All Out Pattern
February 25, 2017
Inspirational Art
Okay … so you know how I’ve been saying all week that you can’t lean on pattern alone. Well, I meant it but there is one kind of exception to that rule and that is, if you are going to do a lot of pattern, go all out with a lot of variation and then be reserved in other design elements so it doesn’t look messy. And this is what I mean by that.
Louise Fischer Cozzi focuses on pattern a lot. She will silkscreen, image transfer, etch, stamp or whatever suits to get the pattern down. I know this would have been made after she got more heavily into silkscreening but I can’t actually say whether any of it is. But that is fairly irrelevant because the idea is that you can see what using a lot of pattern, and successfully, looks like here.
There are more patterns here than I have been able to count but for all that chaos of pattern, there is this very clean collection of circles carrying it all along. Some variation in size and solid versus donut type circles mix it up some, but they are placed at regular intervals to keep everything orderly. A little order in the chaos allows the viewer to enjoy the variety without feeling lost in it. Plus this works as both a necklace and a belt so for those of us that like versatility, this piece has quite a bit going for it.
Louise does a lot of wholesale and a lot of shows so you don’t see her stuff bouncing around the internet too much. To see her latest work, just pop over to her website or check out what she is selling to us mere mortals in her shop.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Focus on pattern this weekend–bit it silkscreen, stamps, image transfers or even hand made marks. You could pick one pattern and see how many ways you can use it. It could be an accent on a bead or the background on a vase upon which you lay other elements. How does the use change how you see the pattern? Or go for an all out piece like the one here, using as many patterns as you can while keeping the design in check.
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Balancing Silkscreens
February 23, 2017
Inspirational Art
As mentioned yesterday, silkscreen is great for adding pattern to a piece but you want to be careful that you don’t lean too heavily on the pattern to carry your design. As fun and novel as silkscreening can be for the maker, it is still just a visual texture. Something else has to come into play.
So, of course, I had to check out Helen Breil’s silkscreened pieces because I knew she’d have a fabulous example for us. This gorgeous bracelet gets energy and an interesting texture from the silkscreen but if it weren’t for the color choices of gold against a rich red and the undulating form, the pattern would not be overly interesting. But with texture, color and form combined, we have a very dramatic and energetic piece. Let’s not forget the anchor of that black focal point. Without it, all the movement and energy might be a bit much but the button in the middle gives the eye a place to rest before heading back out to take in beauty of this great combination of elements.
Of course, Helen’s shop is an excellent source of silkscreens as well as instruction on how to use them. You can find both on her website here and her Pinterest board of examples here. Also take a look at her video classes, including her new Magnetic Pendants class, all on her website.
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Many Faces of Silkscreen
February 21, 2017
Inspirational Art
I just realized the other day, as I was admiring a slew of silkscreen work by one Noelia Contreras, that I don’t think I’ve ever spent a week admiring this little gem of technique. So as I keep focused on fixing a couple snags that are in the way of getting the Spring issue off to the printer, let’s admire a some nice silkscreens and look at ways it can be used.
Noelia’s set seen here shows a number of applications for silkscreened clay. It works as a background, a foreground, a peek-a-boo ground (yes, I just made that up) and even to create singular objects to raise about the surface. I enjoy these pieces because they all have focal points, some more subtle than others, but it is more than just a swath of pattern. What I assume are brooches on the right side are probably my favorite designs because of the energy of their shape, just off-center focal point, and the couple of layers there that lead to a small spot of negative space. A bit of the cloth those will be set against will be framed in those negative spaces which integrates the brooch and its background. It’s a nice touch.
The silkscreen and patterns are the primary focus in these pieces, which can be a little tricky. Just using lots of pattern can make for weak design if the artist depends on it to be the sole point of interest. As much as we might like a pattern, it needs contrast and context, at the very least, to create strong design. Here there is a mix of pattern that invites the viewer to find relationships between pattern choices and enough contrast in other design choices, including those bold black outlines, to show the pieces were well thought out. You can see alternate views of most of these pieces on Noelia’s Flickrphotostream and in her website gallery.
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Scratching Through
February 18, 2017
Inspirational Art
To finish up a stretch of blog posts on vessels, I have for you this interesting ceramic vessel done in a style easily translated into polymer. The technique is referred to as sgraffito. The beautiful texture and imagery are created by scratching into a surface that reveals a contrasting surface beneath it.
This vase is the work of Terri Kern whose choice of large bold scratches add to the illustrative and dreamy quality of her imagery. The way she has to work in ceramics makes the process all the more impressive. “Black is painted on in a small section and while it’s still wet, a carving tool is used to carve away the black to reveal the color underneath. It normally takes as long to apply black as it does to apply all the other colors combined on any given piece.”
This is where polymer would have the advantage. Although I have only done this in small decorative swathes, it is quite easy to lay a very thin layer of clay on top of a thick contrasting color, run it through the pasta machine until the top layer is even thinner and then you can scratch or carve the raw clay. It has got to be faster than the process necessary to scratch wet glaze out on ceramic clay. You can also shape and cure the polymer layers and then scratch or carve the surface afterwards since cured polymer, especially when still warm, is quite easy to carve.
The two approaches yield a different kind of mark with soft edges in raw clay and very sharp and smooth edges in cured clay. Although I have not tried it, I imagine you could apply a very thin layer of raw clay to a cured piece and scratch the raw clay which would create a uniformly shallow mark. It would be fun to try and I have it on my to-do list!
I was thinking you could also go over the scratched areas with paint, the way you apply an antiquing effect. I got the idea while I was analyzing Terri’s work since it looks like some colors would have been laid back in after scratching. That could really add up to some beautifully complex and intriguing color.
You can also use oil paints on raw clay as shown here by Kate of Kalinkapolinka. This is actually the page through which I found Terri’s very intricate work. Want to see more from Terri? Go to her website here.
Weekly Inspiration Challenge: Scratch out a little something this weekend. Whether you try one of the sgraffito ideas listed here or just scratch at the clay for textural purposes, let you mind go as you doodle-scratch your way to some interesting effects and imagery.
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Following the Rooftops
February 16, 2017
Inspirational Art
I so need something bright and cheery as we prepare for serious flooding level storms out here in Southern California. What a winter we are having! I wish it were snow though. Much less messy. But here we are, under cloudy skies, waiting for the deluge.
So, in looking for a couple more bowl style containers to share this week, I was delighted to find this beauty by the equally beautiful Nevenka Sabo. Her work lately has been so intensely bright and cheery. It was just the thing for a day such as this.
I love that she breaks away from the standard bowl form and cuts the lip of it to follow the roof tops of her little neighborhood. The bright blue interior and the mixed colors of the houses add to the playful look. The fully saturated colors are well matched to the illustrative look of the imagery on the pieces she creates. It’s just a wonderfully done, fun piece. If you like this, you’ll want to see the other views of it on her Flickr photostream.
Nevenka has been working with this technique for a couple of years now with really eye-catching results. She even put out a very detailed tutorial for this technique she calls Nambi. You can find it in her Etsy shop. But also take a look at her other examples of how this technique can be applied by checking out her Flickr pages and her Facebook page.
Ok, hopefully I won’t be heading to the rooftops myself this week. Hope you all stay warm and dry!
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A Tower of Giraffes
February 14, 2017
Inspirational Art
I know it’s Valentine’s Day and I should be posting hearts or something but I’m guessing you’ve had plenty of that already today. So how about looking at something we are all sure to love because who can resist a tower of cute giraffes (‘tower’ is what a group of giraffes is called, so says Wikipedia) or the amazing precision of Wendy Jorre de St Jorre’s artwork?
I know I couldn’t resist these guys. This bowl just made me smile along with the usual stare of wonderment that accompanies the moment I spy a new piece by Wendy. She is so masterful in her control of her images. This is not, however, one of her canes although I did wonder for a moment. They would be insanely precise canes but she is so amazing, I wouldn’t put it past her. Instead, these are silkscreens but they are not store-bought. She made the silkscreens herself so they are completely original designs.
Her preciseness does give her some grief on occasion, although it looks effortless from here. Here are her words from her posting of the first version of her browsing giraffes:
My newest bowl, I call this one “Browsing Giraffe”. It has been quite a long haul getting this one done. I had to figure out a way to make a silkscreen veneer that would fit around a bowl. With compass and pencil I drew some circles and came up with a template that fit the bowl and also would fit on the “mini” silkscreens I have. It took a few goes to get the sizing right, but eventually I got what I thought would work and made 2 silkscreens that joined together. 3 repetitions of these fit around the bowl just right….whew! I had to wait a few days for the sun to come out so I could make the screens and then It was ready, set, go. Unfortunately the paint I was using was not quite right, so another day gone until I could buy some more, but eventually the silk-screened veneers were done. They needed cutting to shape to fit the bowl, that was tricky business, but patience won out in the end.
Although Wendy has a website, you’ll want to head to her Flickr pages or her Facebook account to keep up with her latest and greatest work.
A very happy Valentine’s Day to you all. You are all my Valentines for reading and supporting my blog and publications. I am a very lucky girl to have such wonderful readers!
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Decked Out Art Deco Bottle
February 9, 2017
Inspirational Art
Here is another way to cover a bottle, this time with the careful layering of sheeted and extruded clay. Beth Petricoin leans on the clean planes and lines of machined clay to help create a well finished and precise design. Her choice of art deco for inspiration works well with the sheets and extruded snakes since the era is marked by crisp shapes and balanced patterns.
And lucky us … Beth documented her process, making it look so very easy, even though I know it had to take a lot of patient application, not to mention a lot of clay. This old liquor bottle is quite large–16″ (a little over 40 cm) tall–and she used 7+ blocks of clay to complete it. I think it would be hard to find someone who would not agree that it was an effort well worth the time and clay.
Take a look at the process on her blog here. Her polymer work can also be found in her Etsy shop and her Flickr photostream.
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Tastefully Ornamented
February 7, 2017
Inspirational Art
You know how you start out looking for one particular thing but end up with somewhere completely different? That’s how I came upon this week’s theme.
I was going to do something pre-Valentine’s but something not having to do with hearts. I thought, maybe, flowers but I was overwhelmed by the many floral-ized polymer pieces out there so then I thought about vases because our valentine’s flowers need to go into something special. The self-imposed problem there was that sophisticated examples were a little hard to find. This landed me on a quest for sophisticated vases, which led me to all kinds of sophisticated vessels and the one thing I noticed is that there is a penchant to make the pieces quite complex or just covered top to bottom in color and pattern. So I decided we should look at uncomplicated designs that would be easy to create with little more than a bit of planning and patience to show how accessible a lovely, polymer covered vessel project can be. So, yeah … this has nothing much to do with Valentine’s Day. Oh well.
