Diving into Exploration

Flickr’s Dragonfly555 shows off impressions samples.

Do you feel like you have to make a finished piece or be working on a particular design when you sit down at your studio table? Sure, it feels good, and it’s very exciting to have a finished piece to show and share, but learning a craft is as much about exploration as is about creating finished work.

So, if you’re not giving yourself that exploratory time, let me give you some reasons to highly consider it. And if you do a bit of exploring already, maybe I can offer up some new ideas about ways to use and organize your exploratory bits that you might not have tried.

 

The Exploratory Reasoning

When you’re fairly new to a material, technique, form, or construction method, it is to your advantage to spend time just playing with it. This is especially true, I think, of texture, mark making, color mixing, new techniques, and new materials including new brands of a familiar material. Trying to make finished work before you are familiar with the technique or material can get frustrating, if not downright depressing. You can gain more success in the long run if you develop a better understanding of what it is that you’re working and hone your skills a bit before gambling your time, materials, and hopes on finished work.

It certainly can be tempting to just pick up something and see what you can make with it right out the gate. With a lot of home craft materials, polymer clay in particular, you can create a decent completed piece within a day of picking it up. However, the ease of these materials is a bit of a deception. They may be easy to get started with, but mastering them, even just a little, takes time and effort. Give yourself a gift of that time to get to know what you’re working with without the pressure of trying to finish something presentable.

 

Samples to Reference

Mica powders with sample chips

Probably the best way to explore new materials and techniques is to make small samples, ones you can keep and reference as you make decisions for future finished pieces. If the color of the sample is not relevant, you can just use scrap clay. If you use clay straight out of the package, you may also have an option to transform the samples into finished work. Let’s go over all these options.

(Although I’m going to talk specifically about polymer clay, if you work primarily in another material, consider an equivalent process. Consider how you can cut out or form small samples that can be saved as references. See if this clay focused process inspires you.)

For some orderly exploration, sheet your clay and then hand cut or punch cut the sheets into whatever shapes tickle your fancy. Then you can just go crazy with whatever you’re exploring. Use as many of these pieces as you like for each process you’re exploring. Keep the ones you are pleased with, etching with a needle tool or, after curing, writing on the back with permanent marker, what you made them with. Keep cured pieces in a baggie or punch holes in them before curing so you can string them on wire or chain, making them easy to flip through.

If you are playing with textures, mark making, or any kind of tooling on polymer clay, I would suggest sheeting three different thicknesses—the thickest setting, a medium setting, and the thinnest setting on your pasta machine. Then try out each of your experiments at least once on each of the three different thicknesses. Anything that impresses or otherwise moves around the clay will be affected differently by the clay thickness, sometimes subtly but sometimes quite dramatically.

Cure the samples you like, being sure to inscribe or write a note on the back indicating what thickness the clay sheet was along with what made the impression or marks.

If you’re color mixing, sheet the finished color, then punch out a decent sized shape, one that has enough room for you to write down your proportions for that color mix. For example, if you mix a deep rich purple by combining 6 parts cobalt, 3 parts magenta, and one part black, inscribe on the back:

6X blue

3X magenta

1X black

Also include a big initial for the brand of clay (P for Premo, F for Fimo, K for Kato, etc) since colors by the same name in one brand are usually nothing like those colors in another brand.

You can also note proportions visually by punching out a circle of clay, smaller than your mixed sample, from each of the colors you used in the mix. Cut out portions, like pie slices, from each color in proportion to how much was used in the mix to re-create a single circle showing how much of each color was used in the mix. Don’t forget to inscribe your initial for the brand of clay. See the image here for an approximate example of the purple mix above.

Adhere this combination pie to the mixed color shape, punch a hole in the sample, cure, and string on a chain or wire.

(If you are confused about how to figure out the parts aspect of the color mixing, just use a small cutter to punch your unmixed colors out of sheets of the same thickness. Each piece is a part. Use these punched bits of clay to make your mix, keeping track of how many pieces/parts you use to create the color you’re making.)

If you’re playing with a surface colorant, try it on both white clay and black clay or on clay colors you use quite often. It’s a rare colorant that doesn’t allow the clay base underneath to the show through, so trying it on black and white will give you an idea of how the colorant will appear on lighter versus darker colors, not just black and white.

I punch small-ish circles out of white and black sheets of clay, then I cut them in half and put a white half with a black half. I apply the colorant to these splits chips. After curing, I glue them to the colorant’s product container so my reference sample is right on the product. You can see here how well this works for those little mica powder containers, above. I keep them in a drawer with the samples facing up so I can quickly find the color I want.

The best part about all these samples is that while you’re designing a finished piece, you can pull them out and compare them side-by-side to see what works well together. You can also hold them up to a partially finished piece to see what you might want to add. Personally, I can’t imagine working without all my exploratory samples.

 

Turning Discovery into Works of Art

Just a few pendants and beads I made with extra texture samples by reforming and/or adding pin lace layers of clay. You can learn the pin lace technique in the February VAB here. The VAB PDFs are 40% right now too.

Now, for those of you who are anxious to produce something with your time at the studio table, you can take any samples you’re not going to save for reference and create with them. You can add additional layers, reshape, or attach embellishment to your extra samples to easily create pendants, earrings, or brooches. You can also use them for collages or mosaics.

Keep cured samples, even if you’re not going to use them for reference, for further experiments where you want to play with cured clay techniques or to test new glues or sealants. This way, not only is your time not wasted, neither are any of the materials you’re playing with.

 

Give Yourself Permission to Explore

Whatever your inclination, the big take-away here is that in-depth exploration can, and probably should, be a regular part of your creative process. Give yourself the permission and time to do this throughout your creative journey or career, not just when you’re starting out.

Keep in mind, not only does this kind of exploratory time hone your skills, your familiarity and confidence with the processes and techniques grow stronger and faster than they would if you tried to learn just through making finished work. This is because you are willing to take more chances with these scrap samples. They just don’t have the same stakes, right?

And, you know, taking chances with this exploratory sample work should eventually translate into taking bigger risks with your finished pieces. I think, when we take the big risks, that’s when we make the biggest leaps and create the most amazing work. Well, sometimes we make absolute disasters as well, but it’s all part of the process. You’re certainly less likely to have a disaster if you do a lot of exploration first.

Christi Friesen shares unusual and creative mark making in the March Virtual Art Box

So, if you have not let yourself just explore and play with the materials you work with, maybe, this week, you can either set some time aside or make all of your studio time exploration time. Making many of your mistakes in the exploratory phase and not always on completed pieces will make your creative time more efficient, less stressful, and more enjoyable.

 

Texture Hungry?

If you’re one of those who is looking for more ideas and direction on texture, don’t forget we have an entire issue of The Polymer Arts on texture, the Fall 2017 issue. Also check out the mark making focused edition of the Virtual Art Box from March of last year. All Virtual Art Box content that was previously members only is 40% off right now.

 

 

The Last of the March Giveaways

Our month of giveaways has ended, but all your wonderful comments have given me so many ideas for upcoming posts. I thank all of you who commented so very sincerely!

I have one last giveaway winner to announce. Valerie Hall is receiving the last batch of my giveaway Polyform clay. I was very excited about this. Valerie is a very active and giving soul who has been trying to teaching through the great clay shortage of 2020 in any way she can. So it’s fantastic to aid her with this clay package. Congrats Valerie!

This was so much fun. I will try to do this here and there as I receive samples or find opportunities to gather stuff for you. So stick around for more free stuff in the not-too-distant future!

 

You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like…

 

Metaphor and Simile

March 28, 2021

Christine Damm fits together leftovers from old veneers to create her “Distant Worlds” earring components. Just for fun, what kind of soup would make a suitable metaphor for these? I was thinking Italian Wedding soup!

How often do you use metaphors and similes when you are trying to explain something? I read somewhere that we use metaphor about five or six times a minute. I’m not sure about the accuracy of that number but we do use metaphor in small ways all day long and similes are often our go to option for things that we are having a hard time explaining. Why do we use these so much? Because metaphors and similes help us simplify complicated or hard to grasp ideas. They also help us see old things in a fresh way or make daunting things less intimidating.

Can you think of some things in your life that you would like to simplify, see in a new way, or find less intimidating? I think we all do and our creative time often has many complications and blind spots as the rest of her life. So let’s talk about metaphor and simile in terms of how can help you resolve questions in design.

To ensure the terminology doesn’t get confusing, let’s quickly define these devices.

Metaphor: assigning a word or phrase to something for which it is not literally applicable. For instance, “my studio table is a disaster area,” or “think outside the box.” Certainly, the studio table is not being cordoned off and applying for federal emergency relief, and I do hope you aren’t in a box to start with.

Simile: comparing two unlike things to make an interesting or exaggerated point, usually using the word like or as to make the connection. For example, “my studio looks like a war zone” or “I was as sick as a dog.”

 

Find Your Answers in Metaphors

The idea of metaphors and similes as a device for helping in design came up when I was reading the comments made last week for the giveaway in which I asked what design element people were struggling with. A lot of people are struggling with color which was expected since that is one of the harder elements to master but there was also a lot of concern about size and, most surprisingly, confusion surrounding the use of texture. Of course, this got me thinking about how I can help you better utilize or master these elements. The first things I came up with were metaphors.

