Wednesday 20 October 2010
Course work: Project 5, Stage 3. Laid out all my Assignment One work for review…see photo p. 53. (Tiles in floor are 30.5 cm.)
Colors are reasonably flat; some transparent colors are less than perfect in uniformity. There is some minor imprecision in paint application: this is due in part to the multiple applications required, and to a lesser extent to occasional difficulty with a mild senile tremor. My color mixing has improved, and my handling of acrylic paint has improved a little. I anticipate some continuing experimentation with color-mixing, primarily in my sketchbook.
At this point, I think that I have completed the Assignment One work. I am sure that if I repeated it from the start, I could improve it somewhat.
Reading and theoretical studies:
Johannes Itten
The Elements of Color
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961
Pp. 72-95
(In my opinion,
The Elements of Color is overrated. The language is frequently ponderous, and the translation is suboptimal. There is useful information, although it is often hard to locate or comprehend in the barely-penetrable jungle of tedious Teutonic verbosity. The irrelevant mysticism (“…the essential factor is the ‘aura’ of the person.”) and a significant number of comments that are not only absurd, but which seem tainted with Nazism (“Light blond types with blue eyes and pink skin incline toward very pure colors… A very different type is represented by people with black hair, dark skin, and dark eyes, for whom black plays an important part in the harmony.”) distract the reader and detract from the value of the book. The association of colors with specific geometric shapes is just silly, and one can easily find any number of other equally absurd statements. Some figures are presented out of logical order…the first cited in the text is No. 58. While
The Elements of Color may have some historical interest, it would seem to have limited value to the contemporary student, who can easily find more readable and better illustrated color theory texts which lack the objectionable features of this volume.)
Time today: 58 minutes
Total time for Assignment One: 89 hours 13 minutes
PAINTING ONE: STARTING TO PAINT
Assignment Two
3: Using Colour to Describe Objects
Wednesday 20 October 2010
Course work: (Project One: A Color Study, Stage One) Set up the still life again, this time on top of a filing cabinet, to bring it up closer to eye level when I am standing at the easel. I removed the light bulb, since it was generally similar in shape to the wooden pear, and because it added no color to an already low-color setup, and added a colored-glass bottle. I then lit the setup fairly strongly from the left, which produces interesting cast shadows and projects and reflects the bottle color. The colors are still analogous (red-orange-yellow) with the background a slightly neutralized green as a complement. To get a full range of color, I would have had to start over from scratch, and this does not seem to be the intent of the project.
Reading and theoretical studies:
These works by Bratby, Derain, Auerbach, Hitchens and Matisse seem to use color primarily as a means of expression, with elements of construction and impression in some:
(Images omitted from blog because of copyright concerns)
These works by DeChirico, Braque, Lempicka, and Picasso seem to use color primarily as a means of construction, with secondary elements of expression:
(Images omitted from blog because of copyright concerns)
These paintings by Hopper, Bierstadt, Monet, and Picasso seem to use color primarily to represent impression:
(Images omitted from blog because of copyright concerns)
I am certain that other observers would classify these differently, especially since two or all three components work together in many paintings. Itten does not provide the reproducible criteria for the categories that one would expect: in the absence of such clearly defined criteria, it is a matter for each individual observer to decide what impression, expression, and construction mean, and which is the dominant component in any given painting.
Peggy Hadden
The Artist’s Quest for Inspiration
Allworth Press, New York, 1999
Pp. 39-78
E. H. Gombrich
Art and Illusion (11th Printing)
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 1969
Pp. 93-115
Sketchbook work: A scribble-sketch of my still-life setup in progress, thinking about viewpoint and relationship of objects.
Time today: Two hours 25 minutes