I am sure most all clayers have covered a bottle or two in their day. They are easy and inexpensive to acquire and make a great canvas to work on. This example of a tastefully ornamented bottle, subdued and yet feeling gussied up for a special occasion, was created by Jayne Ayre of Kismet Clay Designs. Jayne is an accomplished fantasy sculptor who makes regular forays into polymer covered objets d’art.
This design is actually a little unusual for her, if the Pinterest page I found this on is to be the measure, but I think it is one of her most successful covered vessels. Whereas her pieces are often adorned with medieval and steam punk style embellishments with regular and balanced placement, this piece is decorated in a free-flowing design, accented with a trail of varied polymer dots that meander casually about. The base layer brings in the color and an enticing aged look and texture so that the stamped clay laid over it doesn’t need to be complicated by color or too much of anything else, really. The one gather of flowers and leaves from this view works as a nice focal point for a simple, grounded design.
This is the kind of object that won’t necessarily grab your attention when you walk into a room but rather, it will make you smile when you discover it’s existence among a small collection of common liquor bottles and wine. Well, that is where I would put it. A bit of decorative elegance in among the labels to surprise and delight my thirsty guests.
Jayne also covers wine and martini glasses, ‘potion’ bottles, and capped jars. You can find these tucked in among her fantastical creatures on her Pinterest board and her blog.
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A Collective Shine
February 4, 2017
Inspirational Art
The art form with the ultimate bits-and-pieces approach has to be mosaics. With mosaics you can take any material that can be collected in chunks that are small enough to puzzle together among themselves or with other smallish chunks. That makes for a lot of possibilities. The possible forms for the application of mosaics is pretty wide open. Even opening the form is possible and breaking the frame is a possibility with mosaics.
Robin Evans‘ choice of material is primarily glass from which she creates jewelry and, apparently, some pretty amazing wall art in a mosaic style. I hesitate to call it a full mosaic as it looks like the swaths of gold, copper, and green are cracked glass or mirrors which gives the impression of a mosaic even though it’s not although it is a pretty cool look.
Then there are the actual mosaic parts which not only flow through from one panel design to the next but also move right off it and onto the wall to make their ways across. This not only connects the vertical panels but brings the piece alive with movement that breaks the frame of each one. And it’s shiny!
I couldn’t find a gallery of much of Robin’s wall art or at least not a gathering of it but you can find pieces scattered among her jewelry on her Facebook page, in her Etsy shop and on Instagram.
Weekly Inspirational Challenge: Create something beautiful from unassuming elements. This could be a great way to use old canes, extra beads, scrap clay and even cured and deserted elements. See what you have in your spare bins and boxes in your studio space and see what can be resurrected from the stuff you set aside.
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Would you call yourself a selfish person? I doubt very many of us would think that way about ourselves. Yet, as artists, we often find ourselves “stealing” time away from others or other things to do what we love, reveling in it when we have it. Is that selfish? I mean, it is more about us than anyone else, isn’t it?
Yes, it is about us, and that is as it should be. In the requested comments for last week’s giveaway (scroll down to see the winner and this week’s giveaway), participants mentioned some version of the “me time” aspect of getting to sit down and create more than anything else. I mean, I know we create because it is something we enjoy, regardless of what anyone else thinks, but I just love that so many people acknowledged and celebrated it. We should!
I strongly believe that everyone should have something of their own, something they can turn to in order to express themselves or at least put something out into the world that would not have existed without their desire to create it. The art we create gives us purpose, exercises a uniquely human part of our brains, and helps us to love ourselves. Not to mention that we deserve the joy we get from it!
But, by definition, that is selfish—doing something because it’s what we want. I wish our society would get over the idea that doing something for ourselves is bad. I think not doing things for yourself is self-negligence. Why is that not a commonly understood thing?
This also highlights the bigger, contradictory world that we inhabit. We live in such strange societies where selflessness and humility are expected or requested, and yet we are also pushed to strive for excellence in what we do. How do we reach excellence without focusing on ourselves? And then there is this silliness where we are not supposed to acknowledge when the work we do is good or that we’re proud of it. If we do, others may think we’re being arrogant or grandiose.
So, do we strive to be great and then pretend that we’re mediocre? We talk about contrast being good in art, but this is so not the right kind of contrast!
I’ve long found the dichotomy of these contradictory but societally prescribed behaviors beyond aggravating as well as having the potential to be debilitating. I think that is why it made me so happy to see so many people acknowledging their creative hours as me-time, self-care, and a time of wonderfully selfish joy. Keep it up, I say!
Now, let’s talk about the good kind of contrast in art.
Design Refresh
Let’s look at the beautiful brooch by Lyne Tilt that opened this post. What do you notice first about this? There’s a lot going on in this little space, isn’t there? What are the three things that jump out at you as far as design elements?
I’m going to say color, shape, and texture. Did you come up with the same three? There is also a lot going on with marks and size. So, any combination of those would be spot on.
How about design principles? What do you think is the number one principal used in this design? Sure, we could refer to scale and proportion considering all the different sizes of the layers, or we could talk about focal point or even just key in on the centered composition. But the one thing this has in spades is contrast.
Obviously, there is color contrast in all the major color characteristics—she has a vibrant trio of warm colors contrasting the cool of the blue and cyan; color values range from the dark blue and deep red to the moderate orange to the light yellow and pale polished silver; and, if you check your CMY color wheels, you’ll see that the color of the bottom layer is a blue-cyan whose complementary AND split complementaries are the yellow, orange, and red that you see in the upper layers.
But doesn’t a color palette have to have at least one common characteristic between all the colors? Well, ideally, yes, and this does. Here it’s saturation. These are not muted colors. The orange may be slightly tinted (has some white in it) but not enough to feel it’s gone off base from the saturated characteristic that ties them all together.
Now, look at the contrast in the textures. The top and bottom layers might have the same texture, but the rest are vastly different. There are even different materials—metal and clay. But they work together pretty well, don’t they? Why?
The textures work together in part because they are all drastically different—the wide variety is part of the charm of this piece. But, like color, they need something to tie them together.
Did you notice that the textures are applied to the entire layer from one edge to another? Thier differences are connected because the application on each layer is the same. That does seem to be enough to allow them to exist in the same piece and not have it feel completely chaotic.
The shapes, on the other hand, are not completely different but they are not the same either, right? They are all some version of a hand cut circle, but some of them are definitely more oval. I think pulling back on the amount of contrast between the shapes also helps to rein in the potential chaos all this dramatic contrast and color and texture could fall into. The centered composition also adds a bit of calm to the piece.
Let’s take this week to consider the design principle of contrast. Would your pieces benefit from more contrast, or do you need to rein some of that in? Remember, it all depends on your intention. There are no wrong levels of contrast, at least not in art.
Last Week’s Giveaway
Drum roll please…
This last week’s randomly chosen winner is Eloise B! I’ve spoken to her and her clay is already on the way. Congrats Eloise!
This Week’s Giveaway
Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s giveaway through comments on the post. As mentioned above, it really made me happy to see all the fantastic, positive and self-caring observations. I also hope it gave you a moment to focus on and appreciate what you love so much about creating.
So, let’s do this again.
The Goodies:
- This week I have a selection of Sculpey clays in 2 new Soufflé colors, 3 new Premo colors, and 2 big 8 oz. blocks of clay stash basics—Sculpey III in Pearl and Silver. That’s 26 ounces of fresh clay along with a three-piece set of Sculpey silkscreens.
- Or if outside the US, I have a $25 Tenth Muse certificate, since it would be such a gamble to ship clay outside the US.
How to Win:
- Put a comment in the blog comments* (below), telling me what type of contrast you enjoy creating most in your own work, or the type of contrast you wish you used more of. And, yes, if you want to share pictures, you can do so by including a link. Just don’t put more than one link in or it may spam filter the comment.
- Note: It can take some time for the comment to appear if you’ve not commented before since, due to annoying spamming, I have to approve it .
- Giveaway winners will be chosen by random—it will NOT be based on your answers. I do hope you’ll give it some thought anyway. The answers could be helpful to you as well as interesting for the rest of us.
- And let’s say you can only win once this month so we can spread the love around.
- Get your comments posted by Wednesday March 17th at midnight Pacific time to get in for the raffle.
- I’ll announce the winner here on the blog next weekend!
I’ll put together yet another pack of goodies for a giveaway in next weekend’s post, so stay tuned here!
You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like…
Read More
Have you started to see hierarchy in creative work everywhere since reading last week’s post? Consciously recognizing the hierarchy in artwork not only reveals the path our eye tends to follow around the work but can also tell you a lot about the artist’s intention and themes.
Maybe I’m a weirdo but I really enjoy searching out the hierarchy and the path the eye makes through a piece of artwork. Sometimes, though, the work seems so simple that one might assume there is not much of a path, if any, or that there really isn’t any hierarchy. But there always is.
Let’s do a deep dive on what initially appears to be a fairly simple composition. I’ve got a few surprise thoughts for you on this!
The Eye and the Hierarchy
I found this gem of a piece here a couple weeks ago on Lyn Tremblay’s Facebook page. It doesn’t appear overly complex at first glance, so where is the hierarchy? We probably all can see that the emphasis is on what looks like stitches between the predominantly yellow portion and the striated blue section. But does anything really take our eye around the canvas?
Of course, the answer is yes, there is a lot going on that brings our eye around the entire piece. Let’s map the probably path.
Before you read on, take a look at the piece and make note of where your eyes goes first and how it travels around the work. Then we can see if the likely path I found is similar to yours!
Did you find your path? Ok, great. Let’s do this!
I don’t think that there is any question that we are all likely to go first to the line of stitches and the edges they pull together but, I think, we don’t linger there for so very long. The brilliance of the yellow likely draws us towards the far end where we kind of float around like we are in a warm, comfy pool of sunshine.
However, the yellow’s disintegration into that murky gray-green is probably going to pull us away soon enough because that area has more contrast and there’s movement created by that color change as well as by the lines of yellow we follow back and forth as it tries to break through the gray-green.
The momentum of moving from one side of the yellow section to the other can be used to pull us off into the blue section whose striated lines push our view to the edge where we halt, ready to turn back but instead we may discover the grouping of impressed dots in the one corner, a surprising addition that slows our return so that we can land rather softly back at the stitches.
Of Interpretation and Uncertainty
Now, if you are to consider the hierarchy in terms of what you think the artist might find most important, I think you have to agree that it pretty much follows where the eye wants to go. Having found the path through the canvas and confirming what we believe her intended hierarchy would be, what do you think her intention was for the piece?