So, let me give you a little design lesson on texture, since that’s the one that surprised me the most, with a metaphor.

In terms of techniques, textures are not hard to create, especially if you’re working with something as forgiving as polymer clay. The question seems to be where to use it, how much to use, and how to choose textures for your work. Thinking about this, I came up with a broad metaphor—cooking.

So, think about what you would have to do to throw together a pot of homemade soup. (Even if cooking is not your thing, it’s not so much about whether you can relate as whether you can imagine the equivalences the metaphors draw between art and cooking.) When you start a soup, you make a lot of your big choices up front, such as what kind of base—broth, tomato, or creamy—and then what’s going to go into it, particularly the protein and vegetables.

Your artwork isn’t that different. Your base choice starts with your intention—what you want to make or what you want to express—then you choose the materials you use and some key design elements such as colors marks, lines, surface design, and embellishments.

At the end of the soup recipe is where you usually find the spice. Texture, to me, is the spice. Although I tend to have an idea about what textures I might want in a piece just as I tend to know what kind of spices I think I’ll want in the soup, my process tends to bring in the texture towards the end of the decision-making. Note that I say it comes at the end of decision-making not at the end of the making of a piece since often times materials need to be textured before they are cut or attached.

Now, why would I save my decisions about texture until the end? Well, with soup, spice is what creates a lot of the discernible flavor and can really bring all the ingredients together. So, if we think of texture as spice, use it where this visual or tactile spice will heighten the “flavor” of the piece or, if you have kind of disparate sections, if they all have a similar texture then it becomes more cohesive.

The metaphor even works for the amount of spice or texture you use. Use a lot if you want the spice to be the primary experience the viewer has or keep it subtle or light so that it complements the other elements or helps them shine. Choose textures that work with the other elements just as you would choose spices that go with the proteins, vegetables, and soup base.

Kathleen Krucoff spices up her dangle earrings with a very light rough surface on the silver and a touch of gritty gold texture to bring our eye up from the focal point gems.

For instance, you’re probably not going to throw a bunch of pungent nutmeg and turmeric into a delicate chicken and wonton soup. That kind of simple soup needs some flavor from spice and herbs, but you would be better off with some bright lemon or ginger, maybe a sprinkling of cilantro or shallots. Likewise, if your artwork is pale and delicate, you might not want a deep and dense texture, but something shallow and subtle.

There is one point at which the soup metaphor kind of fails. You don’t actually have to have spice In soup but in artwork, every surface has texture even if the texture is smooth. Still, you can think of smooth textures as equivalent to a soup that doesn’t depend on spice for its flavor. That does mean that all the other ingredients/elements need to carry the design. If you go heavy on the texture, keep in mind that is it will probably overpower, visually, many of the other elements. You know, like cayenne pepper does in a pot of Texas chili!

Okay, so, This metaphor soup for texture will work for some and not for others. For some of you, the idea of texture being spice may have lit a big light bulb over your head and you just left me to run off to your studio table to try some things out. Fabulous! Of course, then there’s a bunch of you who have gotten this far but are scratching your head thinking, “I don’t get it.” That’s okay. Maybe you can find a different metaphor, or you might find similes easier to visualize. There’s Bound to be something that can give the concepts you’re struggling with the structure and simplicity you need.

I’m going to work up some ways to talk more about texture, size, and color over the next few weeks since those seem to be the primary concerns for so many of you. But in the meantime, look to other things you do for potential metaphors that might help you with your approach to various aspects of design, especially things you find easy to do or have a lot of experience with such as gardening, party planning, interior decorating, writing, or putting together the perfect ensemble for a special night out (if any of us can remember what that was like.) Ask yourself, what do I start with, what do I add next, what are the little decisions I have to make to get it to be perfect?

There is a good chance you can find a somewhat equivalent process to plan your designs if you think on it. At the very least, searching for metaphors and similes might bring up some options for a new approach to your work that you would not have seen had you not looked for a metaphor.

 

An Easy Search

If you need more detailed information on various aspects of design right now, go to the blog and use the search box there to find the posts in which we discuss those elements.

Also, did you know that you can search for articles and artists published in any of the Tenth Muse magazines by going to this table of contents page? There is a link at the top of all the magazine sales pages too.

The page allows you to search through the titles of every magazine article published through Tenth Muse, most of which include the subject matter in the title. The listings also include artist’s names and the author of each article. To search the page, use your “find” keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+F in Windows or Command-F for Mac) to bring up a search box that will help you find specific subjects, artists, or authors. Use the simplest version of keywords, (like mokume instead of mokume gane, or transfer instead of transfers) to have the most success in your search.

If you have a collection of The Polymer Arts or Polymer Studio magazines, bookmark the table of contents page so you can find out which issues have the technique, artists, or subject matter you’re looking for.

 

Last Week’s Giveaway

Last week the giveaway box went to Kathleen von Balson. She actually posted about trying to be more subtle in her use of contrast. I just love when the blogs get someone going in the studio and I get to hear about it!

Congrats Kathleen!

(You know, you are always welcome to post comments below or send me an email about what you got out of a blog post, especially if you have suggestions or questions. It helps me determine what to share with you here.)

 

This Week’s Giveaway

Thank you to everyone who took part in last week’s giveaway through comments on the post. I do hope it gave you a moment to think and refocus on design elements you’re struggling with. I think it was really revealing for other readers as well– there were quite a lot of replies to the various comments. So, let’s do this one more time.

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 $30 Tenth Muse certificate, since it would be such a gamble to ship clay outside the US.

How to Win:

  • Put a note in the blog comments* (below), this time letting me know what else besides design elements you’re struggling with in your artwork or creative time. (Yes, I’m using you to give me ideas about what to write about my coming months. I think that will work well for all of us!) It can be one word or a whole explanation.
  • Note: It may 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 31st at midnight Pacific time to get in for the raffle.
  • I’ll announce the winner here on the blog next weekend!

 

 

You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like…

 

Contrast of Self

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…

 

Of Hierarchy and Uncertainty

February 7, 2021

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 …

A Variety Show

January 24, 2021

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 …

A Lack of Absolutes

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:

  1. Create with intention, whatever that means to you.
  2. Draw your intention from that authentic and unique core that is you.
  3. 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.

Why Size Matters

Fanni Sandor creates exquisitely small and biologically accurate creatures in polymer clay and mixed mediums. Her choice to go small is born of a fascination with minature art and we, likewise, are fascinated by the tiny masterpieces. See more on her Instagram page.

What size art do you work in? Have you even ever thought about that? Do you work small, big, or a nice moderate middle size?

I think many of us have a limited size range that we feel comfortable working in and rarely, if ever, venture outside that range. There’s nothing wrong with that but it does beg the question, do you think about what the appropriate size is when you create something?

As you might be guessing, if you’ve been reading my blog or design articles for any length of time, I’m about to point out that making the decision about the size of your work can help to fulfill your intention.

(Do you ever think, “If she says something about intention one more time…!” Well, I do hope it’s not annoying. It’s just that important!)

Size in art simply refers to how big or small something is. It is used in a variety of ways to emphasize, organize, assist in functionality, and symbolize the intention of the artist. A lot of the size choices made have to do with relativity – something can only be called small if something else is big and vice versa.

In design, this is actually a principal known as proportion and scale. Proportion is about the relative size between two or more objects or elements when they are grouped together or juxtaposed. Scale refers to how big or small something is compared to the general understanding of how a thing usually is or should be. For instance, we expect a chair to be sized for human beings to sit in and a teapot big enough to hold several cups of tea. Anything significantly larger or smaller than these expectations would be a change in scale.

Scale represents an interesting concept in that it makes note that we do have expectations about how big or small thing should be. That may sound like we have some kind of undue constraints placed upon those of us who create, but actually, scale gives us an opportunity to step outside those expectations and make a point.

As mentioned above, size can be used emphasize things. Making something bigger than expected usually draws attention, so if you created a beaded necklace with beads as big as golf balls, those are definitely beads that are bigger than normally expected.

The same concept of emphasis works with proportions. Let’s say that you only made one of those beads as big as a golf ball in the previously mentioned beaded necklace and the rest of the beads were of a more reasonable size. In that case, you would be drawing attention to the big bead as a focal point. Size allows you to direct the viewer’s eye and their impression of the work.

It may seem that bigger items will be more impressive or have a bigger impact but, honestly, very small artistic creations can be just as fascinating, sometimes more so due to the skill needed to create beauty in such a small space. I think you can see that in the opening image of this post. Small art requires the viewer to come close to it to really see the details, creating an intimacy between the viewer and the piece.

So, have you ever thought about these considerations for size when creating your work? Don’t worry if you haven’t. It’s not that uncommon for size to be determined in some arbitrary or organic manner. And I’m not saying that doing it that way is wrong, but you could be missing out on an opportunity to better express your intention if size was a conscious decision.

 

A Sizable Story

One of my high corset collars with stitched copper and polymer embellishments.

