Thursday, March 18, 2010

St. Patrick's Day Color Study



I recently took a Color Class. I'm pretty well versed in Itten color theory and have a lot of experience creating color with a limited palette, but this Michael Wilcox School of Color class taught by locally well-known landscape painter, David Schwindt, was a course in practical color mixing. It cemented what I already knew and opened up more possibilities for creative color mixing using the Color Bias Wheel, using six primaries, instead of the usual three-primary color wheel we all learned about in school. I've probably told you more than you wanted to know....but artists are always interested in color, especially how to create the exact color in a short period of time without wasting a lot of expensive paint.
This is a color study of a beautiful cabbage that came with my corned beef. It was delicious!
I re-created the subtle hues and tints using only a violet red (quinacridone red), green-yellow (lemon yellow) and blue-green (cerulean blue), plus white. The color range available was amazing. The vibrant yellows aren't showing up so well in the photo - I'll try and get a better shot.

1 comment:

Diana Moses Botkin said...

This is especially fun!

I also have trouble sometimes getting colors to show accurately in a photo or scan of a painting. I've found that it's particularly challenging with reds and yellows sometimes.