Something being held together must be central since the stitches are where the primary emphasis is. And there must be more significance in the yellow than the blue. Do remember what emotions and associations yellow brings up? It generally brings up thoughts of warmth, playfulness, and happiness when juxtaposed with primarily positive elements. (It can be associated with depression, stress, and cowardice is surrounded by dreary or negative elements though.)
So, is she trying to stitch a happiness that might disintegrate to the calm represented by the blue or to the openness of blue skies? She titles it Dream Weaver so could the line be where the edge of her dreams of happiness met the real world? Is that what she meant?
Guess what? It doesn’t matter overmuch what her own specific intention was. The fact is, the piece feels complete and cohesive which is likely due to a consistent adherence to her intention, and If the whole of the design is good enough to draw you in and to have you wondering or making your own conclusions, the artist has done a splendid job.
The composition and sparse elements seen here are enough to create metaphors in our minds, leaving us to fill in the blanks about what it might mean based on our own life and outlook. That’s the kind of thing that makes great design and wonderful art!
Uncertain Orientation
Here’s a bonus little lesson and a different view of the piece found on the same post. I found it really interesting that Lyn posted this piece in both a portrait and landscape orientation. The piece can be read rather differently depending on which way the piece is sitting.
The vertical orientation makes it look like the undeniable presentation of a wish or, not so coincidentally, a dream. On its side, and with the stitches to the right (remember the Rule of Right!), it feels more like a journey or a process as we have a gradual change going from left to right.
It may seem like a piece of art that is presented as not needing to be shown in a particular orientation suffers from a lack of commitment to the artist’s intention. It is the case sometimes but not always. I think in Lyn’s piece, it works both ways since the same basic idea of trying to connect the strange world of dreams with the reality of life, or whatever metaphor you might have found there, is still present although one way shows a strength of position while the other feels open to change.
And I think it works particularly well with the concept of dreams since they are subject to such wide interpretation. So why not allow the owner of the piece to hang it in the orientation they prefer because it best represents their interpretation of it? Kind of cool really.
That doesn’t mean you don’t need to create your work with an orientation in mind. Most of the time you probably should. But, in some cases, if it’s abstract enough, follows at least one of the compositional rules, (we have the Rule of Thirds working here) and it makes sense for the piece, leaving the orientation open to the owners preference can really work.
What Next?
Phew! That was a deep dive, wasn’t it? Were you able to follow my interpretation? I’d like to do this kind of thing fairly regularly, focusing on a different design lesson each time so you have a chance to really dig into the concepts along with me. But if it’s just a lot to wade through on a Sunday morning with the cobwebs not quite cleared out of your brain yet, let me know.
You can reply to this email, if that’s how you get this, or go to the contact page here. I am always thrilled to hear what you think whether it’s a commendation, criticism, or suggestion. Absolutely love getting all of them. It really helps me steer what I create for you.
During the next couple weeks, I think I might steer us away from design and talk about other things that can really help take your artwork up a notch. I’ve been in a lot of conversations and have been reading a lot about novel length fiction writing and I keep finding equivalences to the way one can approach art and so that’s where my mind is and I think some of the ideas might be pretty exciting for you.
So, join me again next Sunday for an easy read and some, hopefully, brilliant ideas. And the meantime, have a wonderful, safe, and warm (or cool if you’re down under!) week!
You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like, just …
Last weekend I talked about contrast, a concept closely related to variety, which is the subject for this week. Understanding the difference between the two can avoid a lot of confusion so I’ll be referring to contrast a bit today as well. If you didn’t see the last post, give it a quick read here.
Now, what is variation?
Variation is the range or assortment of differences throughout a design. Now, didn’t contrast also speak to differences? Yes, but those differences were between similar types of elements while variation is the degree of difference between all of the elements, principles, and placement choices in your work. It is like contrast in that variation is also used to create interest or energy or to otherwise support your intention, however, while contrast is often the key to adjusting the level of variation, you can have a fair bit of variation with little or no contrast.
To put it succinctly, contrast is the difference between two or more related elements while variety is about the relationship between all the elements in a piece. So, let’s talk about those relationships and how they are used in design.
Picturing Variation
First of all, keep in mind that you can create variation with elements or principles or pretty much any visual or conceptual part of your work.
Take the gorgeous pendant that opened this post. Liz Sabol has variation in color, line, balance, repetition, rhythm and even types of composition. In fact, even though we can identify a use of the Rule of Thirds, a Golden Spiral, and use of the Focus to the Right principle, it’s the barely-there nod to centered composition, created by an implied line from the midpoint focused, and yet asymmetrical, balance of the bail to the centered tip at the bottom of the pendant, that is holding all the chaos at bay. This piece is an absolute celebration of variation.
Alternately, if you use a lot of the same elements or employ principles in the same way throughout a piece, then there would be little variation. You can see that in this simple but still striking little pendant by an undisclosed creative on VK.com. (If you know who made this, do let me know and I’ll update the post.) Here there is regular rhythm, an absolutely centered composition, and every shape is circular. The only variation is created by contrast in the value difference between the black and white and the textural difference between the smooth outer elements and the rough interior disc.
Now, looking at the two pendants, I’m sure you can see that there is a huge difference between the energy and feel of them, largely because of the level of variation.
It’s a Matter of Degrees
So, as you see, a piece can be interesting with little to no variation or contrast. These concepts add points and degrees of interest. It’s your intention that should determine what role they will play in your work.
Just think, if you want a piece to feel solemn and quiet, avoiding high contrast and keeping your variation quite subtle may be what you need. That calm could be very awe-inspiring in its subtlety. Alternately, you can have a piece with the points of contrast and variation ranging from subtle to obvious.
You see an example of moderation in contrast and variation in Amy Genser’s Eventide pictured here. Yes, the piece feels quite busy and has a lot of energy but the contrast and variation are not that dramatic. There’s a lot of texture but it’s all rough and predominantly created from the rolled-up paper elements. The rolled paper elements are all ovoid in shape but with variation in regard to the roundness and width. They also range in size and are very in color although, like the rest of the canvas, they are predominantly blue and cyan, keeping to the cool side of the color wheel. The canvas does open up into a brief mix of reds and yellows in the middle and the color values do range from a dark blue to white. But the variation is applied in a gradual and moderated way. Most of the energy comes from the texture, the repetition, and the sense of movement.
So, we see here that the degree of variation doesn’t have to be high to create energy or interest as other elements and principles can do that quite well. However, I do think in this case that the level of variation included boosts the energy of the texture and repetition. It’s a team effort.
So, unlike some other concepts, there is no way to really list the different types or degrees of contrast and variation and what they might mean for your particular piece. As you’ve seen, this is in large part due to how much these concepts depend on, and play off of, the other choices made in the design.
This is only a quick introduction to the subjects of contrast and variation but I’ll continue talking about them in many of my future posts. If you think about it, I’ve actually been talking about these ideas throughout the year as the differences in your choices for the various elements and principles is quite wrapped up in your decisions on how you’ll employ contrast and variation.
Some of your choices for contrast and variation will be made automatically if you make characteristic choices for your elements before specifically thinking about contrast or variation, like choosing just daisies for a flower necklace or choosing green and red as your color palette because it’s for Christmas. Repeated daisies will dictate rather low levels of variation because of the sameness of the primary motif so you’d have to work with contrast in things like value and size to take it up a notch. And Christmas colors are high contrast so it would be difficult to make the work also feel calm or serene starting from that color palette.
However, you might find it more advantageous to make choices about the degree of contrast and variation that would best suit the work and then make that happen through the characteristics you choose for your elements. In fact, knowing the degree of contrast and variation you want can help you make more confident and intentional choices for your elements, various principles, and composition. That’s how influential the concept of contrast and variation is in art.
Perhaps this talk of contrast and variety will get you jazzed to try out some variations on variety your own self. So, while the sun is shining and the muse is calling, do try to have a wonderful, safe, and creative week!
You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like, just …
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Helen Breil’s variations lean on the principles of emphasis and movement using line, in particular, to create a feeling of unity and a sense of complexity even though these are not particularly intricate. The design just feels so complete and satisfying.
Do you feel, or have you felt, that design is a very confusing subject? I wanted to ask because as of next month, we dive into the PRINCIPLES of Design. We’ve been working on Elements thus far. Yes, there are two categories to define the ways we use design. So, before I go further, let’s define those.
Elements of Design – the components used to create designs. They are like the ingredient in a recipe, only they are not the materials or tools you use but rather the individual elements you create with them.
Elements of Design (my list for mixed media arts) include:
-
- Line
- Marks
- Color
- Shape
- Form
- Texture
Principles of Design – the concepts used to arrange and organize the elements of design. These are like the methods and choices used to combine the ingredients in a recipe in order to create the desired outcome.
Principles of Design (as I am going to teach it here) include:
-
- Balance
- Movement
- Contrast<->Variety
- Emphasis<->Hierarchy
- Repetition<->Rhythm
- Scale<->Proportion
- Unity<->Similarity
Don’t they look so manageable in those simple lists? Well, Elements does, I’m sure. Principles … they are concepts, so they’re more complicated. But don’t worry. I’ve been fiendishly sneaking them in all along so you are actually familiar with many of them if you’ve been reading my blog even for just this year. Just in the last couple months, I’ve been drilling in the ideas of contrast, similarity, movement and even a bit about scale.
There may be two separate lists above but they are completely dependent on each other. You can’t use principles with out the elements to create with and you can’t create with elements without the principles pushing you, consciously or unconsciously, towards the beauty and satisfaction that comes from a good design.
The Ultimate List of Design
Now, you may be asking yourself, why are the notations above about these lists my version? Aren’t these things standardized? Well, unfortunately, they are not and that’s the crux of the problem I want to peel open today.
When I talk about elements and principles of art and design, I’m giving you what I believe would be the best set of these for what we do in polymer and mixed media art. If you go online and search for just a list of the Principles of Design, you will find everything from a list of 5 up to a list of 20 principles. That’s pretty crazy!
It is understandable when some people think one or two things don’t belong on a list but when you regularly get this whole range, with some items paired up (like I did above) and others listing those same paired items as separate and distinct concepts, it can really make you wonder how you will ever learn the “right” set of concepts?
To make it simple (but possibly no less frustrating), I’m here to tell you there is no single ultimate list of elements or principles of design. And, no, it’s not because people have different opinions, although they do, but it has to do with the type of creative work each source assumes the reader will be considering.
These lists of elements and principles change to best serve the medium the writer or instructor assumes you, the reader, are dealing with. For instance, in painting and illustration, value is its own element discussed outside of color because value is what allows painters to define dimensionality, space, and perspective in the work. Our work in craft is primarily dimensional to begin with which is why I simplified my list to included value as part of the color element discussion.
Likewise, mark making in crafts is extremely important while mark making in graphic design is nearly nonexistent or is replaced with the concept of motif or pattern. And motif is an extremely important element in interior design but it is usually a side note, if even that, in fine arts.