When I was a working artist, I often made decisions about size based on what I thought people would want. It wasn’t a particularly conscious choice, more of an aim not to make pieces too big. I was not trying to make statement jewelry, but rather something that could be comfortably worn all day, or so that was my train of thought.

I can’t say what got me to start thinking about size, but at some point, I started to ask myself why I was afraid to go big. So, I started to push myself, making big collar pieces that would sit as high as the jawline and come down to the collarbone. Some were a little crazy, some were so uncomfortable, but I still found so much joy in making all of them.

I found something freeing in pushing myself beyond what I thought my market would like. And, as it turned out, my market liked them big too. I sold every one that I put up for sale. They never came home with me after a show. So, what I discovered was that the sizes I had been working in were completely self-imposed without any supportable basis for my choices other than my own fear of not being able to make a sale.

Once I realized why I had been working in those smaller sizes, I was able to start making decisions based on what the work needed to be instead of what I thought the market might want. For example, if I was going to make an ornate piece with the intention that the wearer feel like a queen, I would probably decide that it should be big and bold, not small and delicate or demurely moderate, to better emphasize the feeling of nobility I wanted it to embody.

 

Georg Dinkel works large when he is trying to make a point about our reverence for technology, like with this iPhone docking station titled IReliquary.

What’s Your Size?

So why do you work in the sizes that you do?

Is it purely functionality or rooted in the idea of what people would expect the size to be?

Is it limited by the tools or forms you have on hand, or by the capability of the materials being used?

Do you let the size come about organically or unconsciously or do you make a conscious decision about size based on the impact or response you would like the viewer to have?

I truly don’t believe that there’s really a wrong way to determine the size of your work but, like any design element, you are only truly a master of it if you are aware of its possibilities and make conscious choices.

So maybe this week, think about the size of your artwork in terms of your intention. Look at pieces that you’ve made in the past and ask yourself how the look and message, if there was one, would have changed if the piece had been smaller or larger. And in the next few things that you design, ask yourself what size piece would best serve the artwork before letting your tools or expectations of scale determine it for you.

 

Goodies are About Gone

Support this blog and your creative endeavors … join the club!

If you didn’t see the newsletter yesterday, I shared the stock I have left for a few special items that were first offered to Art Boxer Club Members, but a couple things are sold out or nearly so already. These are limited items that I will periodically offer publicly, without the discounts or freebies club members get, when there is extra stock, so if you can’t join us in the club, keep your eye out for my newsletters and sign up here if you aren’t on that list for my next offering.

Getting first dibs as well as discounts and freebies is one of the advantages of being part of the Art Boxer clubs, along with the weekly mini-magazine pick me up you get in your email. (The Art Boxer Success club that includes coaching is also unavailable at this time as spots are full up but I do have a waiting list going – just write to me if interested.)

These limited supplies are available on this page if you are still interested.

 

All Quiet on this Western Front

I have little to report on the home front. I did go in in for a small surgery Thursday only to find out I’m going have to go back in six weeks or so from now to have it completed. Nothing is straightforward and simple this year, is it? So, just trying to make myself take it easy this weekend although I am just a horrible patient in that regard.

Next weekend, assuming nothing else weird happens, my better half and I are going to slip away for the weekend to test the camper van conversion we’ve been slowly working on. I do plan to put something for you together before I go so you should still be able to visit with me next Sunday.

In the meantime, all your hopes and plans, big or small, all go off as intended this week!

Tactile Allure

Melanie West’s satiny smooth finish has a heavanly tactile texture even though many people might think of her pieces as being textured because they’re so smooth. Yet smooth is actually one of world’s most loved textures.

How often do you touch art?

No, I don’t mean being the unruly museum visitor who gets yelled at by the docent, but in your everyday life, how many things do you touch that you would also consider art?

Works in the applied arts, which encompass decorative art, adornment, and functional objects, are often things that we touch. Because of this, the tactile texture of most applied art is exceedingly important. Not only can the wrong texture put someone off from buying a piece, but the right texture can make a huge difference between people liking your work due to its visual appeal and being utterly in love with it because it feels so good to touch. It is also another means by which you can express your intention.

Choosing Tactile

The first time I touched a Melanie West polymer bead, it was like taking a bite of the most heavenly chocolate mousse. Her finishes are flawless and so soft; my fingers just couldn’t get enough. That kind of tactile reaction is golden. It also supports her soft and organic themes. As wonderful as her finishes are, that kind of texture may not be wanted in your work or may not even be possible due to techniques or materials you are using.

The point is that her textures are part of the experience of her work and, if you’re creating things that will be handled, you too should consider the experience of touching your piece as part of its aesthetic value. As always, let your intention drive your decisions, but pay attention to the physical sensation experienced when handling the work and aim to have it support your intention, alongside all your other design decisions.

For instance, if you want to share your love of the beach through your work, think about the physical sensations that stand out the most – the soft breeze on your face, the refreshingly cold water on your feet, and your toes digging into cool sand. Now, how do you translate those physical sensations into tactile texture that will help you share that experience to those who will handle your work?

You can do so by thinking in terms of those adjectives – soft, refreshing, and cool. You probably want those to be the dominant sensations so don’t go for, say, a sandy texture just because the beach has sand. Is a gritty, sandy texture going to convey soft, refreshing, and cool? Chances are, it’s just going to remind someone of getting sand in their shoes and other uncomfortable places. You can create a visually sandy texture that includes sandy colors and a speckled look, but in terms of tactile sensations, going for a soft, maybe matte surface that will feel cool and soothing to the touch will share something closer to the sensations you want to relay.

Felt may have textural limitations but the final texture is still a choice. Olga Demyanova contrast a tight, even texture with the rippling and rougher orange edging and accents in this intriquing handbag.

There are a lot of materials that have limits on the tactile textures available. Polymer clay can replicate most tactile surfaces except for fuzzy, but felted work is limited to that dense and slightly rough feel of matted wool while glass will almost always have a smooth aspect. There are also techniques that create their own texture or limit how you can further manipulate the material to create texture. Learn the range of tactile sensations available in the materials and techniques you use so you know what options you have.

 

Work that Begs to Be Touched

There are a couple things you can focus on in order to create work that people will love to touch. It primarily involves smoothness and variation.

 

Smooth Surfaces

Our sense of touch enjoys traveling along a pleasantly smooth substance such as polished metal or stone. But what we like most is softness, such as a fluffy blanket or bunny fur. Softness is a type of smoothness as it allows our skin to glide across, unimpeded.

Note that you can re-create the look of fluffy and furry textures in hard substances such as clay or wood but you can’t re-create the same associated softness because, in those materials, you lose the ability for our fingertips to effortlessly glide across it in the same way due to the unevenness in a hard surface. So, recreating the look of fur doesn’t necessarily re-create the tactile experience. The ‘look’ of fur is just a visual experience.

So, be careful to think of smooth tactile texture, not in the way it looks, but the way it feels.

 

Klavdija Kurent gives the wearer of her jewelry much to explore with their fingertips.

Variation

Our fingertips were made for receiving information, and lots of it, so they do very much enjoy a variation in texture. However, we don’t normally enjoy variation that is sharp, prickly, scratchy, or sticky. These textures make it hard for our fingers to glide along and take it in, not to mention that they are also often painful.

However, bumps, grooves, and fine lines excite the nerve endings. It’s just like the sense of taste – we aren’t too happy with things that are bland but a lot of flavors that go well together thrills our tongue. Our fingers, likewise, enjoy complexity.

 

The Best of Both – Smooth and Varied

I think you’ll find that pieces with both a smooth and varied surface attain the pinnacle of touchableness.

Take a look at the pearled bracelet here. It is not even in your presence and you probably still feel a tiny urge to reach out and touch it. That’s because each half pearl has a small, smooth surface which is further aided by the round and unimpeded nature of its shape as well as there being a varied field of them.

The combination of smoothness and variation in this bracelet makes for an engaging texture, adding energy to the piece both in its tactile and visual nature. Note that this also has a bit of rough texture around the edges to provides textural contrast. Because contrast is important in texture too!

The contrast of texture fit well into my intention of showing the classic perfection and allure of pearls in an organic setting. I wanted it to be a subtle reminder of the messy world pearls actually come from even though we now associate them with neat, tidy, and conservative dress.

 

The Tactile Balancing Act

The textures you choose will dictate limitations in terms of surface treatments and other parts of your design, so you have to balance out your tactile texture choices with your other design choices. For instance, if you create a deep and dense texture on a light color, it’s going to appear darker, which you might not want.  Or you may want a very smooth surface but want pattern to raise the energy so you would have to figure out how to incorporate pattern visually with inks, veneers, or other smooth surface applications.It just needs to make sense for your intention and the limitations of material.

If your tactile texture decisions, weighed in light of all the other decisions you have to make about color, shape line, function, etc., are chosen in service of your intention, you are sure to have a beautiful, cohesive, and interestingly touchable design.

 

Should I Call Them Mini-Mags?

The first week of the Art Boxer Clubs has commenced and one of the first comments about the weekly Pick-Me-Up is that it ought to be described as a mini-mag. I guess it is. It’s hard to take the magazine attitude out of me. There were 5 little articles and a good handful of links for further exploring.  So, yeah, maybe it is a mini-mag. I might have to rethink what I call it.

