Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Self Portrait


This is my latest completed painting. It's a self portrait done from looking at a mirror. There is a lot going on in this painting but what is important to me now is the colors. I used blue green and red orange combinations for the face. I kept to the orange side of the spectrum but at times I did venture over to blue green. The background is red and green, the shirt is blue and orange. In each field of color I used the complement to dull the darks and shadows. The dark shadows on the shirt are actually created by adding orange to the blue. Overall I am happy with this painting. I like the intensity that is created by stroke and color contrast.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

The Death of Color



This painting is about the death of color. I find what happens with a sunset very interesting. As darkness comes the hue is sucked out of most color leaving dull browns and black. There is huge contrast created when yellow and orange sunlight pierces through the shadows. I was trying to achieve a balanced painting of dull and bright. I tried to suck the color out of anything that wasn't facing the sun. I did this by adding whites, complements, and black. When I felt the intensity levels for dull and bright were balanced the painting was finished.

For my next painting I want to try a self portrait. I plan to use red and green for my pigments. I plan to paint myself in my brown and yellow shirt. First I will cover the whole painting in red. I will add green and white to this red to get a brown and pink flesh. I hope to use these to these two colors to create a proper tone, value and intensity without having to mix in any other hue or black. This way the colors will appear to darken and dull naturally. I will be mixing other hues for my brown and yellow shirt, but I think that is pretty much it. While mixing the flesh it will be a challenge to keep the face from turning green,...it is important that I keep my mixtures on the red side of the spectrum.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Just because I cant see a color does not mean that I can't determine if it's there.

The more I study color the more I understand the extant of my colorblindness. When I mix a color wheel I can distinguish all of the colors apart and name them except from blue-violet to blue. I can always distinguish a pure Violette. I can always distinguish a blue green. Any of the other pure colors on the color wheel I have no problem with. Sometimes if I add white to a blue Violette i can distinguish it from blue. (It should be noted that I can distinguish a pure blue most of the time but I am unsure if there is Violette in it. It's the blue I understand and the blue Violette my eyes are blind to). So does this mean that these are the only colors I get confused? No, Because blue Violette can be mixed into many colors. So this means any color that has blue Violette mixed in, I stand to get confused. There is a lot of colors out there that have Blue Violette mixed in them.
If what I said above is true then I still have some unanswered questions.
Why do I get brown and green mixed up ?( I have no problem with pure green and brown.) I get greens with a lot of black mixed in confused with dark browns. An example of this is in pine trees. When I was a young painter I would paint them brown.)
From what a understand about brown in that it is a muted color. It can come from many color combinations. I believe if you mix any complement into one color it will turn brown.( Blue and orange become brown) So why do I confuse a green Hue with Brown?

I have been finding out little tricks to identify color, I think it's interesting that a non-colorblind artist would never have the need to come up with these tricks. It's something about using these tricks that is exciting. Just because I can't see a color does not mean that I can't determine if it's there

Take blue violet for example. Lets say I dont know if it is blue Violette that i have mixed. Well it's true that my eyes will not allow me to see blue Violette but they will allow me to see it's compliment, yellow orange....A color that I can distinguish 100% of the time. So to see if I have really mixed a blue Violette I can add it to yellow orange. If the mixture turns black, then I have a blue Violette. This works on a palette but in nature I can't exactly grab a peace of the sunset add yellow Orange to it and see if it turns black........Or can I?

Monday, January 7, 2008

Yellow Orange and Blue Violet


It's amazing what you can do with two colors. I first covered the canvas with yellow orange. Then I painted the balloon and landscape in it's complement blue violet. When these color compliments are added together they complete the color spectrum. This means that all the primary colors meet. As a result the colors cancel each other out and become muted. It's great that you can get so many tones without adding black. I find it important that muting of color can create contrast in two colors that almost have the same tone. If you look at the river you see that it is very muted its almost becoming no color at all. This separates it from the blue Violet trees and the yellow orange background. I want to continue working this way. Next I want to use three colors that cobine to add black. This way I will have a whole rang of bright and dull colors.

Back to the Basics

Sunday, January 6, 2008


On Saturday (1/5/2008) I attempted to reproduce a Remington. Here is the results.

Parrot


This painting was an experiment in color. I was using new colors and I wanted to paint something saturated. I chose a parrot because they are very brilliant in color. The three colors I used were Magenta, Cobalt-Turquoise and Cadmium yellow. If i were to paint this again I would use a Pure Red. The Red in this painting was made by mixing Magenta Cadmium Yellow and black. most painters say mixing in black is a mistake. I agree with this sometimes. I feel that mixing black does desaturate a color but sometimes that is just what you want. For this painting however it was a pure rich red that I wanted and this cant be achieved by mixing hue. Also, I used tube black to mix in my colors. Tube black is cheap and it shows in this painting. In the future I am going to mix my blacks. I like to mix Phalo blue and Burt Sienna to get a cool black. For a warm Black I prefer Crimson and Phalo Green. I also need to be more concerned with the temperature of colors. This again can be achieved by not mixing blacks to get a darker tone of color. Dark-tone can be created by mixing a colors complement. I am going to attempt this in my next painting.