So, all those lists out there are customized and created for the particular creatives the creator of the list believes will be using it. Right? Right!
I just wanted to clarify that before we jump in the principles of design so if any of you have learned or been taught something different than the list I’m going to give you, you understand why. I do believe my lists will best serve you as a mixed-media artist but you are welcome to build your own as needed.
The bottom line here… Don’t worry about whether you’ve got design terminology down precisely. Worry about understanding the concepts, identifying them, and working with them.
Ack! What’s a Creative to Focus On?
If all these lists and their imprecise ways make you feel like you’re going to hyperventilate, take heart. When it comes down to it, there are really just a few things you need to focus on as I can distill what I am trying to teach you into just three things. If you concentrate on these, you can just read my posts and the club’s mini-mag content and all this design knowledge will work its way into your brain by osmosis:
Your Artistic Keys:
- Create with intention, whatever that means to you.
- Draw your intention from that authentic and unique core that is you.
- Aim to make conscious, intentional design choices on every aspect of your work.
If you can do these three things, you can and will be an incredible and fulfilled artist. The rest – the terminology, concepts, elements and such – you can gather like you do art supplies. You pick them up as you can and then use them at every opportunity that makes sense. It would be great if you actually thought of them as new shiny tools and materials on your studio table. They can be, and usually are, the most valuable tools you have at hand.
The End of Free Lessons is Nigh!
In the coming months, the Principles of Design lessons, although they will continue to appear here in some fashion, will be largely moving to the weekly Devotee Club mini-mags. I need to start transitioning the bulk of my content to the Club content as the full free lessons were intended just to help get us all through this tumultuous year, but I do have to get back to bringing in the funds so I can keep at it!
So … if you have been enjoying the lessons you’ve had here in recent months, come join the club! Not only will you be getting the full lessons, but I also have a lot of other content from tips on living a creative life to community news to subscriber only specials and first dibs on new products.
And for the rest of this month, get a 14 day free trial! Offer ends October 31st.
(By the way, the Success Club, which combines coaching with the weekly content, is full, in case you are wondering when you get to the page and don’t see it to add to the cart. I am taking names for the waiting list only at this time.)
Come support your design knowledge, creative growth, and these Tenth Muse Arts projects with a subscription to the Devotee Club. Just click here.
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Meredith Dittmar’s work is, surprisingly, freeform and spontaneous although her intention to “explore, illuminate, and break down the boundaries of the conditioned self” are well supported in her design choices.
Did you work on identifying colors similarities and contrasts, even though I was unable to get anything out midweek like I’d hoped? I ended up with an exceptionally busy week but, unlike many of these past months, it was mostly good, positive things going on. I’ll catch you up on some of that stuff at the end here (including notes about my latest big sale if you’re interested) but, this week, I thought we would take a break from the intensive design lessons so I could get back to writing what I call creative growth articles.
These kinds of articles were included in every Virtual Art Box but I had set them aside while we thoroughly explored color the past few months. I’d like to do these at least once a month now to keep you thinking about why and how you create and to give you a break from the lessons here and there.
The Question of Conscious Intention
When I started the Virtual Art Box, the first thing I wrote about was artistic intention. It was easily the most impactful thing I’ve ever put out if measured by the enthusiasm and number of the comments, messages, and emails I received and, if you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably noted that intention comes up over and over again. But I realized, after an interesting conversation recently, that I’ve never really talked about the variety and ways creative people approach intention.
The core question that came up in this conversation was about whether the person creating has to be consciously aware of their intention in order for the design to be intentional. In other words, can decisions be intentional without being understood by the creator? Sounds rather philosophical but it is, in truth a very practical and rather important question.
By definition, intention means that you have some knowledge of your motivations but, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are wholly conscious of them, not in a detailed way that allows you to verbalize it to yourself or others.
For instance, you could head to the grocery store intending to get something for your sweet tooth but you may not realize what you want until you’ve wandered through the bakery section and the candy section and then found yourself entranced by some caramel gelato in the ice cream freezer. Alternatively, you may have specifically headed out to get a pint of Talenti Caramel Cookie Crunch. The intention, and the outcome, would be the same for either trip out but there was a varying degree of awareness as to what you were after.
This works the same way when it comes to intention in art. You aren’t just fully intentional or not intentional in your design choices. There are variations and degrees to which you understand and apply your intention as you create although, I will argue, having some intention is necessary.
First of all, understand that when I talk about intention, I’m speaking about the concept, story, or theme that directs your design decisions. In the shopping trip example above, the intention was to satisfy a sweet tooth. In your artwork it could be anything from re-creating an image or place to telling a story to relaying a message to simply sharing your aesthetic tastes. But that intention guides your design decisions.
You could, for instance, choose round shapes for a pair of earrings. That choice might be made because round is a soft shape and the theme or story or idea behind your piece would be best supported by soft characteristics, but it also could be a gut feeling that round feels right compared to squares or triangles or amorphous organic shapes. If you have strong instinctual reactions to certain options for your design, you can absolutely make decisions based on that intuition. You just need to check that it supports and is related to your intention rather than it just being something that you are drawn to in general.
The Role of Instinct
Instinctive decisions are very common in many artist studios but they work best when there’s knowledge behind them. If a creative person is well versed on design, they will likely transition to working almost wholly by instinct at some point. That education and understanding works away in the background, guiding the artist’s instincts, but when they run into a problem, they still have the ability to puzzle out possible solutions based on the knowledge that they have. That is actually the primary intention that drives all my publications and this blog – to get you to the point where you understand design well enough for your design decisions to be instinctual. That way, you can approach your creative work with anything from a general to very specific intention and can begin to make purposeful decisions from the start.
Donna Greenberg’s latest post on Facebook: “WIP. Glazed bubbles and supporting texture coming in on this bad boy. Miles to go but each step helps me clarify my idea and even surprises me at times.” Because of the size and complexity of Donna’s vessels, planning has to be fairly well thought out before she really gets going but she leaves lots of room in her intention for discovery and alterations (via those clarifications she mentioned, I’m sure.)
There is also an argument in the art world that proposes that the artist does not have any responsibility to create with an intentional concept, meaning, or story for each piece, suggesting that it is completely up to the viewer and not the artist to give the piece meaning. I can’t say that I disagree with that but, if you create without any direction or some kind of framework to work off of, I think it becomes rather hard to create cohesive work that is meaningful to viewers.
I know, I am getting all abstract here so here’s a concrete example. Let’s say you want to create an eye-catching, one-of-a-kind piece to be showcased in your booth at the next fair or on the opening page of your shop’s website. You could just sit down with your materials and mess around with them until something comes out of it that you like. That is a valid way to design. But how do you even start doing that? Do you work with just whatever happens to be out on your table or do you pull out your newest, coolest materials and tools or do you open up your drawers and cupboards and stare at them until something jumps out at you (you know, kind of like when you stare at the fridge contents trying to figure out dinner)? I think we’ve all started something in this rather mindless way but how often are we successful compared to when we have some bit of intention?
Never Face a Blank Canvas
It is often said that facing a blank canvas is the hardest step in creating because it is, as yet, directionless which can be rather daunting. However, if you look for your intention first, then you never actually face a blank canvas. Instead, you come to that blank space or yet to be formed material with something to work on already. It’s the difference between walking into the grocery store only knowing that you want something to eat versus knowing you specifically want something sweet. You might not realize what you want is the gelato but at least you know where to head off to when you walk in those doors. Otherwise it is a lot of wandering up and down the aisles and that can be frustrating. You might not even make it that far. You might just turn around and leave because you don’t know which direction to take.
So, I do think you need to have something to work off of but it doesn’t always need to be something that you understand well enough to explain to someone. That was actually one of the hardest things for me in graduate school as I work towards my MFA in Poetry. Every word I chose in a poem was very intentional but a lot of the time there was more a feeling of it being right than an understanding about why it was right and yet, I was called on to explain my work all the time. I could always explain the theme of the piece and my inspiration but I could not always explain the specific significance of an image or sensation in the poem. To be honest, I think my lack of explanations was partly a kind of rebellion against the dissection of creative work. I know a lot of you feel that way too, that some (maybe most) art should be a visceral experience not an intellectual exercise.
However, trying to glean understanding from a piece of art, writing or any other creative work can be very satisfying so I’m not saying that I don’t think art should be approached that way. With some work, that’s the only way to approach it. And I did eventually come to the understanding that, as creatives, we can learn so much from that kind of examination but I also don’t think we need to do it all the time. I mean, there is some work we may want to just enjoy for what it is.
It can be the same in regard to how you approach intention. You might just want to enjoy the creative process and let your fingers and mind take the designs where they will. That’s great, especially if you are doing the work primarily because you enjoy the process. In that case, intellectualizing your intention can take away from that visceral experience but I will still argue that you need something to guide your design choices , even in a general way, if you want to arrive at the end of that process with a well-designed and engaging piece. Alternately, fully understanding your intention and planning out the details of a piece will allow you to boldly move forward as you work but you may also want to allow for modifications as your ideas and construction may change as you work.
Celie Fago may have a penchant for some pretty intense planning if this sketchbook page is any indication. She shared this with Dan Cormier for the Broken Telephone project article published in the Fall 2013 issue of The Polymer Arts (available in digital if you want to grab a copy here.) The objective was to create a brooch inspired by another artist’s piece that was sent to her. Her notes start off with “What Do I Hear? (when listening to Dave’s piece),” followed by a list of descriptive words as a way to search for her intention. That leads her into an exploration of design possibilities that support that intention. (Click image for a larger version.)
So, I think the best way to think of intention is in degrees of awareness. You can be fully aware of your intention and be able to verbalize it in detail, you can access your intuition with a more general idea driving your choices, or it can be somewhere in between.
I think the most important thing is that you make all of your individual design choices purposefully whether or not you fully understand your reasons. (I mean, I have no idea what I like caramel gelato so much but the lack of understanding certainly isn’t going to stop me from enjoying it!) Just try not to allow your design choices to be decided for you. Like don’t just default to a smooth surface because that’s how your clay comes out of the pasta machine. Choose a smooth surface because that is what best supports your intention. Purposefully choose shapes that support the concept you are inspired by rather than determining them based on your available cutters or because organic shapes are easiest to create freeform. Pick colors based on symbolic or emotive qualities not just what you have on hand. And ask yourself, every time, whether your piece will benefit from lines or marks or if there shouldn’t be any so you don’t miss out those possibilities.
These kinds of purposeful decisions will show a controlled and skilled intention, creating depth and cohesiveness and, likely, a lot more satisfaction on your end as well as in your finished pieces.
