Colour Studies I, II

I have been rereading a very great book on colour. Colour: A Workshop for Artists and Designers by David Hornung. (It appears that perhaps the US edition is differntly titled Color: A Workshop Approach).

Anyway - I am learning a lot more by DOING the assignments than from just READING the text. The pictures above are the results of Assignments 1 - a study using only grays, with wide value range and another with narrow value range - and 2 - study with muted colours, again narrow and wide value ranges. There are 16 assignments altogether, so it seems I have a lot more learning ahead of me.

I am reasonably pleased with my choice of values (as you can see from the black and white photo), however I found that some of my planned grays were a little colourful and some of my planned muted colours were a little gray. It seemed to me that targeting a particular value sometimes limited saturation levels which could be achieved. Then again, it also became very evident that defining exactly where gray starts and finishes on a continuous scale of saturation is a matter of opinion.

Canterbury Foothills

Two books which lately I have been reading have inspired me to try to paint more emphasis on colour and less on detail. Not because less detail is easier, but because a few of the paintings in these books looked jaw-droppingly great, without the detail that I typically try to achieve in many of my own paintings. First Wolf Kahn Pastelsand second Raw Colour with Pastelsby Mark Leach.

Both artists call themselves colorists (I am not an art historian, so please excuse me if I use incorrect terminology here). I cannot admit to liking all the paintings in both books, but some take my breath away. Maybe that's how it is when an artist interprets reality rather than copying it - maybe sometimes they get it right and intensify the emotional connectedness with the scene, and sometimes they don't.

First I painted the Poplar Shelter Belt (below), and in the last few weeks I have completed this pastel of the Canterbury Foothills. I have a long way to go before Achieving the jaw-dropping wok of the artists above, but I am very happy with my progress so far.

For the piece above I first created a textured surface by stretching a piece of watercolour paper and painting it with acrylic paint and a small foam roller. I coveredthe lower half with black pastel and charcoal, imaging that this would give the impression of shadows behind the wheat.

I like that 3 different textural finishes in the painting, the evenly blended sky, the carefully drawn mountains, and the roughly scratched in wheat fields. Each texture suits the subject very well.



The colours I used:
Sky: Schmincke Ultramarine Light (H, D)
Mountains: White, Schminke Blue-Green Deep (H, M), Caput Mortum Deep (M)
Hills: Winsor Newton Oxide of Chromium IV, Schmincke Bohemian Green (H), Grey Green II (B), Ochre Light (M, B), Olive Ochre Deep (H)
Fields: Scmincke Vanadium Yellow Light (O, D), Vanadium Yellow Deep (H, D), Permanent Yellow 3 Deep (D), Sennelier Orange Lead 37

New Bookshelf

I have gotten around to installing a new bookshelf at home. One of the shelves is reserved for my art books.