Assignment 2: Project 3 colour - Stage 3 - Recording Colours Accurately - Exercise 1

Exercise 1

For this exercise I chose a series of colours working a sample in watercolour paints and in watercolour pencils. For each sample I started with the pure colour along the centre line.
I then...
Reduced the amount of colour (top left)
Added black (bottom left)
Added white (centre top)
Added a complementary (centre bottom)
Added a dark grey (right top)
Added a lighter grey (lower right)

My first samples were using madder carmine pencil dry-blended with chinese white, ivory black, ultramarine as the complementary, gunmetal dark grey and silver grey for the light grey.

 A similar colour grouping using watercolours - alizarin crimson with ivory black, Chinese white, sap green complementary, grey.

For the second set (same process) I chose Naples yellow and dark violet for the complementary, dry-blended...

 
 ...and wet-blended

Set three was grass green pencil and scarlet lake as the complementary. Again, dry-blended...

 ...and wet-blended

The last set was watercolour using cadmium orange and cerulean blue as the complementary.

There were interesting differences when adding black compared to adding a complementary shade. The complementary is more subtle and tends towards brown. Adding white as opposed to simply using less pigment is also quite different. Of course this wasn't a very scientific experiment as there was no measurement of the various colours used and the proportions, but it was a fun exercise.

Assignment 2: Project 3 colour - Stage 2 - Colour Perception - Exercises 1 and 2

Squares on squares - seeing how colours interrelate and how a neighbouring colour affects the way we see the colours around it.

This was my first version with small central squares in grey:

And version two with larger central squares in green

And version three - central squares in yellow:

Thoughts:
It would be interesting to do this exercise again with different colour backgrounds to see how this affects the relationship between the inner and outer squares.

As an extra exercise I tried manipulating these images in Photoshop by converting them to black and white to see what the contrasts look like when removing the colour aspect. Here are the results.

What is interesting about this is that the pink (bottom left image 2 and 2nd from left image 3) is almost exactly the same tone as the central mint/yellow square which was surprising. The reds produced the strongest contrasts which I would have expected. The grey centre squares offered very little contrast with the outer squares when seen in black and white. The mint and yellow contrasted more strongly.

Assignment 2: Building a visual vocabulary: Colour, design, printing and painting - Project 3 colour - Stage 1 - Introduction and preparation

Taking a deep breath for a major blog update on my Assignment 2 work!

Assignment 2 - Building a Visual Vocabulary: Colour, Design, Printing and Painting.

Have to say I started out this assignment with gusto, and I'm certainly looking forward to the printing and painting sections as a I love working with printed textiles and handpainting fabrics. And I am determined to relax and sketch with less anxiety.

Project 3: Colour

Music to my ears! As  a dyer by trade I live colour. Colour mixing/blending and interpretation is something I do in my own textiles work, when I tutor hand-dyeing students and when I am creating things purely for pleasure too. I even read books about colour!

That said, my work is almost entirely with dyes and dyes perform differently to paints and other media so this will be interesting with plenty to learn.

Stage 1 - Introduction and Preparation
Here are some colour wheels I created to try out different media and explore the density of the colour, the effect of blending/overlaying vs pre-mixing. I used six base colours (a warm red/blue/yellow and a cool red/blue/yellow) From these I made 12-colour wheels to create the secondary and tertiary shades.

Cotman Watercolours

 Crayola Crayons

Aquarelle watercolour pencils (overlaid on outer ring, wet-blended on inner ring)

Interestingly the watercolours and the crayons produce quite similar tones, the watercolour pencils are cooler with the purples in particular being more aubergine than, say, violet, when blended. The pencils do take on a paint-like appearance, however, when used with water. (I pencilled first then overpainted with water).