Dare I Say Winds Are Changing (in the Right) Direction
Yes, I’d hoped to do a midweek blog last week with some more examples about how to look at color and pick contrast and similarities, but not only did I have a busy week taking care of my husband after his biking accident (he is healing amazingly well and quickly, thank you all for asking!), I also had the opportunity to bring a staff member back on board so I’ve been getting her up to speed and we start work on possible new projects this coming week. It’s going to be so nice not doing this solo!
Also, you all really took advantage of the Damage Sale! I am nearly cleared out although, as I write this, there is still a small handful of slightly imperfect publications on the Specials page if you want to grab up those last $4 magazines and $12 books.
Then I got so excited about how cleared out the shipping room was looking (I’ll need the room to bring in new publications!) that I added a 25% off sale through September 15 on all regular print publications. No coupon code is needed if you want to take advantage of that. Just go over to the website.
So, there has been a ton of packing and shipping this week which not only kept me busy, it also made me more aware of an issue I’m having with my bad right arm. It’s kind of worked into my shoulder. But I saw a new orthopedic doctor and he had some wonderfully encouraging things to say so this coming week I start a new and different regimen of physical therapy that he believes will actually heal my arm. I am reservedly hopeful!
So, I’m busy but relatively happy over here. I hope to have some concrete new project announcements after this coming week. It’s been such an aimless, up in the air kind of year for us all, hasn’t it? I look forward to having a production schedule of some sort to keep me feeling relevant and to keep you inspired. So, keep fingers crossed!
I hope all of you have had your own dose of good news, light at the end of the tunnel, or other positive developments. I’m sure we could all use a bit more of that right now. So, keep an eye on impacts for incoming upcoming newsletters and announcements. In the meantime, take good care of you and yours!
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Noelia Contreras, stretches the idea of analogous color schemes by choosing pairs of colors that are in the same third of the color wheel then creating contrast by choosing tinted versions of one or both colors to create her stripes and spots.
As promised, this week we are going to start talking about creating color palettes. But first, because I love you all so much for following me as I blather about color and design, I want to make sure that you get in on the Damage Sale that is going on right now.
Damage Sale is on Now … and They’re Selling Fast!
Once every year or two, I pull out these boxes of publications that have been slightly damaged or marred and put them on sale, usually for 40-50% off. This time though, I marked it all down by 50-60%.
I started that yesterday and sold nearly half of them before lunch! Not wanting my blog readers to miss out, I went through my backstock boxes yesterday and pulled a number of imperfect copies that got shelf wear from storage so I’d have something to offer you.
Those got added to the sale inventory last night and so you all now have a fighting chance to grab some too. Just click here. But best be quick. It’s not quite toilet paper but I think there is a pandemic response thing going on here!
(If you got in on this Saturday but something was out of stock and is available now, buy it and I’ll combine the orders, refunding the difference in shipping if the order comes in by noon EST on Monday.)
Color Combo Considerations
Okay, now on to the business of color. Choosing colors to use in a piece takes into account quite a number of things but let’s hit on what I think are the three most important things to keep in mind:
Intention – What is your intention in creating the piece? What is the piece about? Go as far as writing it down and come up with some adjectives. Now, what colors go with those words and match your gut feeling about what you want this piece to be. I believe one should never ignore the gut but you do need to discern between instinct and taking the easy road or simply being dazzled by a color. That’s the hard part of using instinct but keep at it and hone it!
Importance – Should color play a major, supportive, or minor role in your design? I think this question is more important for color than for most design elements because we have such a strong and visceral reaction to color. There is usually a hierarchy of design elements in a piece and you benefit from intentionally deciding where color lands in that order. If you create a super tall vase, size is probably the major player in your design so do you want to draw attention away from that by making it a rainbow of bright colors? You absolutely might want to, but the size can make the colors even louder, which is great if that’s what you are after. However, if you want to focus on size because you want people to feel how monumental the piece is, one or two analogous colors in a supportive role might better support your intention.
Susan Dyer’s work puts color at the top of her design hierarchy with lots of contrast in hue and value but not a lot of contrast in saturation, going for bright and playful in most of her pieces like the one here.
Contrast – What level of contrast does your piece call for? High contrast creates high energy, low contrast creates calm, while something in between can be comfortable but still energized. Levels of contrast in a color palette can be created between color values (light versus dark), saturation (bright versus toned down), hues (complimentary colors), temperature (warm versus cool), and relative quantity (how much each color is used versus the others.)
Like everything else, how much contrast you choose should fulfill your intention but also, high or low contrast can be chosen to balance the energy of the work as needed. For example, you might have a busy piece with a variety of shapes and lines plus a lot of marks fulfilling your intention to create high energy but if you don’t want it too chaotic, you might use low rather than high contrast colors. Some intentional restraint in contrast will make the energy of the other elements feel more grounded. Alternately, you could go high contrast on the colors but go less busy on other design elements, especially if you deem color to be of high importance to the piece and don’t want it to be overlooked.
This necklace from Sandra Trachsel has low hue contrast using an analogous color scheme of yellow-green to blue-green but has value contrast between the two to give it a subtle energy but enough punch to really highlight the dimension of the interlocking geometric forms.
Okay, so, yeah, those are quite conceptual points and are very important to keep in mind when choosing a color palette but now, how do you even begin choosing colors? There are actually so many ways you can approach choosing colors for a piece and once you work with color intentionally and intelligently for a while, you will find your own way. But this week and next, I’m going to make some suggestions to get you started. Here is the first for this week.
Go with Your Gut
It’s going to sound like I’m saying this quite blithely but I’m serious about this – the most common way to start choosing colors is to go with your gut. Yeah, as mentioned, it may be something you have to hone but your instincts are really a great place to start and will help make your work truly your own. Now, you may think you have no instincts about color but we all do. We all react to color so the connections you make to color are in there and those connections are exactly what you need to find the colors you need for your work.
So, you can think about your intentions and see what colors come to mind or you can, with your intentions or associated adjectives running through your brain like a little chant, start shuffling through your colored art materials, a collection of color cards if you have them, or browse about online. Find yourself a base color to work off of. It doesn’t have to be the exact color yet but think of it as an anchor point for the time being.
Once you have that, you can start adding in other colors based on one of the following color wheel schemes. Keep in mind, this is not math. You don’t have to be exact in these color schemes. Think of them as templates that give you an idea of what colors to pair up with your anchor color.
You’re going to recognize a few these terms from the post on color relationships if you read that one. Those relationships for color mixing are also great starting points for choosing color palettes but I’m going to add a few more possible color combinations to your repertoire today.
Complementary – This color scheme involves focusing primarily on two colors, ones that are opposite each other on the color wheel. It provides great color contrast but, sometimes, these combinations create an almost uncomfortable tension. Fully saturated complements, when butted up against each other, will even cause a visual buzzing where they meet. Again, the tension between the complements is not a bad thing if that is what you are after but, because of this, this kind of color scheme should be carefully and quite intentionally chosen.
Analogous – this involves choosing colors that are near each other on the color wheel. These are usually two to four key hues so although you’re limiting yourself to one section of the color wheel you can still have quite the range.
Combining colors that are near each other on the color wheel creates palettes with low hue contrast and low or moderate value contrast, at least between the key hues themselves. If you choose colors that are desaturated (have reduced purity) due to tinting, shading, or toning of the color, that can increase the value contrast between analogous colors. So, you could create in blues and greens but go for a dark blue and a bright green so color value and saturation will be contrasted but since there analogous it will be relatively subtle. That’s why analogous color schemes are often found in moderate to low energy designs.
Triad or Square – I put these together because they are simply choosing a set of colors that are equidistant from each other on the color wheel. In a triad you are choosing three and a square you are choosing four colors. These create quite colorful and moderately high contrasting hue schemes. These color palettes tend to work best if one color is dominant (like your anchor color that you started off with) while the others play supporting roles in the color scheme.
Split Complementary – This can be a combination of two colors although I think it is best used as a three-color scheme. Here you choose one color and combine it with one or both colors to the side of the color’s true complement.
The TMA website scheme is yellow-green with its split complements magenta and blue (both leaning towards its true complement violet but still no visual tension.)
These create beautiful, high contrast color schemes but without the tension that direct complements can create. The combination remains lively and high in hue contrast but it feels much more refined than direct complements, triads, or squares. This is because you actually have a pair of basically analogous colors set against a high contrast one but not with high-tension contrasting hues. It’s kind of the best parts of all the previously mentioned schemes.
Monochromatic – The term monochromatic itself is synonymous with boring, I know, but this color scheme is anything but that. You may have just one base color but you then create a variety of shades, tints, and maybe even some tones of that one hue. Although it lacks hue contrast, you still get to play with saturation and value contrast so you can scale your energy level up and down with great control. I personally don’t think there is any other color scheme quite so sophisticated and clean as a monochromatic one so if your design is primarily about refinement, this color scheme should be seriously considered.
So, now you have one, somewhat structured way to start choosing colors. I would suggest this week that you play around with the various color schemes above. It could be as simple as pulling out your art materials and shuffling colors around on your tabletop to find complementary, analogous, triadic, and split complementary color schemes or continue practicing your color mixing by at least mixing up one luscious monochromatic scheme. Go with your gut and play with the colors as you feel you need to.
Not Much to Say
I know, I usually catch you up with what’s going on with me at this point, but it’s been a rough and tiring week for a variety of reasons and I am a bit talked out. I’ll tell you about drowning my sorrows in my minvan camper conversions project at a later date, okay?
I’ll just leave you pondering classic color combinations for now but next week we’ll going to get into some slightly more advanced ways of choosing color. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too difficult and you have all the tools to do it. In fact, I think a lot of you will be quite surprised at how easy and fun it will be. All this color study has been great fun, hasn’t it? I do hope so!
So, enjoy your week and fill it full of color!
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Lampwork beads by Pikalda Phuengpong
Have you noticed that, in art, very few things exist or are created in a vacuum? In other words, every choice you make has an effect on all the other choices you have made or will make when designing and creating original works of art. So, if you are coming to my blog for the first time, you may want to read the last three weeks of posts first because each successive article builds off the last.
Last week we talked about color value and this week we’re going to talk about how you can change the value along with something called saturation. This will be a little heavy on terminology but it’s easy stuff and by the time you’re done reading, you will have quite the sophisticated color vocabulary.
I also want to speak for just a moment on the reason you would want to do this deep dive into color and design. Whether you create your own colors or simply choose colors from pre-mixed options, your choices are best ruled by your understanding of the characteristics of color. Of course, understanding color characteristics is essential in color mixing but choosing and identifying color requires the same knowledge especially when creating color palettes, analyzing your work (or the work of others), and correcting or improving your color choices.