But regardless of what it’s called, joining the club will get you a little extra boost each week and at least once a month, you’ll get a special discount, a first dibs or limited stock offer, and/or a giveaway. And right now you can get in on it with a 2 week free trial and a FOREVER discounted rate.

So, if you enjoy my blog, support this while boosting your own creative endeavors by joining us in the Devotee Club or Success Club (there are only a few spots left in this upgrade to personal coaching option, at least as of my writing this), or buy yourself a good book or an inspiring magazine to curl up with. Just visit the website by clicking here.

 

No Fires Here

We are still a safe distance from all the fires and the sky has started to clear up from the smoke so nothing too exciting to report from Tenth Muse central. I’ve already gotten started on the next project but I don’t want to say too much about it. It seems like every time I say something, I get jinxed and delayed. So, you’ll just have to stop by and check in with me on the weekends, or read the newsletters, or, if you want to be the first to know, join one of the new Club options as Art Boxers will be the first to know (as well as getting extra discounts … just sayin’.)

 

I hope you all have a relatively unexciting week yourselves. It’s not like we need much more excitement with the craziness of the world providing plenty already. Just go make beautiful things and be kind and caring to each other.

The Language of Texture (Plus … Discover the new Art Boxer Clubs!)

September 13, 2020

Dawn Deale, Crackle bracelet using gold leaf with alcohol inks.

Now that we’ve spent three months intensely delving into color, are you ready to completely switch gears and explore a different design element?

How often, when you are creating something, do you ask yourself “What kind of texture do I want?” Or, more importantly, “Why this texture?” I think we can all agree that texture is an extremely important part of all types of arts and crafts and, like color, is probably more often than not chosen consciously. But why do you choose a smooth texture versus a rough texture? Or a simple texture versus a busy one?

I think the first thing we need to define in terms of texture is what it actually is. Do you automatically think of some uneven and fabulously tactile surface? Well, certainly, that is a type of texture, but that is only one type. Texture is more wide-ranging than that. At its most basic, it is the feel or appearance of a surface.

Texture can be of two primary types – tactile or visual.

For instance, tree bark is generally rough. If you can reach out and touch the actual tree bark that is tactile texture. If you have a glossy photo of tree bark, the texture is still rough, it’s just visual rather than tactile. If we don’t make this distinction, you could say that the photo of tree bark is smooth but you’re actually describing the tactile texture of the glossy paper.

So, you know what? That means you potentially have two decisions to make when it comes to texture – what kind of tactile texture and what kind of visual texture will your piece have?

In this necklace by 2Roses (Corliss and John Rose), softly marbled polymer gives subtle variation to the visual texture of its beads.

Your initial decision for each is not too hard being that you really only have two basic options for each – will it be smooth or not smooth? Or you can say smooth or rough, although I think rough has a lot of specific associations but it does describe the alternative to smooth.

Your chosen texture will actually be on a scale from smooth to rough. It will also be relative to the smoothness or roughness of other textures either on the piece or to similar textures. Beech tree bark is relatively smooth compared to oak bark although it is relatively rough compared to, say, glass.

Lightly marbled polymer clay (like that in the necklace seen here) will have a rougher (or busier or denser) visual texture than a solid sheet of clay but is not as rough a visual as a finely crackled alcohol ink surface treatment (as in the opening image), don’t you think?

You may be tempted to say that sometimes you choose to have no visual or tactile texture, but what you’re really saying is that you want a smooth visual or tactile texture. There is still texture; it’s just smooth or without variation breaking up the surface.

Now is it really important to call what we might see as the absence of texture as smooth? Well, how will you define the emotive, symbolic, and/or psychological meanings or effects of your surface if you don’t acknowledge its type of texture? I think that would be a little rough. (Sorry for the pun!) And that’s what I really want to talk about today.

 

Talking with Texture

As with color, different textures communicate varying emotions and atmospheres but, unlike color, texture can rather easily communicate all kinds of abstract ideas in very concrete, and sometimes quite literal, ways. Concepts that deal with the physical nature of things like force, fragility, turbulence, or stillness are not only readily interpreted or felt by viewers but they are also readily determined by artists. I bet you can think of a texture that could represent each of those for physical concepts within a couple minutes if not a handful seconds.

Texture can also readily elicit specific emotions such as comfort, fear, revulsion, and desire. To come up with textures for emotions, you could just think of a physical thing associated with each (fuzzy blankets for comfort, sharp knives for fear, etc.) and from that come up with a texture (a soft, matte surface for comfort, or sharp, erratic lines for fear, etc.).

“Lichen” tiles in porcelain by Heather Knight. They are all dense, tactile textures but they convey different things. What words would you associate with your favorite 3 in the image?

You can pretty much come up with a texture to go with the intention of the work you’re creating simply by identifying what characteristics you associate with the ideas or emotion of your concept or theme. For some people, recognizing these characteristics is very intuitive. For the rest of us, or even for those who feel they’re intuitive, it can help to come up with words you would associate with your intention and develop your textural design decisions from them.

This could be as simple as throwing out a few adjectives to describe what reaction you want from the viewer or you could list specific ideas or objects related to your theme or concept and then consider textures that you associate with the words you’re writing down.

If you have a hard time just freely coming up with textures, you can find possibilities to jump-start your ideas by looking through your texture plates/stamps/random objects stash for textures that evoke those words. Or you can look at artwork to get ideas. Determine what emotions or sense you get from various pieces and then identify what textures are used.

I know I brought up visual versus tactile texture but I’m got not going to talk about them any further today. I’m going to save those for the next couple weekends this month. I haven’t decided which to do for next weekend so it’ll just be a surprise. Just have fun coming up with adjectives to associate with textures that you can use to help support the intention of your work.

 

Announcing the new Art Boxer Clubs!

The first of the latest projects I have been brewing has launched!

The content of these Art Boxer clubs will be aimed at all types of mixed media creatives, not just polymer clay artists. Like the blog, the focus will be on increasing your design and creative skills while helping you stay energized and engaged in your craft, all while mixing in a good dose of fun and exciting bonuses!

I am keeping core design lessons free here on the blog for now but giving you many of the other features that were in the original VAB plus some new exclusive offerings:

The Art Boxer Devotee Club… $9/month: Exclusive weekly (Wednesday) content including mini-lessons, creative prompts, project ideas, and challenges as well as member only discounts and offers, giveaways, and early notices on all sales, new publications, and limited items. Get 2 weeks free to try this out if you join during the month of September.  Go here for full details! 

The Art Boxer Success Club… $35/month: For serious aspiring artists or artists looking to take it up a notch, this includes everything the Devotees get plus twice a month email or once a month chat/zoom coaching sessions. I’m reviving my creative coaching services but in a limited way – only 20 of these memberships are available. This is a very inexpensive option (normal rate is $65 for similar coaching) for one-on-one support to help with whatever artistic and/or business goals you have been aiming for. Click here for the details.

*If you are already a monthly contributor toward the support of my projects and free content, you will automatically be added to the Devotee Club member list, even if you contribute less than $9. If you would like to move up to the Success club, just write me. Thank you for your early and continued support! 

If you have questions about the clubs, write me here and I will get back to you on Monday.

 

And don’t forget … the 25% off PRINT publications sale is still going on.

Good only until Tuesday! Click here to get in on this before the sale is gone.

 

 

Under Smoky Skies

Thankfully (for me), I have no crazy personal updates or unfortunate stories to tell you about. I hope I haven’t disappointed those of you all into the Sage soap opera over here. I’m loving my new physical therapist and although I haven’t seen any significant progress thus far, my knees, shoulder, and elbow have not gotten worse.  And hubby’s face is healing just beautifully so we are pretty content in our recoveries here. So that’s cool.

Speaking of cool, how many of you are dealing with weather changes due to fires in your area? We were supposed to have another hot week but the dense smoke all over California has developed its own little weather system, blocking out the sun and cooling down the day. Too bad the air quality is too poor to go out and enjoy the nice temperatures. We also have this weird orange-yellow cast to the daylight. It’s just otherworldly.

To be clear, there are no fires anywhere near enough to endanger us although I suppose that could change at any moment. Between the wonky weather and just what a ridiculous year this has been, I think we all should just stay in and create beautiful things for a while. At least until the skies clear up. What do you think?

 

Well, I hope, wherever you are, you are staying safe and healthy. If you join one of the clubs, then I’ll chat with you on Wednesday!

Degrees of Intention

September 6, 2020
Posted in , ,

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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Same but Different

August 30, 2020
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Kateřina Věrná uses a split complementy palette of violet, yellow and green, all slightly lightened with a tint of white, creating similarity with the tinting but contrast in hue, value, and temperature.

So, are you ready for your last weekend of color design exploration? Not that you will ever be done exploring color but this will be the last of the installments on color in this blog series. We will move on to other design elements in September but for now, let’s look at one final aspect of working with color that I find particularly important and rather fun to identify.

If you read last week’s post, you will have gotten a good idea of how to start choosing colors to use together. If you paid close attention though, you may have noticed that those suggestions for color combinations last week primarily revolved around one particular characteristic of color. Did you notice that? Do you know which one?

