. Make something pop forcefully, and hit all of these points:

Contrast of saturation: Yes! The slightly red-hued pink accent contrasts both the saturation of the red track and the green grass.

Contrast of value: Yes! The slight yellow and pink are both technically brighter than the green and the red at the very least.

Contrast of complements: Yes; red and green exist on opposite ends of the color spectrum. 

Contrast of extension: Yes, the highest value and most saturated color takes up most of the space, and very noticably. The red track is also shaped in a way that implies a lot of movement, so the eye is dragged way down into the picture. The accented siderails and slight concaveness of the horse help with this.

Simultaneous contrast: Yes, I think so! To demonstrate simultaneous contrast, I placed the main pink accent (really, a de-saturated red) on the red track as well as the green grass, to demonstrate its effects on the eye. The ominous red track swallows up the horse since the pink accent is more closely related to the saturated red, and is only seperated by value and not warmth. Whereas... the pink accent on the green grass shows up quite dramatically. If the track was green, everything would seem much more balanced, but wouldn’t be as punchy!

Contrast of hue: Yes, certainly because the complementary red and green are synonymous with the differentiation of hue. 

Contrast of warm and cool: Yes. Red is terribly hot and green is welcomingly cool in this piece. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Here is the last part of the assignment. I took the pre-existing color palette that I picked + manipulated from the original beach photograph and designed a new beach composition, making it only a tad bit more decernable. I wanted to have more sky and water instead of land. The orange serves its purpose even better this time, since I used less of it. The warm, saturated orange hue pops out very dramatically, yet the composition still manages to keep the atmosphere feeling less intense since the blues occupy most of the space. Again, I used the cream colors as accents. I like that the eye is drawn to the clouds more than anything. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Picture taken by Minjah on March 7th, 2017, featured on “Best Drones for Aerial Photography”

In terms of understanding color blocking, choice of color, choice of image, understanding of color in image, and refabrication of image-based colors, I think my last shot was my most successful. The highly-saturated blue and orange compete for color dominance in nature of being on opposing ends of the color spectrum, and due to their placement and space taken in the image. Since orange is warmer and is surrounded  by only cool hues it attracts the eye in immediately. The eye then travels to the obvious accent, which I have made cream-white again. I’ve been getting less picky about color-blocking which helped in the long run, because making the clouds a bar-shape and not a cloud-shape helps me to understand color relationality better than “what everything is supposed to be.” The whitecaps on the waves reflect the cloudy accent. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

“626″ taken by Davie Holme iii

This is technically close to my mom’s favourite mid-century interior design color swatch, which involves light blue, turquoise, cream, light brown, and mahogany. The color palette I’ve picked + edited is light blue, violet, cream, maroon, and dark mahogany/slight burgundy?.

After making a compositional faux-pas with my last piece, I wanted to exhibit my skills in demonstrating how a color’s space can make a big difference. I chose an image that I knew would already benefit me. The cream-colored sand takes up a little more than half the image, from the viewpoint to the landscape horizon. The mild, robin-egg-blue sky takes up the rest. I knew every other color was then allowed to be accents, especially if they happened to be darker (i.e. the red mountains) and smaller than the surrounding, cool colors. This helped me figure out the importance of color blocking to begin with. The small triangular shape of the mountains is what brings all the attention, especially with the shades of darker red well within the same occupied space. Feeling I needed one more color for reasons related to aesthetic, I added violet again, for the silhouetted mountains in the background. I think the violet helps to create a more dynamic color palette. In terms of temperature, the two red hues still dominate both colder, lighter hues so there’s no fighting between colors. In this piece, I tried to make sure I used a darker hue as an accent instead of a light one.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Original picture taken by fromthebeehivetothebay.tumblr.com (it was all written in Japanese so I couldn’t tell you their name!)