Working with color, like anything else in design, is about the relationship between colors and between all the design elements. In design, we work with likeness and disparity. That’s really what all relationships are about, aren’t they? Think about your spouse or your best friend or the coworkers you like to hang around with. You have something in common, some area of your life that overlaps that you can share. But you also have differences. These differences make the relationship interesting, encourages curiosity and conversation, and allows each of you to fulfill different roles in the relationship. That’s how design works as well, including between colors.
So, if you keep in mind that these conversations are about those design relationships, I think you’ll start to see just how useful and essential these immersive color lessons are regardless of whether you makes your own colors, pick available colors, or simply want a better understanding of the art that you enjoy.
Saturation is Not Value
Now, let’s talk about value versus saturation. For some reason, these two concepts get confused a lot even though they are quite different. As you learned last week, value is the lightness or darkness of a color. Saturation, however, is about how intense the color is or how close it is to the unadulterated hue or “key” color, at least in regard to pigment. (This is dealt with a little bit differently when it comes to mixing light in RGB. Just thought you ought to know that in case you come across a definition that talks about saturation, brightness, and luminosity. That’s RGB stuff.)
So, let’s take a pure blue as an example of both high saturation and dark value. Take a look at the color wheel. True blue, in its most saturated and vivid form there on the outside ring of the color wheel, is far darker than pure yellow. You could make that blue as light in value as yellow by adding a lot of white to it but that would also change its saturation because the addition of white takes away from the purity of the hue, right? The addition of white in a color is called tint.
Now let’s take that yellow. If you wanted it to be as dark in value as the blue, you could add a lot of black, so much so that it would probably look gray with little yellow to be gleaned. This would both darken the value and desaturate it, a lot. The addition of black to a color is known as shade.
So that’s the thing with adding black or white to a color. It will desaturate a color but it also will make it lighter or darker in value. I bet that doesn’t fully clarify why value and saturation are so different since adding white or black changes the lightness or darkness (value) as well as the intensity of a color (saturation). Well, here’s the thing – you can, on the other hand, change the saturation without changing the value, just not with black or white.
Let’s look at the color red for moment. On the CMY color wheel, you can see that opposite red is cyan. They look to be about the same midrange color value, right? If you add a bit of cyan to the red that will reduce the saturation or purity of the red by altering its hue but it will not make a noticeable change to its value. If you got yourself one of those CMY color wheels, you’ll see on the front side there that each ring getting closer to the center shows what happens when you add 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40% of each hue’s complementary color. That kind of mix tones down the color which is why it is called a tone.
You can also tone down a color without changing its value by adding a gray that is the same value as the color. In fact, a fully desaturated color would be just gray. Or you can mix in a lighter or darker gray to make the color lighter or darker while toning it down but without muddying the key with its complement. A gray mixed with a color is also called tone.
So, you see, changing saturation can, but does not always, change value but changing the value will necessarily change the saturation of a hue, making it less pure. This is true for color mixing or even using digital photo editing (and is why I warned you last week not to use saturation options in photo editing to look at values in grayscale, because value is not taken into account.)
Your Bright, New, Shiny Color Vocabulary
Congratulations! You probably didn’t realize it but you just completed a major step in your color education. If you’ve read all the posts, you have learned (or refreshed your understanding of) the three most important aspects of color – Hue, Value, and Saturation.
And, now, with this article, you’ve come to know the three primary ways to change a color. Let’s review because it’s kind of cool to realize how much you’ve soaked up.
The three primary characteristics of color:
Hue – the key and name of a color.
Value – the lightness or darkness of a color.
Saturation – how pure or how adulterated a color is due to the addition of white, black, gray or a complementary color.
The three primary ways of adjusting color in pigments:
Tint – the addition of white to a color.
Shade – the addition of black to a color.
Tone – the addition of gray or a complementary hue to a color.
Look at that! You have six color terms that are going to help you tremendously in color mixing, choosing palettes, and analyzing work. But let’s spend a little more time with those last three just to be sure you got them well seated in your creative little brains.
Color Quiz
Okay, let’s put your new knowledge to the test. Take a look at the opening image and the images below and find the pure hue (just visually – you don’t have to name it) and then determine the variation of that hue was accomplished with tints, shades, and/or tone. We’ll chat about them after you have a chance to come up with your own thoughts.
Carved wooden vessel by Louise Hibbert
A polymer bracelet by Judy Belcher.
Well, what did you come up with? Some of these examples are not so straightforward but I find them very interesting.
First of all, Pikalda’s glass beads that open this post have a saturated blue as its key color while the other color variations, aside from the black and white accents, are the key blue with white added so they are tinted versions of the key color. Pretty easy to see that, right?
With Louise Hibbert’s wooden vessel, the key is a kind of violet and, I’m sure you guessed it, the gradation to the nearly black tips is the result of adding black, in other words, creating shades of the hue. But there are also diluted versions of the hue where she lets the wood show through towards the center. Is that a tint because it makes it lighter or a tone becuase it isn’t quite white that has been added?
Well, think in terms of the color elements here. Since the violet color is translucent, it visually mixes with the color of the wood, a pale cream, which is a tint of yellow. This actually makes that diluted violet a tone because the change in color is not due to the addition of just white or just black and it’s a color that muddies the key color even if just a little. It’s true that yellow is not the direct complement of violet – that would be a yellow-green – but you can actually tone down a color with something close to its complement too. We’ll get more into those complexities when we get deeper into color mixing so you can just stash that info away for later if you like.
Now, in Judy Belcher’s bracelet, it gets even a bit more complicated because, in truth, the fully saturated hue is not present. That would be bright lime green but the key color has been toned down with variations of gray. In fact, the entire bracelet is a series of lime green tones with nothng else but some white. Some tones are due to a very light gray addition, others to a few different middle grays and the darkest green would be a tone with a dark gray. Being able to spot the key in something like this takes practice but not a lot. It might just take the following little exercises.
For Further Study
Okay, so there are a couple ways you can further concrete your, hopefully, not too hard-earned knowledge. These are both fun and easy and take 10-15 minutes each to do.
Color Wheel Studies
First of all, if you bought yourself that CMY color wheel I suggested – or even if you didn’t – you can see tones, tints and shades set up on this handy color tool with approximate percentages that one would mix to achieve these colors from a key. Here is a video that the Color Wheel Company put together to explain how to use their color wheel tool while making note of where these items are on it so you can familiarize yourself with them just by looking over your color wheel. Clicking on the image takes you to the purchase page but scroll down to find the videos.
Isn’t crazy just how much information they put on this little paper tool? Keep in mind that those percentages for the tones, tints and shades are approximate because in the real world, our materials have varying amounts of pigment so adding 10% of one complement to a color could make a dramatic change while adding 10% of a complement to another color may make almost no change. You’ll start to get a sense of the stronger and weaker colors (and brands) if you do the exercise below and as we work through color mixing in July.
Mix it Up
Studying the color wheel is an easy and quick way to see the difference between tone, tint, and shade but the best way to not only remember the terminology and what it means but to really understand how saturation, tint, shade, and tone work in color is to mix it up.
So, grab some clay in one fully saturated key color. Pick your favorite or grab one of the primaries – cyan, magenta, or yellow. You also need a bit of your chosen color’s complement plus black and white. Roll out each clay on your thickest pasta machine setting and, using a single punch cutter, punch out portions of clay from each sheet. (You can also do this with paint – you won’t be “punching” out your portions but, instead, you’ll be picking up dabs of paint.)
- At the top of a piece of paper, write Tint, Shade, Complement Tone, and Gray Tone as column headers
- Put one portion of your key color under each column header. This will be a starting point for each color as we desaturate it.
- Punch out two portions of your key color and mix it with two portions of white until well mixed. Sheet the clay and punch out one portion of this mix. Put it under the tint column with space enough between it and the key color for another portion.
- Take one of those mixed portions and one of the key color and mix that. Punch a portion out of this new mix and place it between the previous mix and the key color.
- Take the last portion of the first mix and mix it with a portion of white. Punch out a portion of this very light mix and line it up in the column under the middle mix, followed by a portion of whites to complete a column of tints from key color to white.
At this point you have three desaturated tint versions of the key color. These are not a lot of steps between the key color and white but it will give you an idea of what white does to a fully saturated color. If you are game before creating a wider range of this tint sampler, you can double the amount for each of the three mixes we just did so you can mix additional portions and create four more steps, one between each of the five portions in the tint column.
- Now go through the exact same process, creating 3 or 7 mixes, as you prefer, but instead of white …
- … make a column using black to build a range under the Shade header. You may want to use 2-3 times as much key color as black for your middle shade to get a better gradation since black is very strong, as you can see in my example. I used twice as much key color and all the mixes are still awfully dark.
- … use the complementary color to create a range under the Complementary Tone column.
- … mix a gray (I used twice as much white as black to get my middle gray) to add to the key color to create a range under the Gray Tone column.
You will probably notice, as you mix, that sometimes the progression from the key color to the color you mix in is not very even or regular. For instance, if your key color is particularly dark in value such as the Ultramarine blue, the jump between the last mix and white may seem quite a bit different, like it could use another mix in between. You are, of course, welcome to change up the portions of color in your mixes to make a more regularly graduated range. This will, however, demonstrate that the amount of pigment in different colors of clay and between brands can differ and so some colors will dominate in a mix. You’ll need to use more of the weaker color to make the range gradations more even. But making a perfectly graduated range is not the purpose of this exercise. The idea is that you make the mixes, see the changes in color, and associated with the terminology.
Now why am I so adamant about you learning the terminology? Well, in July, as we learn about color mixing and palette choices, being able to verbalize the common and contrasting characteristics in a set of colors will be key to making beautiful, intentional color choices. Plus, you can impress friends, family, and complete strangers with sophisticated color banter!
So, relax and mix up some colors. It’s easy and often surprising how the colors come out. I have found more than one “new favorite color” doing these kinds of exercises. You just might find a inspiring new color or two as well!
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My Weird Low Pressure Week
Hopefully there aren’t too many mistakes here. I need to beg your forgiveness if there are. My brain has literally been shorted as I gave blood this past week and got tested to see if I am a antibody plasma donor candidate to help out COVID-19 patients but my naturally very low blood pressue has yet to recover so I feel very dingy and am sometimes dizzy still, 5 days later. I never could give blood in Colorado due to the high elevation and even lower blood pressure up there but they thought I’d be fine down here. Well, guess not. We learn something new all the time!
So, I probably can’t give plasma eithere but I am still going to do all I can during this rough time to help others and, as part of that, maybe you will allow me to ask a little favor. I know this has gotten a little political here in the states but thsi is not about politics … I would just like to ask that when you are out, and it has been recommended where you live, you can show your love and concern for your community by the simple act of wearing a mask. I wear one everywhere even though I’ve already had this bug so I am supposedly immune and can’t pass it on. But people are scared and worried and wearing a mask shows you care, even if you question the validity of the science that says it will save others from getting sick. We need all the consideration and caring we can put out there right now, don’t you think?
