Project 2 Stage 1 Introduction

I find Itten's statement about unknowledge intriguing.   I think I have some degree of unknowledge; that is to say I sometimes get it wrong.  With a bit of knowledge the success rate should improve.  It will be interesting to re-read this in a month or two and see if I still think this way.

I've been vaguely aware of the colour wheel but never looked at it closely so making a colour wheel was an interesting thing to try. First I used pencil crayons then blended them with water.  After using water colour later on I realised that I would have got a better job with them rather than crayons.

Chevreul's colour wheel

My colour wheel

My colour wheel looked very simplistic once I had read about about Chevreul (1786-1889) and his exploration of colour theory.  I think his representation of the wheel in 72 sections (Hodge, 2004) is so elegant.  Chevreul was a chemist at the Gobelins tapestry works and he was asked to investigate why certain colours looked dull in some tapestries. He found that  the colour perceived depended on the colours surrounding the one that looked dull. He described how colours relate to perception and the emotions of the observer (Hodge, 2004).  In 1839 he published The Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Colours.  The Impressionists used the findings of Chevreul to create a new way of enhancing painting effects.  This change in style was helped along by developments in the new chemical pigments available and the ease with which paints could be transported in the new metal tubes.  They were able to paints outdoors much more easily than previously.

The way the eye can be deceived was used by the Impressionists who used paint in such a way that this illusion was harnessed (by placing hues next to each other) to allow the eye to mix colours.  This is a technique known as optical colour mixing.

I used my crayons to mix complementary colours and was surprised by what I got.  The task made colour theory explained in the manual very clear.  I then tried water colour paints to see if there was any difference in the results. I achieved a much better blend of colour that was recognisably from the same source but different because of the tone used.

Water colour paints

Pencil crayons

Red and green

Water colour paints

Pencil crayons

Violet and yellow

Pencil crayons

Water colour paints

 Orange and blue

 Playtime

The whole

Vibrant

Much softer

                

I used this playtime to see what happened when I scribbled with a whole range of colours in this arbitrary way.  Some inadvertently mixed and there are places where the colour then drifted further and mixed more. Overall the effect is vibrant and pleasant to look at but there are changes in character within the whole.  The red gives a real zing but as the brush becomes less loaded things calm down and become much softer.

With what I have just learnt I can see harmonious and complementary colours  at work.  I've searched for "after image" but can't find it.  Is this because of the lack of grey I wonder?

Susie Hodge, How to Paint like the Impressionists, Collins, 2004. p 20, 21