When I was in art school I didn't see the point of studying painting because it seemed obvious to me the process was instinctive, not something that could be taught.
These days however, since I've made Print and Pattern Design my focus, I've been struggling a bit with color. Instinct can only take one so far before you start asking yourself why your choices have the effect they do.
I borrowed a copy of Johannes Itten's The Art of Color to better understand the relationships between colors. He had a couple of interesting exercises pertaining to subjective color that I thought I'd try out. These are watercolor painting using colors I am most drawn too. Essentially using instinct/intuition to create "harmonized" personal color palettes. After doing about 10 different painting, I was surprised to see how similar they all are when placed side by side.
And what did I learn about myself?
Apparently I've got about as much subtlety when it comes to color as Rainbow Bright!
this would be very helpful for me right now too! thanks for sharing, leah!
ReplyDeleteyour paintings are beautiful.
Thanks TC.
ReplyDeletethere are a bunch of other much more technical exercises in the book which I'll be doing and posting. i think it will be interesting to do these subjective color tests again after a couple of weeks of doing more precision-oriented exercises.