Ok, that is my public service announcement for the day. I hope you are all staying well and will find joy in a creative and colorful week!
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Libby Mills uses value in color to create drama and depth with a mostly monochrome color palette.
I planned on talking about color variation this week but then it occurred to me, that we will need to talk about color contrast and you can’t talk about contrasting color without talking about value. So, I switched up my plans and we’re going to talk about the often neglected concept of color’s lights and darks, otherwise known as value.
The Light and Dark of It
So, what exactly is value? Value is simply what I just mentioned – the lightness or darkness of a color. This has nothing to do with their hue. Remember, hue works more like a category so mint green and hunter green both are a green hue, but mint has a light color value while hunter green has a very dark value.
The most important thing to remember about value is that it used to create contrast. For instance, purple has a much darker value than yellow, right? Used together, they are high in value contrast and, so, make a rather dramatic color palette. On the other hand, a dark magenta and forest green will have the same or similar middle-dark value. Putting them together will not create much value contrast. Although there is nothing wrong with that – they belong to complementary (opposite) hues on the CMY color wheel so they have contrast there – the lack of value contrast greatly reduces the potential of their dramatic contrast in hues.
To be blunt, similar values in rich colors such as dark magenta and forest green would just be boring. Now, if you choose a slightly darker magenta and a lighter green such as a burgundy and an jade, that will increase the value contrast and make a much more interesting color combination, as seen in the example image here. Below the color combinations you see them with the hue removed, leaving just their gray value. So that’s another way you can think about value – it’s the lightness or the darkness of the color without any color in it.
Seeing the Value
If you are a painter you might be shaking your head at the simplicity of the above explanation so let’s get a bit more precise. (If your head is already spinning a bit, just read through this but don’t worry about understanding it fully yet. You can come back to this later.)
Value is not just the lightness or darkness of a color. It is the lightness or darkness of what is SEEN. That’s an important distinction because the color of things we are looking at out in the world won’t stay constant as the light changes.
For instance, have you ever been around someone in a restaurant or on a train – some poorly lighted space – thinking their hair is dark brown only to see them step outside and find that it’s a rich red? Their hair didn’t change color. The light did.
The less light there is, the darker things appear, right? That seems obvious, but it’s really important to consciously understand that. It underlines one of the primary principles about creating art, especially imagery you’re trying to reproduce in any realistic manner – it’s not about what you think something is, it’s about what you actually see. So, if you are painting a portrait of me in a dark room, you would not paint me with the bright henna red and copper hair you know I have, because in the dim light, my hair would not actually look red or copper.
You may not be a painter but if you plan to build images in canes or are painting with polymer or create pretty much anything where you are developing a two-dimensional illusion of form and depth , you will be working with these kinds of value changes in color. Even if you don’t create imagery, the concept of how light changes the value of a color is useful for understanding what value is and why it is important in your designs.
You’ve actually learned about the importance of value if you’ve ever tried to draw a ball – to make it look round you have a very light spot where light hits the sphere directly, a dark side where the light doesn’t reach, and a gradation from light to dark between the two. Now, if that ball had color, like the blue ball you see here, you can tell that it’s a solid blue ball even though it actually has a variety of blues in this rendering of it. But I couldn’t just fill in a circle with one shade of blue and have you understand it is a ball. We need to see that change in color value – the swatches pulled from the blue ball are all the same hue of blue but are all different values – in order to see a dimensional form.
Without those changes of value – those lights and darks, those highlights and shadows – everything would just look flat. That is also why you don’t want to take a photo of an object with the light shining directly on the front facing view – it will kill the shadows, eliminate value changes, and make it difficult to perceive its form.
Intentional Value
So, a change in color value provides us with visual information, right? We like that. We like to be able to perceive if something is round or flat, textured or smooth. The contrast between light and shadow gives us that information. It is one of the reasons that we look for (mostly unconsciously) the contrast in value in works of art as well. Contrast, or the lack of it, can tell us a great deal.
In these beads by Jennifer Morris, there is very little contrast in value but these are not about drama so it makes sense. There are muted and pale colors with feminine floral motifs on round forms with low value contrast to match. The intention for this to be soft and quiet is obvious and with all the characteristics servicing that intention, she has designed some very lovely beads.
On the other hand, here are liquid polymer painted pieces by Lynn Yuhr who is clearly going for a bold and graphic look with wide ranging color values to support that objective.
So, don’t think that you must have a high contrast in the value of your colors. It can be high or low depending on what will best serve your intention. Value contrast also can bring attention to certain portions of your work or lead your eye around the piece.
For example, the fish on this clock by Gera Scott Chandler are much lighter in value than the background, bringing our focus to them first. The light value of the circles on the background subtly connect to the larger fish since they are similar in value so that your eye moves from fish to circles, going around the face of the clock.
Furthering Your Color Consciousness
So, before I get into how to manipulate values – something we will get into next week – I suggest you spend some time getting familiar with the values of color. I have a couple suggestions for you.
Go Grayscale
To better familiarize yourself with the actual value of colors, I find it helpful to look at colors in grayscale. A grayscale image will show you the actual value of colors, relative to the colors they are grouped with.
This means taking photos of your work in “black and white” mode or changing color images (yours or other people’s if you want) to grayscale in a photo editing app or software. Not all cameras have a black and white (or grayscale) mode. If you’re not sure, look up your camera model online along with “how to shoot black and white” and if no information comes up, then it probably doesn’t have that option.
The other way to do this is to edit the image. To do this on your computer, use Photoshop or whatever default photo editing software is available on your computer.
- In standard Photoshop, go to Image> Mode> Grayscale.
- In Microsoft Paint.net, you go to Adjustments> Black and White.
- If you are using another program, search the web for “how to convert image to grayscale” along with the name of your editing program.*
If you take a picture with a mobile device, you can usually edit it to grayscale directly in the phone or tablet.
- On an iPhone or iPad, select an image, hit “Edit”, tap the three overlapping circles icon, then scroll the little thumbnails of the photo over until it is in “mono”. Tap “Done” if you want to save it but keep in mind it will save over the original. If you do this accidentally, just follow the same steps and you’ll find the original version in that little row of thumbnails so you can convert it back.
- In Android, and pretty much any mobile device, you can use Google photos. Open your image in this app, tap it to bring up the icons and choose the three stacked lines. Slide the thumbnails over until it is in “Vogue” mode. You can also save it and undo it later.
*Note: There are quite a number of articles online suggesting you convert an image to grayscale by using a “saturation” adjustment. DO NOT do that for this value exercise. As we will discuss next week, saturation has nothing to do with color value. Reducing saturation tends to also reduce value, more for some colors than others. It will completely mess you up. You need a conversion to “grayscale”, “black and white”, or “mono”.
If using software and apps is just too much of a bother or you don’t have a software program, here is a free online service. You just click the file icon, browse to and open the file, and it will appear in the browser window in grayscale. You can save it from there by hitting the floppy disk icon.
Once you have these grayscale images, start looking at how much value contrast shows in the images.
- Is there a lot of contrast or all the values fairly close?
- Does the amount of value contrast match with the probable intention or feel of the piece?
- Do any of the colors set next to each other just blend into one another because the values are so close? If so, do you think that works for the piece or do you think more value contrast could help it? (We’ll talk more next week about how to choose alterantives when you want a different value.)
Just make yourself more familiar with value. You can also use this value scale (click on it, then print it out) to check values of colors or pieces you have. You can lay the scale next to a color and see which value you think is the closest. Then take a photo of the scale next to the color, convert it to grayscale, and see how close you came to matching the color to the right value. Do this a few times and you’ll be seeing in values quite quickly!
Get a CMY Color Wheel
You know how I recommended you get a CMY color wheel? Well, the more I work on these articles, the more I wish you ALL had the CMY color wheel from the Color Wheel company. I can’t tell you how many times I reference mine, and I am convinced that when we get into how to use these color concepts to pick color palettes and to mix color, having this particular CMY color wheel will make it all such a breeze.
No, they’re not paying me to push this. I have met the owners and they are a fantastic little family company (who worked with the polymer community’s very own Maggie Maggio to help build a CMY based grade school art curriculum, by the way) but more than that, they are so intensely passionate about color and education. That’s why they’ve done such a superior job with this particular color wheel.
So, if you haven’t gotten one yet, you can buy it directly from the company for $9 (including shipping in the US) and you will have it within 5-7 business days. It’ll be the best $9 you ever invested for your creative journey. Outside the US, I am not sure where it is best to get them but you can search for “Color Wheel Co CMY” and look for this wheel:
https://colorwheelco.com/buy-now/product/cmy-primary-mixing-wheel-7-3-4-diameter/
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this immersive in value. I have to say I am always surprised at how much there is to talk about each characteristic of color. These articles really could be much shorter but I don’t know if you would walk away really understanding and feeling confident about these concepts. We retain concepts better when we spend some time with them. I’m hoping these articles do that for you! If you have any thoughts or suggestions about the length or detail of these articles, I am always up for hearing them. Just reply to this if you get it by email or write me through the website.
Wondering about my references to Intention? Or how to support this content?
Read what so many VAB members have said was a life altering (or game changing or mind opening) set of articles on Intention in the February edition of the Virtual Art Box and catch up on the concept of marks, lines, and shape too. And they are all on SALE, 25% off right now – no promo code needed. I’m also having a 20% off sale on ALL books!
The purchase of a box would help support this free content that I am creating now as well as give you a stronger base for the conversations we will be having going forward. You can help me keep the lights on by making a purchase of any of the publications I have on the Tenth Muse Arts website or by making a one-time or monthly contribution here.
Thank you for your past, present, and future support!
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Cornelia Brockstedt communicates her sense of each season through color sets (cones and the cord) that speak to her idea of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.
So, here we go with the second installment of this summer’s color adventure. If you didn’t read last week’s posts, you can find it here. That post really lays the foundation for a lot of what I’ll be talking about over the next few weeks so you might want to read or review that first.
This week I want to expand upon your knowledge of hues but, more particularly I want to talk about the expressive nature of color. I know last week I may have forced a shift in your thinking about primaries but to confirm that and as a way to connect last week’s post with this one, let’s ride this CMY train a bit farther down the tracks.
Hopefully, we are now all in agreement that the most accurate pigment based primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. That is particularly helpful to keep in mind when mixing but that hardly gives us enough categories to work from in order to have a sense of how colors communicates or how to choose color palettes. I would like you to add a few more, starting with the CMY secondaries – the colors that result from mixing two primaries together – red, green, and blue.