Creating color combinations using the color wheel and things like complementaries, split complementaries, triadic, or square (aka tetrad) combinations are rooted in the characteristic of hue. They don’t necessarily take into the account all the other characteristics, not directly. So, this week we’re going to learn how to choose colors with two goals in mind – creating contrast and similarities.

Why Similarities?

Our minds are always analyzing our world, weighing and judging all kinds of things our senses take in, but the mind works particularly hard to find connections between things, trying to divine a relationship between objects or concepts we encounter. When we can’t find the relationship or common connection between things that seem to belong together, it feels uncomfortable. Like, if you see 2 people sitting on a park bench in close proximity to each other, you assume they know each other. But if one is dressed in a business suit and the other is all punked out in black clothes and sports a mohawk, you may find it weird. The close proximity makes you think there should be a connection between them but their appearance makes a connection difficult to ascertain.

Now, if those same 2 people both had French bulldogs sitting at their feet you might assume that they are part of a French bulldog lover’s club. Or, if they have similar documents in hand then you might think that they are a businessman and a client going over paperwork. Once you find a connection, then the relationship makes sense even if the contrast between the two is odd. That contrast simply makes for an interesting combination but not a wholly uncomfortable one once you divined a possible reason for them to be sitting together. This all comes down to the fact that we simply want things to make sense.

This is true of how we see color as well. We want to see that colors grouped together are related and not just because they are near each other or on the same piece of art. Yes, we like contrasting color as well since that creates energy and interest but when there is no similarity between the color characteristics, there is no specific relationship and that can feel (and look) uncomfortable.

This doesn’t mean you can’t combine colors that have no particular color relationship or common color characteristics. You can … but you would be conveying chaos, discontent, disorder, and/or anxiety. That might be exactly what you want a viewer to feel, so if that is what you are after, go for it. But if you want pleasing color combinations or at least comfortable ones, you’ll want both similarities between your color choices and some level of contrast.

In other words, the color choices for a piece you are creating will usually work best if connected by a similarity in one or more of the characteristics we have been learning about the last couple months. Of course, you will want contrast as well. Let’s look at how the various characteristics work as similarity or contrast characteristics.

Hue

Hue is usually used as a contrast characteristic unless you are doing something in a monochromatic palette (using different versions of the same hue). If your palette is analogous, your contrast in hue is relatively low since you are using colors close on the color wheel. But if you choose complementary or split complementary colors for your palette, then you have high contrast and, usually, higher energy.

Value – this is also more commonly used as a contrast characteristic since relative lightness and darkness so often help to define images, shapes, and boundaries. If you use it as a similarity characteristic, with all your colors are similarly light, mid-tone, or dark, it is harder for the eye to differentiate between changes in color. It also results in fairly muted energy. Again, that may be what you want. There is no right or wrong, just your intention.

Saturation

This, on the other hand, is more often used as a similarity characteristic between colors in a color set in large part, I believe, because of the emotional value of saturation. Bright colors are generally happy and high-energy while muted colors tend to feel calmer, quieter or more reserved. Because of this, contrasting bright and muted colors in the same color palette can result in a clash of emotions that may make your viewer uncomfortable. This is not always true but it is something to look out for if you choose to use this for contrast rather than a point of similarity.

These glass beads use a desaturated color palette, predominantly toned down.

Tint, Shade, or Tone

These characteristics actually have to do with saturation but because they can be so distinct, they can be chosen as their own point of similarity or can contrast against each other. For instance, we’ve all seen pastel color palettes. Their similarity is that all the colors are tinted with white. Organic palettes tend to have rich but muted colors, displaying a similarity in toning. The one area where contrast between these characteristics works well is if you contrast tinted colors which shaded colors, creating light and dark colors. Why? Because tint and shade can produce a dramatic contrast in color value and, as mentioned, color value can be an important characteristic for many designs.

Temperature

Creating a color palette that is predominantly cool or predominantly warm will create a subtle but still recognizable similarity. Contrasting cool and warm colors is more readily recognized and creates high energy. Note that if you choose to use a triadic, 3 color split complementary, or a square (tetrad) color combination (as described last week), you automatically create contrast in temperature because of how far across the color wheel these classic color combinations spread.

Quantity

Yes, it’s true we haven’t talked about this in terms of color characteristics because it is not in and of itself a characteristic of color. But it is something you can manipulate to address similarity or contrast in your color palette. For instance, if you use the same amount of vastly different colors, the brain will find that quantity relationship – the balance between the otherwise disparate colors – as an apparent reason to be grouped together. And when it comes to contrast, quantity differences can help the viewer understand the hierarchy of your color palette. So, if you want one color to dominate because of its emotional connection, you can use a lot of it then just enough of the other colors to add the amount of color contrast and energy you need without drowning out the primary emotion.

Cecilia Leonini uses a wide variety of colors without a lot of similarity except that no color dominates so there is some similarity in the quantity of each.

 

Leeway, Accents, and Matchmaking

So, after telling you all that, I have to qualify those notes by saying that even though the above are good rules for helping you choose colors, choosing palettes don’t always fall into such tidy formulas. If you pick a few favorite pieces of yours, or favorite pieces by other artists, you may find that some color palettes do not readily fit into any of the classic color combinations we talked about last week or do not adhere to the similarity your contrast rules, not neatly at least. The fact is the perfect color combination all depends on what it is you’re after and where your inspiration comes from. You know that mother nature isn’t out there purposely throwing together split complementary color palettes or worrying about similarity characteristics. But, if you allow for some leeway, you will often find classic color combination sets and similarities as well as contrast in most every scene you see in nature. You just can’t be too exacting when looking for them.

One of the areas that can really throw these ideas about color palettes is accents. Accent colors, usually added in small quantities, tend to contrast in all the characteristics but one, and sometimes none. That’s what makes the accents stand out. You could choose a palette of rather neutral colors (thereby having a similarity in saturation and tone) but if you really want to kick up the energy or create a focal point, there is nothing like a dot of red to do that for you. That red could have nothing in common with the rest of your color palette, but because it’s an accent, it can, acceptably, look out of place. This will cause a bit of tension which can be really cool if it fulfills your intention. If you don’t want it to cause too much tension but you still want that spot of warm color, choose a version of red that is similar in saturation to a couple or all of the colors in the rest of the palette. If you want that accent to create a focus but not tension, instead of using red, choose another neutral color but one that contrasts in all the other characteristics as much as possible.

 

Lynn Yuhr, using a predominantly warm and saturated color palette, accents her leaves with nuetral grays, bright magentas, or various purples. The purples, being a cool color and her versions here being largely desaturated with tint or shade have the most contrast with the dominant warm palette, creating a bit of excitement without overshadowing the feel of the hot reds, oranges, and yellows.

 

The other thing about color combinations is that sometimes you can have colors that are not just tiny accents but that do not share the same similarity characteristic as the rest of the colors share. As long as that one color has a similarity or two with another color in that group, it may work. So, for instance, you can have a palette of cool colors that includes fully saturated blues and greens as well as shaded versions and then throw in a dark yellow (aka gold) which is not a cool color but since it has a bit of black in it, it is a shade like the darker versions of the cool colors.

I know, exceptions to the rule just complicate things but you don’t need to work with the exceptions if you’re not ready for it. Just know they’re there and you can play with them when you’re ready.

 

That Color Game

Okay, now that you are clued into the contrast/similarity importance between colors, you can quickly hone your eyes for this by playing a little identification game. Look at any of your own work you really like, or the work of other artists that you really admire and identify what is similar in the color sets chosen. What are the contrasting characteristics that add to the energy and interest.

I did plan on having examples for you to play with all conveniently here but only got part way with that before my preparations got cut short this weekend. My darling man took a bad spill on his bike and I spent my alloted blog time today running back and forth to the hospital and being nursemaid when I got him home. He didn’t break anything and no concussion so it could have been much worse but he ended up with 49 stitches in his face and road rash all over so, needless to say, I was a tad distracted.

Is it me or does it seem like I have some bit of tragedy to report at least once a month lately? I have to say, I could use a break. Heck, we all could! What a crazy year.

Well, I may surprise you with a mid-week post to drive this home with the examples and a few more photos that I originally had planned but I didn’t want to leave you without on this last weekend of color. So go out and spy those similarities and contrasts and you’ll be ready to play with whatever I get together for you.

Have a beautiful, color-filled week!

 

 

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Color Scheming

August 23, 2020
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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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Hot or Not

August 16, 2020
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Does this colorful necklace by Camille Young have a predominantly warm or cool color palette? Or neither? Read on and then determine it for yourself. I’ll confirm the answer shortly.

How goes your color mixing adventures? My adventures have been less about color and more about traversing the landscape of grief my sister is dealing with as well as the landscape of Colorado and I tried to return home this past week. Plans to leave the Denver area through the usual I-70 corridor went up in smoke as fires shut down my usual path through the Rockies. This forced me to take a southerly and slightly longer route which turned out to be, strangely enough, just what I needed. I went through some gorgeous country I’d not visited in a while and it was an absolute boon to the soul. I stopped and savored and took it all in.

