Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Hue/Saturation Chart


Okay, so I was reading some more through Johannes Itten's The Art of Color and he had an impressive looking plate of hue/saturation (color) chart.


I've heard of people trying to replicate this chart in order to test their color skills, and when I came across it I thought "Ok, lets give this a go".

So...


I feel as though I might have done this same exercise back in my art school days. My eye has completely changed since then and I think attempting to replicate this chart with as much precision as possible is really helpful.

Here's something interesting:


I color picked my hand-painted chart in Photoshop. It was really hard to stay honest, especially since the watercolor paint that I used gave many of the squares an uneven shade and I could kind of pick from regions that helped me make the chart look more accurate then it actually was.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Basic Instinct


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!