This lesson was about color.
I must say that I didn't so much "struggle" as just not enjoy the
first process of laying down areas of color. Laying down sections of
color as a first step makes me uncomfortable. I always wonder whether I
want hard edges or soft edges, high contrast or low contrast...etc. This
time I ignored my thoughts (crazy as they may be) and really just
put down paint to deal with later. That being said, once I started the
mark making and emphasizing the color areas I loved this exercise!
I
am disappointed that overall I did not get much variation in the yellow
and will work on that in the future. The pinks and oranges, however
show a wide range of hue and saturation.
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| 1 |
I almost didn't post this one, but now that it is
scanned, It feels successful. The dramatic difference in saturation of
the 2 greens creates a great contrast. As I worked with aqua I realized
that I have 4 shades that are almost the same. I added the light blue
for some contrast. I almost never choose brown on purpose, but I'm glad I
did. Even though it isn't fantastic here, having it on my palette made
for some interesting paintings later.
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| 2 |
In #2, the yellow is more saturated than the other
colors and has almost no range in value. There are some marks in the
yellow, but they are really subtle.
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| 3 |
Starting with #3, I put yellow, magenta, and aqua
down on my palette. It wasn't until I had used up all the paint that I
realized they were essentially the primary colors!...just done my way..
--smile--
I played with hard and soft transitions here and I like having both in the same painting.
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| 4 |
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| 5 |
#5 is one of my favorites. The brown colored pencil
made that stripe feel like a wooden log. The variations in the pink are
wider in range, but there is a little more variation in the yellow than
in other pieces.
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| 6 |
In #6, I realized that I had been defining all of my
color transitions with hard lines so I left some of the pink/blue
transition undefined. I enjoy the low minimal value shift between the
pink and blue coupled with the high contrast brown.
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| 7 |
#7 is an all-time favorite color combination with
orange and aqua from across the color wheel. This has a lot going on in
the large orange field that isn't all captured in the scan.
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| 8 |
This one has some significant contrast between the
red/pink areas and the orange/brown areas along with a wide range of
values in the brown section.
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| 9 |
The highly saturated chartreuse section makes me happy and I love it against the pink.
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| 10 |
For #10, I decided to try a monochromatic color
scheme and managed to capture many values and saturations of green. I
always say that green is my favorite color, but I find it a challenge to
paint with green.
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| 11 |
In #11 I explored more gradual transitions. This was
an end-of-the-palette clean-up with titan buff that became an analogous
study through orange/red/magenta.
All in all, I found this a very successful exercise that made me look to create variety and contrast within my color choices.