I’m hoping your color mixing adventures have been similar in that you may have ended up going in directions you didn’t plan but found some wonderful new colors to work with. Since we oftentimes return to the same preferred palettes, favorite pre-mixed colors, or comfortable combinations over and over again, the discovery of new colors and new combinations often has to be purposefully sought after. However, color mixing explorations can often result in the discovery of enticing new colors which can also push you to try new combinations. But the question then becomes, how do you determine what colors go with your new found color finds?

You may think I’m leading into a discussion about color palettes and, originally, that’s what I was going to do but as I wrote this article, I realized that, in the chaos of this last month, I neglected to write the article about one last set of terms you’ll need before we can jump full on into creating intentional color palettes. It’s a simple concept that can really inform contrast and the relationships in your color palettes and can be a great place to start when choosing color combinations. It’s the concept of color temperatures.

 

Warm or Cool

So, just what is color temperature? Well, colors actually appear either cool or warm to us, so much so that being in a room painted in a cool color will literally feel much cooler than one painted in a warm color even if they are the exact same temperature.

Warm colors are those that represent fire, heat, sunshine, and other hot and warm things. So, of course, red, orange, and yellow are warm but so are magenta and yellow-green. They just happen to be on the edge of the warm range. The warm colors are also all on one half of the color wheel, right? So that’s the one half of the color wheel that feels warm to us.

Cool colors are those that we associate with ice, water, shade, and other cool and refreshing things. These would include violet, blue, cyan, and green. And, as you will note, those are all on the other side of the color wheel, the cool half.

Now, why is temperature in color important? Well, warm colors and cool colors not only have us react to the associated temperature but they also act different visually. Warm colors advance while cool hues recede. Warm colors also have a lot more energy visually than cool colors which is one of the reasons they pop out at us so readily.

Take a look at this pendant by Dan Cormier. What pops out at you first? Red, right? It doesn’t take much since red is so high energy and it visually advances. (Dan will be releasing a self-study online course for the techniques used in this pendant next month. Sign up on his website to get in on it here.)

You might have noticed that red in particular is often used in the form of a dot, slash, or other very small accent of color to draw the eye and create contrast. The warm temperature, the color’s high energy, and the way that color comes visually forward allows for it to be used in a very small amount while still drawing a tremendous amount of attention. In addition, you might also note that these red accents are usually a dark red and rarely a pale red because darker colors also advance so being red as well as a deep rich version makes for quite the attention getter.

On the other hand, blues are quite commonly used in large swaths and as backgrounds due to how much they recede, our association with the vastness of the blue sky, and blue’s relatively low and calming energy can then be contrasted with higher energy in the foreground or in images or marks an artist would like to advance visually.

Warm and cool color categories also have an emotive and psychological tendency in the same way individual colors do. Predominantly warm color palettes will be associated with heightened emotions and energy while cool color palettes will feel relatively relaxed, calm, or refreshing.

Although cool colors have a calmer energy, they are not without vitality. Violet and green combinations, such as the one seen here in this piece by Cecilia Button (Mabcrea), are well-loved and don’t lack energy due to the contrast between them—they are on the far ends of the cool color half of the color wheel. So instead of cool and calm, this color combination is more cool and refreshing with added energy from the lines and texture. It’s also a split complimentary combination if you recall what that is from the Color relationship post.

Although cool colors have a calmer energy, they are not without vitality. Violet and green combinations, such as the one seen here in this piece by Cecilia Button (Mabcrea), are well-loved and don’t lack energy due to the contrast between them—they are on the far ends of the cool color half of the color wheel. So instead of cool and calm, this color combination is more cool and refreshing with added energy from the lines and texture. It’s also a split complimentary combination if you recall what that is from the Color relationship post.

Look around you at the color schemes in various decorated objects, photos, artwork, etc. Try to identify the dominant temperature of the color schemes, if there is one. There are times that the color scheme is neither predominantly cool nor warm. There are other times where they are simply hard to identify due to the range of color, like in the opening piece. That is predominantly warm, by the way. The cool colors are not as abundant and work more as calming accents in a piece that is busy and bright and could use a few visual “brakes”.

Another area that can be hard to read the color temperature of is with metallics. If something is predominately gold or copper, is that warm or cool? If you think in terms of their key hue, you’d recognize that those are warm colored metals since the underlying hues are yellow and orange. How about silver? Most people would say that silver has a cool color temperature but, in reality, silver is a gray and, gray can go either way.

 

Temperature Bias?

Which brings us to the brief discussion of color temperature in terms of color bias. I think I mentioned, in the July 12th post on color bias, that some people have learned color bias using the terms of cool and warm. In other words, a red could be a cool red or a warm red but that simply means that that the red leans towards magenta (moving closer to the cool side of the color wheel) or towards orange (leaning and staying within the warm side of the color wheel.) I think the use of the cool/warm terms for color bias causes too much useless mental gymnastics (telling yourself things like “the red leans towards orange, orange is a warm color, therefore the red is a warm red”) when we can simply identify which color it leans towards, giving us the precise information we need to both color mix and color match.

However, the terms are useful when talking about grays. Since gray represents an absence of saturation and the complete absence of saturation theoretically means the complete absence of hue, you wouldn’t think that a gray would have a color bias. But in the real world, most grays do have a color bias (as do most whites actually) but it’s much harder to identify a specific hue with so much color information missing. So, it’s a lot simpler, and just as informative, to say a gray is warm or cool. Put a gray next to your color wheel and see if the undertone of that gray matches more of the warm colors or more of the cool colors. If the gray has a blue, violet, or even green undertone, it’s a cool gray. If it seems to have a bit of red or orange, anything leaning towards brown, then it is a warm gray.

And yes, it is important to know if it gray is warm or cool, just as it is with any other color, because that can help you match up a color palette by intentionally picking similarities or contrasting differences between colors and grays based on their color characteristics. I don’t suggest you bother with temperature for whites because, to be honest, most whites in artist’s materials are a pretty good pure white or become warm (yellowing) plus they are heavily influenced by reflected color coming from surrounding surfaces so they can appear warm in one setting and cool in another. If you are picking wall paint, however, warm versus cool whites can really change the feel of a room. But that’s a whole other can of worms (or paint!)

So, now, I hope you will start looking at color combinations in terms of the warm/cool relationship. This is a really easy way to start thinking about color relationships which is the basis of creating color palettes and you are just looking at one aspect for now. The whole process of developing color palettes will rely on all the information that you read up to this point so I’m going easy on you this week!

If you’re feeling a little out of the loop because you haven’t caught up in all the posts, or if you feel like you are starting to forget some of the terminology we talked about early on, take this next week to catch up or refresh your understanding of color terminology because when we get into palettes next week, it’s going to be all about identifying characteristics by the terminology I’ve been giving you. I know it doesn’t sound particularly sexy or exciting, using terminology to determine color, but once you get the hang of it, you will be amazed at how easy it will be for you to successfully combine colors in beautiful ways that also support your intentions.

Here’s a quick review of terminology you will want to be sure to know as we move forward into developing color palettes:

  • Hue–the name of the pure, key color under which we categorize all colors like it. This breaks up the full spectrum of color into a manageable set of names we can use to describe colors. If you think of colors in terms of 3 primaries, 3 secondaries, and their 6 tertiary hues, you will have 12 hues to categorize under.
  • Value—how light or dark a color is.
  • Saturation—how pure and bright a color is.
  • Shade—the addition of black that darkens a color.
  • Tint—the addition of white that lightens a color.
  • Tone—the addition of a complementary color or gray that neutralizes or tones down a color.
  • Color bias—the primary or secondary color on the color wheel that a pigment color leans towards if not an absolute hue.
  • Temperature—the sense of warmth or coolness in a color or color combination.
  • Complementary — colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel.
  • Analogous — colors that are next to or near each other on the color wheel.
  • Split Complementary — colors that are one step over on the color wheel from a color’s direct complement.

 

Does that all sound familiar? If not, re-read the posts for June, July, and August as a refresher if you have the time. Otherwise, I would suggest spending this week playing with color mixing some more and identifying colors that are warm versus cool as well as warm and cool color palettes, especially in decorative objects, patterned fabrics, intentionally designed rooms, etc. And, of course, create! Color is only one part of designing and creating, albeit a really wonderful part! But more important than learning the stuff is actually doing the work, creating from your heart and the essence of your being.

My essence will continue to rest up and recover and dream of more time in the mountains. It was so great to be out just hiking, taking photos, chatting it up with a friendly marmot or campsite cow (yes, my campsite had a herd of black cows and calves handing around), and falling asleep to a view of a zillion of stars out the back window of my yet-to-be-fully-converted camper van. Refueling the soul is much needed for us all right now, isn’t it?

Do get out among the trees or put your toes in the sand, or just drive and get a fresh view of the world if you can. You’ll gather color and design inspiration wherever you go. Times may be hard but the world is still an amazingly beautiful place.

 

Support This Blog!

If you appreciate the articles and the work put into presenting these for you, and you are in a good financial position, you can help support my work by purchasing publications on the website or you can contribute in a one-time or monthly capacity. Anything to help me keep the lights on and get me a bit of dark chocolate here and there is much appreciated!