In this piece, I was attracted to the warm yellow hues. I noticed there were some dark-yellow shade too, which would give me a good dark color in the palette. It might also give me some three-dimensionality. I started out my making my Photoshop canvas completely orange-yellow, since that was the general vibe of the image. Then I added the pink-yellow as a filler color (which I picked from and increased the red-hue by a small amount just due to preference), and then the dark yellow mountainsides. In the sky-background just behind the illuminated yellow clouds, I knew that there was some light violet. At first I didn’t know whether adding violet would do much to the image, but since it provides the entire composition with the only cool hue, I thought it worked out nicely. It draws the eye into the most accented part of the image. Near the end, I realized that parts of these clouds had even brighter light coming off of them so I used a cream-white for the accent color. In the end, I liked the color palette but am not so sure about the composition itself. I think the composition would benefit from having a bigger push for one color instead of all the colors competing for space. On the other hand, I don’t think the colors themselves fight for dominance.

The palette seems triadic, with some variation. For example, the yellow, dark-yellow shade, and grey peach-pink are all very close to the same side of the theoretical color wheel providing warmth, and they all basically contrast violet. It’s a rendition of yellow vs. purple, but with a few accents added here and there.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Tetradic - “Springtime”

Springtime is a variation of my other Beach Day piece, if only because I added purple and decided to refine a drawing to its most basic components for the sake of color-based association. I was told that tetradic color schemes are the hardest to make look good, so I made boundaries for both contrasting colors, i.e. blue and orange versus purple and yellow.

If the contrasting colors occupied their own worlds, they could probably mesh well in the end, I thought. The palette was obvious to me, so I created that first and then went on to painting. Weirdly enough, I think this piece was the most cohesive from the rest since it had the easiest rules to follow. I knew exactly where each color had to go. Since the fish were the ones directing the eye, I thought that using the lightest color (in terms of hue) would be most appropriate. Originally I was wondering whether or not to use purple for the body of the fish, and yellow as accents on the fish. This wouldn’t have contrasted enough (at least in tone) against the high-value blue background, and may have left the viewer trying to debate what the yellow marks were. Again, having cyan would’ve helped me create a better purple. I took the scanning of this image into Photoshop, and manipulated the purple to look more vibrant and, well, purple-hued, whereas the physical image has a very awful, muddy purple instead.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Split complement - “Healing”

Healing is the color palette I came up with after realizing that cyan would’ve theoretically benefited me in creating another violet hue. Without violet in this piece, I would say that the entire image looks much warmer. This warmness was honestly a blessing. I like the way the dark red and dark purple echo against the greens, but only enough so that everything is still in balance. The use of a dark green and a lighter orangy-red hue adds to the overall balance of the piece, whereas if the greens were too light, they might have taken away from the main subjects of the piece. I wish I had kept the “archway” shape a bit darker too (which I may correct in my own time if only to see the effects) so that the girls would pop out even more. Like Contemplation, I used a darker background first and layered lighter pigments on top.

I was hoping the viewer would feel almost as strongly I do about the subject matter -- whether they cared for it or not -- solely based on how the colors were influencing them. Colors say a lot: this is the piece that really let me understand this message.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Triadic - “The Races”

For this piece I decided to go for a formulaic secondary color palette involving violet, seafoam green, and light orange. The light orange immediately reminded me of my job walking Thoroughbred racehorses; some of the “chestnut” horses turned a variation of gold while walking in the sun, especially if the horse was still sweaty from training. I thought, perfect! I can use light orange as my mid-tone (aka: the body of the horse) and use seafoam green and violet (including an even lighter variation of the previous light orange) as apparel-based accents.

An important disclaimer would be that I did not have a good cyan or magenta in my gouache set, which would have greatly improved the color for “violet” that I came up with. In the end this might have been the easiest piece for me to crank out since I refused to work on a background.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Analogous - “Contemplation”