Hmm. RGB, you say? Doesn’t that sound familiar? If you remember from last week, RGB are the primary colors for mixing light (such as the light that creates images on any digital screen.) Yes, CMY’s secondaries are the primary colors used to mix with light. And the reverse is true – CMY is the secondary color set for RGB. Why do you think they are interrelated like that?
You may remember from last week’s post that RGB is considered an additive color while CMY is subtractive so it’s not surprising to find them as opposite sets on the same color wheel. This is not the same RYB color wheel that painters have been using for years, mind you, so if you have a color wheel that depends on bread, yellow, blue, you might want to either get a CMY color wheel like this one by the Color Wheel Company. Or use a CMY color diagram like this one below. (Note that colors in this image below will shift if you print it and may be off due to your display already. Also the percentages listed are just guidelines when mixing colors as quality and concentration of pigments between types of materials and brands can differ greatly.)
Click for full size and to print. Created by SW Pryor, 2009
Back to color categories. Right now, you have six – cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, and blue. How about we add four more for a nice even 10?
Since the majority of the art world has been working with red, yellow, and blue as primaries for the last 200 years, their secondary hues have been widely referred to in color psychology and communication. Those are green (which we already have), purple and orange. Purple and orange carry very particular associations so we can’t leave them out.
The other two I feel necessary to include are black and white. For the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to wander into the mire that is the argument about whether these are actually colors. I think that argument is really based in the one inarguable fact – they aren’t hues. Depending on the color mode, either black or white is the inclusion of all hues or the exclusion of all hues but the argument on whether they are colors is just semantics so for our purposes I am proclaiming them color categories.
Connecting in Color
Now, why is it important to have categories? Well, you have to realize you’re going to be communicating something specific with the colors you choose so it’s best to choose with intention. Having color categories and knowing their specific association gives you a base from which to begin making those kinds of decisions.
We all react to color on some level, so color choices are no small thing. For instance, if there are a set of sisters who are triplets, all dressed the same but one has fire engine red fingernails another cobalt blue fingernails and the third has sunshine yellow, do you not draw different conclusions about each of the women? The one with a red nails might come across as strong but conservative, the one with the blue may strike you as audacious or even rebellious, and the sister with yellow nails may seem carefree and funky. You might draw a different conclusion that I did but I’m guessing we’d agree that we would think of each of those women at least a little differently based solely on the fingernail color.
Strangely, those conclusions I made about the fingernail colors are not necessarily associations common with those specific colors but that’s our curveball here. It goes to show that it’s not just the color that creates what you are communicating – it’s also the context. And you.
Since there is a lot more to communicating with color than what we might assume is inherent in each hue, I’m going to give you very general associations as a kind of jumping off point, but you may very well have other strong associations not listed for these colors. We’ll get to that in a moment.
For now, simply read through this list but don’t try to memorize it. Just let it sink in as you read it, maybe just asking yourself what associations are true for you that I have listed, and mentally (or in writing) adding your own as you go. Then I have some thoughts about how to use these categories for your own authentic creations.
Color Associations by Color Category
Here are the color categories we’ll work on for now. We’ll get to the grayed out sections later.
Magenta – uplifting, balancing, and cheerful, this color can convey and encourage happiness, creativity, and compassion.
Purple – often thought of as the color of luxury and grandeur due to its historical rarity, it is now also associated with drama, ambition, and dignity. Purple also encourages daydreaming which may be why it is associated with mysticism and imagination.
Blue – one of the most liked colors in the world, blues can feel uplifting, quiet, calm, and reliable, as well as communicating trustworthiness and comfort.
Cyan – lively but calming, cyan invokes the serenity and brightness of tropical oceans along with a sense of cleanliness and focus.
Green – relaxing and reassuring, green is a very positive color that is easy on the eye, literally. It lessens glare and absorbs ultraviolet light reducing eye fatigue. It also represents growth, freshness, nature, and harmony although in certain contexts and tones it can also be associated with illness.
Yellow – considered the happiest of colors this is associated with joy, optimism, and spontaneity. It is visually dominant which means it can drown out other colors, so it is often used in small amounts or as a background color.
Orange – energizing, cheerful, and friendly, orange literally wakes us up by encouraging oxygen intake in the brain. It is also highly visible which is why it is used for construction and warning signs even though emotionally it feels playful.
Red – well-known as representing love, passion, power, and excitement, it is also associated with danger and blood. It also appears hot so much so that a beverage will seem hotter in a red cup than any other color. It is also the most eye-catching, so it gets noticed regardless of how little is used.
Black – is often associated with death but in the absence of a context with death associated symbols and imagery, it will more likely convey authority, respect, seriousness, and decorum while sometimes feeling aggressive. It can make objects appear deeper or heavier than light or white versions.
White – purity, cleanliness, goodness, and innocence are the more common associations with white although it can also be thought of as formal, cold, sterile, and stark. When it is not a dominant color, it is overlooked, reading as an inconspicuous background.
Now, you might be asking, what about brown? Or gray? How about pink? Yes, we do have very specific associations with those colors, but they are variations on hues, not hues themselves and I am aiming to give you baby steps, more or less. Trying to figure out how you feel about 10 colors is a pretty big baby step already. We’ll get to the rest in future weeks.
Real and Authentic Color
Okay, now that I you’ve read that list, let’s talk about the only color associations that really matters – your specific emotional connection to color.
Choosing the colors you want to use to communicate your intention really should be based on what you feel, not what you THINK, about those colors. This can be tough to figure out but if you’re up for it that’s what I’ll suggest you work on this week. Let me explain.
Take the color blue. It supposed to be calming, peaceful, and trustworthy and is one of the favorite colors of all times. Well, strangely, I myself have a kind of aversion to the hue of blue. It’s not all blues, but I certainly steer away from it when it comes to my attire. Other than maybe a pair of blue jeans on a back shelf, there is no blue in my closet. I know I associate dark blue clothing with domineering personalities (my father wore a lot of navy, for instance) so I don’t find it comforting or uplifting like many people might.
So, if I wanted to create a piece that portrayed a peaceful calm, I would not choose blue even though that is supposed to readily communicate that concept to others. It would be like trying to laugh at something I didn’t find funny. It will come across as inauthentic. However, I might go with green or even cyan as a dominant color because those colors do feel peaceful to me. That choice, combined with my other design choices, all rooted in my personal intention to convey a peaceful calm, should result in a cohesive and authentic feeling piece.
I know you might be concerned that choices based on your personal associations won’t communicate well to a lot of people. It is true – it might not. But for the right people, the people that will love and feel connected to the authentic you they see in your work, it absolutely will. It will also be a more joyful and satisfying piece to create for you.
Connection and Context
You might’ve noticed my persistent use of the word “connection”. I’m using this as a kind of catch all term for the various objectives an artist might have for drawing people to their work. Sometimes we want people to feel drawn to, and therefore connected to, the work on a personal level so that they want to buy it. Or we may be more concerned about captivating them in order to elicit a specific emotion or to get them to think, which is another kind of connection.
You can also have the objective of not trying to connect to others at all but may simply want to please yourself, which is wonderful and more than valid. In that case, it is even more important to make design choices based on how they make you feel than about what they mean to others. Even though you’re communicating with only yourself initially, the authenticity of your choices will communicate and connect to others if and when you share your work. Personally, I think this is the best way to work.
If you haven’t already noticed, everything in design is about relationships. Although the relationship between your artwork and the viewer is one relationship, I am more specifically referring to how every design element is related to each other in a piece to create an overall feel or message. Your choice of color, as strong as it can be in relaying a specific message on its own, relates to the other design elements which can change how the color and the overall design feels.
Look at these two pendants by Melanie Muir. They are using essentially the same color palette, but they have a notably different feel. For those of you who were with me last month, or bought the May VAB about shape, you might have readily recognized how the softer, round shapes of the left pendant has helped create an inviting and fun feel in that pendant. Yes, orange is associated with a sense of joy to start with but then look at the one on the right. It still has a burnt orange with black and white palette but the sharp corners of those shapes make it feel more serious although still lively due to the orange.
Here is another comparison with two different color palettes but the same design by Christine Dumont. Do they not feel quite different? Even though I like the core design, I am more drawn to the blue-green (yes, even though I am not big on blue.) I am a huge fan of green and I don’t think of domineering men when blue is combined with it. It actually feels uplifting and comfortable to me. The magenta, a color known to be particularly cheerful, is quite elegant here but feels too loud for me. That’s probably because I am essentially an introvert so although I like my attire to be creative, edgy, and even weird, I don’t like it to be loud.
Which do you prefer and why do you think that is?
Exploring Your Version of Hues
So, if I haven’t fully confused you by giving you a set of rules and then telling you to toss them out window, I would suggest that, this week, you spend time investigating how you feel about particular colors.
Now, how do you figure that out? Well, honestly, it’s going to take a lot longer than a week for most people if you’ve not done this before, but you can start by simply making word associations and becoming more aware of your reaction to color.
Wrapped in Color Exercises
Try to put yourself in a place, physically or mentally, where you can respond to color that surrounds you.
Go and put on different colors of clothing, wrap yourself in various colored blankets, or, if you have a stash of fabric, pull out some solid colored bits and wrap yourself up in them. Then ask yourself how you feel in each color, especially if you can do this in front of a mirror (you know, when everybody else is out for a walk or asleep or something so you don’t have to explain yourself.) What colors make you feel more energized? What colors make you feel more relaxed? Do any of them make you particularly happy or make you feel regal?
Since you are likely to be wrapping yourself up with colors that are not a pure hue, you could start making note of how you react to the hues when they are dark, pastel, bright, or muted. You may be responding to that version of the hue, not the hue itself. Like I might feel very bold and confident in a plum dress, but I would probably feel a bit subdued and delicate in a lavender one. (More on color variations next week.)
If you don’t have sufficient colors to wrap yourself up in, just try to imagine yourself in a room painted all in one hue. How do you feel in the yellow room? Does it make you want to dance around or is it annoying? How about a red room? Does it make you feel impassioned and energized or maybe frightened? How about a white room? How about a black room?
You aren’t really trying to make any specific conclusions about your relationship with color at this time. Just try and become more familiar with how you feel about various colors. Color relationships are complex. Like I love using copper polymer when making jewelry, but I can’t imagine ever creating anything with orange. Orange just doesn’t speak to the things I want to express. But you should know, I also hate tomatoes but love salsa so, I’m probably just particularly weird.
As we work through the various aspects of color over the next few weeks, you can continue to ask yourself these questions about how you feel about particular colors. And when you are designing, you could also ask yourself what color comes to mind when thinking about the emotion associated with the specific intention of the piece you’re working on. You might be surprised with what you come up with.
Wondering about my references to Intention? Or how to support this content?
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