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Formula for Color

August 9, 2020
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Using both shades and tints of the same cyan-blue, Magdalena Buldak created a color palette that is predominatly monochormatic on the bottom but has the drama it’s complement at the top. Do you see how the cyan-blue leans heavier to cyan than blue? You could also say it’s cyan with a blue bias. Which you chose depends on what colors you have mix with. But being able to identify a hue+bias+tine/shade/tone allows you to see what you would need to mix those colors.

Did you get some practice in mixing and matching colors last week? Those proposed exercises are only the beginning of the possible uses of that formula I gave you: hue + bias + tone, shade, and/or tint =your target color.

The thing about last week’s post is that we talked about matching a color that you found out in the world but the formula also works for creating a color that you want to achieve even without a sample and it will also help you in choosing color palettes. I have limited time this weekend for you so we’ll get to palettes next week but let’s quickly talk about creating colors when you only have an idea of what you want and not a sample to go by.

A lot of times, especially when you are organically creating a palette at your worktable, you are making choices from the premixed materials that you have or you might have some idea of what you want. If you start with a prepackaged color you want and need to choose additional colors, don’t limit yourself to the colors on hand. Consider what would best go with it (and again that would be about palette choices which we will talk about next week but just go with me here) – is the main color you have chosen fully saturated or is it toned down? If you break down the color formula for your main color in the same way, you may discover that it’s not fully saturated or has a strong bias towards blue when you thought it would lean towards magenta or whatever.

Once you’ve broken down your main color, you can more accurately choose a complement, your range of analogous colors, or choose similarly toned down colors so the additions to your color palette don’t seem dramatically brighter.

If you are working with just the idea of a color, start with the hue you believe it would be a part of, look at the color really consider whether it should have a bias of one side or the other and whether it should be lighter, darker, or toned down. Start mixing your best guess and then, knowing what the formula includes, you can change the portion to make it more saturated or brighter, lighter or darker, or toned down more as needed.

The other reason you want to be able look at colors in terms of this formula is because when you put palettes together you’re going to be making them relate based on the details that formula lays out. I know that probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense right now but, trust me, looking at colors in terms of that will not only help you mix the colors you want but it will help you pick out color sets that will be more successful and satisfying for your intention.

So, for this week, either continue mixing color based on the formula or get yourself started so that you, ideally, can name the details of a color’s formula in moments. It’s cool to be able to rattle off Hue – Bias – Tint/Shade/Tone at glance. And will make you much more comfortable mixing your own colors as well as pairing them.

Get ready to dive into color choices next week. I think you will be surprised at how easy the method I have for putting together colors really is. So, keep mixing. Yes, it’s always practice, practice, practice. You have to do the work, of course, to gain the skill, but once you have it, it cannot be taken away from you to keep your eye on the prize!

And if any of you had trouble getting to that online mixer game, I know some people were getting error messages, so use this link here.

 

I’m still in Colorado but leaving to travel back on Tuesday. I’ll be out of touch most of Tuesday and Wednesday but will certainly see you back here next Sunday!

 

Support This Blog!

If you appreciate the articles and the work put into presenting these for you, and you are in a good financial position, you can help support my work by purchasing publications on the website or you can contribute in a one-time or monthly capacity.

Thank you so much!

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Ideally Unpredictable Color

August 2, 2020
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The unpredictable but wonderful nature of color mixing shown with a transparent medium – alcohol ink. By LiquidEyesArt on Instagram.

How do you feel about the predictability of color? Do you think after everything you have learned these past 2 months that you can easily and predictably mix colors? I would guess you feel far more confident but don’t worry if you still feel a little uncertain. The fact is color mixing in the world of pigments will always have a level of uncertainty associated with it. It can be a tad frustrating but that is also part of the beauty of working with color –you learn to work with that uncertainty and embrace the beautiful and unexpected outcomes.

If you’ve been color mixing for any period of time you probably have a few colors that you came upon purely by accident and probably in the process of trying to create a different color. Keep those happy accidents in mind when you’re frustrated with creating the perfect mix of color. Also, if you have at all grasped the concepts we have discussed so far, you are leaps and bounds beyond what most self-taught artists, and even many formally educated artists, are able to do in terms of confident and successful color mixing.

That said, let me introduce you to the basis of this unpredictability so that in your color mixing practices, you will not get frustrated and blame it on a lack of knowledge or understanding. It’s not you. It’s pigment! We will then go on to do an exercise with a very predictable and fun tool. So, stick with me!

 

It’s Not You, It’s Pigment

If you remember from early last month, the characteristic of color is not easy to define in a kind of absolute manner the way a rock is hard or a liquid is fluid. Color is solely about the way our eyes take in reflected light. All the information we know about the color we are seen comes from the way light is reflected off of surfaces. Because of that, when the material that is reflecting the light changes in its density, transparency, dampness, texture, or whatever, it can change how the light is reflected off of it. That’s why a material can look like one color when it’s dry and something much darker, richer, or more saturated when it’s wet. The dampness changes the physical property of the surface so that changes how much light and what colors are being reflected back.

This is also true when there are differences between the pigments used in your materials. Let’s say you want to make green mixing a yellow and cyan. You can have two yellows that look to be the exact same color from two different brands (and sometimes even from the same brand) but even with mixing each with the exact same batch of cyan, you may very well end up with two different greens. That’s because the pigment in each of those yellows can be different (in the way they disperse or reflect or how dense they are) and so when they are mixed in what you think would be a predictable way, they may be a bit off.

Even though polymer clay is a more predictable medium when color mixing, color mixing tests can reveal surprising results and will allow you to learn a bit more about the vagaries of the brands and colors you work with. This is part of a series of tests Sabine Spiesser shared with me, complete with a grid to layout what was mixed with the base clay color so she could see how each color changed. It’s not always as expected.

Standard opaque polymer clays can be mixed with a fair amount of predictability based on the information you have learned over the past weeks. Mixing with opaque color materials (versus translucent materials like watercolor, inks, or glass) minimizes the differences that might be present in some of the clay’s pigments. I would try to explain this phenomenon but it practically takes a PhD in physics so just trust me that if you work in colored clays, acrylics, pastels or any other nontransparent colored materials you have it relatively easy.

If you do work with transparent such as inks or dyes, you cannot simply look at your colorants and determine how to mix them and get the color you want since concentrated transparent colors look different than when they are diluted or applied to a surface.

You’re probably all familiar with how weird it is to find that the liquid in a bottle of yellow food coloring or yellow alcohol ink is not yellow at all but some version of red to reddish-brown. That’s because the density of the pigment that, when diluted, reflects only yellow light, does not do so when concentrated. It reflects red and a few other colors they give it a deep muddy look. Crazy right? Well, if you have learned anything over the past couple months, you know pigment-based colors are crazy.

So, you could jump in and just mix up some polymer, using what you know to try to develop both simple and complex colors but that could take a lot of time and a lot of clay or paint. So, before you do that, I have a really fun way to test your color mixing skills in an “ideal” process. You have to promise me that you will keep in mind that this is not exactly how it will work with clay or paint (due to pigment strength as we learned last week and pigment variation and quality as I just mentioned), but it will tell you how well you have come to understand the concepts we’ve been learning and gives you way to practice without making a lot of mud.

 

Test Your Color Mixing Skills

Start by picking at least three relatively complex colors that you will aim to mix. The more colors you do, the better you will get at this but just start with three to begin with. Don’t pick anything too toned down or too muddy quite yet. Identifying hue and tone in khakis and browns can be a bit tricky so it would be best to work with something a little more saturated. I would not go too simple though. You know, don’t pick fully saturated examples of cyan, magenta, and yellow.

You can choose colors from existing objects you have access to, photos, images and magazines or books, color swatches, paint chips or whatever you have at hand, just not preferably something that you have on a digital medium because that is a lot harder to do this particular exercise using a sample from a screen.

Click to get a larger version

  1. Pull out your color wheel or, if you don’t have a color wheel, print one out from the color wheel here. If you are a subscriber to The Polymer Arts, and you have a print edition of the summer 2017 issue on color, there is a color wheel in there you can use. If you don’t have one and can’t print one out you can still do the exercise but it may be a little hard to compare colors as you’ll see.
  2. Hold up your color item/sample to the wheel and find the closest of the 12 hues to the object’s color. Jot down the name of the hue.
  3. Now, identify the color bias. Does the color lean at all to the right or left of the hue you identified? If so, what is the primary or secondary color in that direction. Jot down if you have identified a color bias one way or the other from the hue you started with.
  4. Is the color darker or lighter than the key hue? Make a note if it is darker, lighter, or similar in value than the key hue as identified on the color wheel.
  5. Does the color look toned down, looking slightly muddied or neutral, not necessarily due to it being darkened by black or lightened by white? Note if you think it is toned down by a complementary color.
  6. Now bring this all together: write it out as Hue+ bias +shade/tint+ tone (what color). For instance, an olive green would probably be green + yellow + shade + tone (magenta).

What we’ve done is identify a kind of template for breaking down a color in order to replicate it in color mixing. You could just grab your clay or paint and try to mix according to the recipe although you don’t have proportions yet. That takes practice to learn. And that can end up being a lot of clay or paint. So I have an imperfect but easy alternative for you to just play around with.