I named this palette contemplation after the image content even though that wasn’t the point of the assignment, but I found that in the end it worked quite well. Nature tends to involve some very beautiful colder hues, and since the image itself is dark it tends to look even colder. Even though I allowed myself the most freedom with this piece, it exhibits my understand of intuitive and learned color very nicely. First, I painted the background with a dark blue so everything layered on top would already have a partner color to be grounded against. Some of the leaves I made were almost as dark as the background blue; providing depth. After that I layered some lighter, more saturated greens to take up the mid-tone of the piece. At first there was not enough contrast between the girl’s similar saturated green dress so I had to add another color to my palette for functionality. After that, the image still looked flat. To amp up the relational contrast of light to dark colors, I also added a very dark purple to the palette. This became the girl’s hair color. Originally it was dark blue like the background but it didn’t make her stand out very well. Contemplation was the color palette that expanded the most, if only because the image had more elements than I thought it would. All the colors still play an important role in this piece.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Complementary/contrasting - “Beach Day”

For this palette, I decided to use a fierce royal blue echoing against the brightness of a light orange. I used the same method by creating a palette and then making a simple sketch afterward. Two different tones of orange are used to contrast against blue, and ironically this makes the piece simultaneously split compliment since the lighter (and dominant) orange resembles yellow. Ideally the viewer would feel a bit more intensity to this piece than the monochromatic image, since monochromatism still exists on the same warm side of the color spectrum.

I wanted the viewer to be drawn in to the exposed parts of the girl’s floating body (since she herself is the product of vulnerability), and then to the rest of her underwater body. The fish provide even more direction for the eye to visit her, since they cave inward and are also various oranges. I think using a few fish of the same size would have done this piece more justice. I really enjoy refining an image into its most simple parts for relational analysis.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

\Monochromatic - “Self Love”

For this piece, I really wanted to express the intensity of different tones within the same hue.

I decided to use red gouache over watercolor since the pigment itself could look much less washed-out. Gouache is an expensive format, but it is alarmingly forgiving and makes the artist seem a lot more focussed with how each color will visibly interact with one another.

I played around with how many tones of permanent red I could muster while still keeping enough contrast. I didn’t want this piece to look washed out if I used too many tones. After having a limited palette that I liked, I came up with some simple yet personal sketches that I refined to have only have a few core elements-- that way, the colors would look that much more relational. The girl’s hair and the dark kitty create a visual border between her and her slightly brighter surroundings, as well as a bit more eye-candy. I wanted the eye to travel to the most saturated pigment first and I think that was achieved, if only because the background and the subject have a very direct relationship with one another in that the background helps to navigate the eye towards the subject associatively.

I wanted the viewer to feel comfortable by the content but engaged with color. This is reflected well using the various (but same) reds and contrasting it to the subject.

[harlolearnscolortheory]

Here is my final piece for the warm vs cool assignment, a couple weeks late! Instead of using a digital medium, I wanted to figure out how a more “childish” medium (pencil crayons) might come up with a more intense, intuitive response from cold vs warm colors. I’ve still been feeling anxious, and since warm and cools don’t always mesh, I decided to push for that exclusively. The saturated oranges mock the saturated blues. Through this, the yellows and magentas become more of an accent. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

1. Warm colors

I accidentally went completely head over heals for this particular self-constructed palette, as I tend to lean more heavily toward warm colors. This is supposedly a portrait of me walking to work as the sun rises behind me, but the feeling I created is more broadly applicable to the word “healing.” The saturatedness of the orange sky makes the scene feel very visceral. My intention was to not mock any specific scene, but to evoke some kind of strong emotion. 

An issue I have with this piece is that the figure is a bit hard to make out, if only because the tone is all quite similar across the board, with no strong dark colors. 

[harlolearnscolortheory]

2. Cool colors

I wanted to emulate the horse barn I work at, often very early in the morning before the sun comes up. It’s always quite dark in the barn anyway, even if the sun is out. I wanted to dramatize that situation by making everything in various blues: dark, vivid blue for the absolute darkness, and lighter, saturated blues for the midtone, if only to bring the eye’s attention to the focal point of the image; the horse. I used only a small amount of bright, light blue to demonstrate that some light existed in the image. I used a limited color palette similarly to how Monet would avoid using “realistic color,” as he was more focussed on the relationships between the colors rather than painting light. In using different shades of blue and playing with the saturatedness and lightness/darkness of the colors, I feel as though everything is well situated to the eye. I think it describes how I feel quite genuinely while working with horses and that is, totally at peace.