Mixing an olive green

At the link below, you will actually be mixing with light since it’s online and so it’s on your screen which only uses light, of course. But it does allow you to apply the concepts you’ve learned very quickly. Just keep in mind, the portions of color you mix here will not be the same you mix with artist materials, Just use this to play with the ideas of color mixing then go to materials after and test your skill there. Here’s the link: https://trycolors.com/

  1. To play this “game,” add portions of color by clicking the colored circle of the color you want to add or use the negative circle below it to take away portions.
  2. Take your little color recipe you identified from your first color and try adding in the primary hue in at least 4 portions then add the bias as one portion and then add the tint or shade and the tone as one portion each. You may not have your exact complement to tone it down with so either use the next closest color or put in one portion of each color that would constitute that complement. For instance, if you needed orange put in a portion of red and portion of yellow. If that is too much you can increase the key hue until you reach the amount it seems to be toned down to.
  3. Play with your proportions until you get close. Try to not just add them in all willy nilly. Ask yourself what you believe will work and if it doesn’t, take those portions back out and try again. You’ll learn more by understanding what exactly you chose that resulted in the various versions of the color you are after. Keep in mind, it might be hard to get it exact on the screen but you are just testing your knowledge.

Did you get close? Was that exciting or frustrating? If it was exciting, analyze and digitally mix your other 2 colors.

If you are a bit frustrated, perhaps you would like to be told whether you’re getting hot or cold. Play their color mixing game and there will be a little percentage counter telling you how close you are to matching the target color. You can choose from Easy, Normal, or Hard versions of the game using the tabs above the color blocks. https://trycolors.com/game/

After playing with this, do go and pick up your clay or paint and try this out with actual pigment. The color concepts for mixing will as you’ve learned it will result in better colors with the materials but the play time online should have really helped you think in terms of proportions, bias and the actual implementation of shade, tint and tone.

 

The Difference with Dyes: A little side note and bit of trivia

Hand dyed cotton fabric allowed artist allowed artist Janet Kurjan to embed the fabric with color that she could then cut and stitch without fear of it flaking off or cracking as many pigment based colorants might.

For those of you have worked with dyes, you may be wondering why I don’t differentiate between dyes and pigments since they are not technically the same thing although I refer to all this color mixing stuff as pigment based even while including dyes in this conversation. Why? One, because it’s simpler to use one term and I don’t know a better one, but also because the main difference between dyes and pigments is the size of the colorant particles. The smaller than water molecules of dyes can bond with water and so can be absorbed into material along with the water it is dispersed in while much larger pigment particles just float.

That differentiation does not have a significant bearing on what I’m trying to teach you so I don’t differentiate. And, besides, many dyes are processed into larger pigment sized particles to make them easier to work with in a lot of artistic processes. So, when I’m talking pigments, I’m basically talking about anything not included in light (RGB) color mixing theory. Cool?

 

Entering a Bumpy August

Well, we have flipped into a new month and I am still in Colorado. I have to say that this is one of the roughest things my family has gone through. It’s not that we haven’t had family members die but they tend to do so well into their 80s and 90s, not their early 50s. And we have never lost someone so well loved by everybody. He was one of the truly good guys. You literally couldn’t roast him for anything unless you wanted to complain about how much he cleaned. But I know how pretty much any woman would treasure that! I want to stamp my feet and scream that it’s just not fair. Instead, I tell my husband and my siblings that I love them dozens of times a day and we all are appreciating all we have so much more. The dude is making us all a better person even in his absence.

I do want to thank you all for your sweet notes and kind words. I may have a hard time keeping up with email this coming week so instead of writing me if you were so inclined, just tell the people you appreciate the most how much you treasure them and spread the love around.

This next weekend is our memorial for Jeff. It’s a strange affair with COVID sitting center stage with him in all the arrangements. It has been a very DIY kind of shin dig but luckily two of us in the family are or have been even planners, just not in a pandemic. So, the plans are keeping me busy which means I don’t know if I will be able to get a post out next weekend. I’ll try to find something to keep your color work moving forward or at least inspired, then we will get back to it on the 16th.

 

Do all take good care of yourselves and your nearest and dearest and have a bright and colorful week.

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Strength in Colors

July 26, 2020
Posted in

Understanding color strength in your materials becomes key to creating even gradations in blends like the one here in a bracelet by Jana Honnerova.

Are any of you having color information withdrawals after nearly 2 weeks since we’ve had the chance to chat about color? I did miss it myself! And I do apologize that I wasn’t able to post anything last week. I had hoped to at least post an explanation for my lack of an article but, unfortunately, it has been a very chaotic time in my family’s world and, honestly, I simply couldn’t focus enough to write. I’ll catch you up on my world at the end of this post for those of you who are interested but let’s talk color a bit first and get back on track.

Math versus Cooking

If you have been reading this blog since early June, you essentially have all the tools to successfully mix colors with control and confidence. At least in an ideal world. What I mean by that ominous statement is that the information you have does provide you with the basis for successful pigment based color mixing but now I am going to challenge you to take ideal information to an erratic and uncertain pigment world.

You see, the information I gave you appears, and in some circumstances is, pretty predictable. It’s practically math since you can, theoretically, determine that if you mix this much of one hue and that much of another hue, add a small portion of white, black, gray, or a complementary color to further tint, shade, or tone it, and you will get a specific predictable color. However, you are working with pigments. That is more like cooking where you work with a generic ingredient list, imprecise measuring tools, and primary components whose flavor and texture are subject to the whims of mother nature.

Our clays, paints, dyes, and inks may not be subject to mother nature but the manufacturing of these artistic ingredients are subject to product changes due to the availability of materials and fluctuations in quality, storage, age, and, of course, brands and lines within those brands. These variations will inevitably affect the characteristics of our color mixing materials.

I could tell you a lot more about the variations in materials and why they affect each other the way they do but I’m not going to do that at this moment. Right now, let’s just experiment with what we’ve learned and with the most dominant issue you run into as a result of these variations – color strength.

 

Knowing thy Material

One of the most basic things you will need to become familiar with in your materials is that some colors are much stronger than other colors when mixed. What I mean by this is that you can put equal parts of 2 different colors into a mix but when one is stronger than the other, it will dominate the mix and look like you put a lot more of that color in than the other. For instance, in a lot of art materials including polymer clay, darker colors tend to have more pigment and so when mixed with a lighter color, you can readily recognize the darker color but a lighter clay color may have less pigment or a lot of white in it so it gets kind of drowned out. More saturated colors tend to do the same thing, espeically when they are more saturated as well as darker than the other color it is being mixed with.

This is also often true between inexpensive and high-quality brands or lines. The manufactuers of an inexpensive line may use less pigment or poor quality colorants to help keep their costs down so they can offer the materials at a cheaper price. If you mix an inexpensive brand with a high-quality brand, you should not be surprised if you find the high quality one is generally stronger when mixing, espeically in colors of similar color value or saturation.

 

Getting Your Hands Colorfully Dirty

This week, I’m going to suggest that you try to become familiar with the stronger and weaker colors in your preferred brand and line of materials. This exercise assumes that you’re using opaque material such as clay or paint. The exercises work differently with translucent colors such as dyes and inks, which can get quite complex, so I would suggest you practice with only opaque materials for now. We’ll talk about translucent materials later.

Color Bias Chart

  1. Start by gathering a selection of colors. You can grab three primaries, three secondaries and black and white, or, if you’re ready for it, gather primary pairs based on the color biases we learned about in the last post. For bias pairs, pull 2 versions each of yellow, cyan, magenta. That means you’ll need a yellow that leans towards green and the other leaning towards orange, a cyan leaning towards blue and the other towards green, and a magenta that is more red while the other is more violet. You’ll want black and white as well.
  2. Then prepare your materials for mixing. If you’re using polymer clay, sheet each color in your pasta machine on the same thickness and cut with a single size punch cutter so that each “part” is one punch of clay. If you are working with paint, use approximately the same size daubs of paint and use them directly out of the tube or at least don’t dilute them.
  3. Start with just the black and white. Mix one-part white and one part black together. Mix them completely to get a gray.
  4. Pull out your grayscale or print the one here. (Click on the image to get a large version to print.) Check the resulting gray of your mix against the grayscale here.  I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty darn dark instead of a middle gray (5 on my chart). In general, black clay or paint has a ton of pigment which means you probably need a lot of white to make a middle gray.
  5. Try it again but this time use one part black and four parts white. Now, where does that land on the value scale? If it’s still not a middle gray, make another mix, changing the proportions to include more white or more black depending on whether it needs to be lighter or darker to reach a middle gray.
  6. What was the final proportions to get that middle value? Make note of that. Now you’ll have an idea of how much a bit of black can darken a color or how much white you’re going to need to lighten a color. Yes, it will take practice to get something exactly as you want it but just becoming familiar with the strength of your black versus your white will get you there a lot quicker as you move into tinted and shaded color mixes.
  7. Now, choose a yellow and your darkest color (that is not black) from the colors you gathered. It’ll probably be the cyan that leans towards violet or a blue. Do the same thing. Start by mixing the exact same amounts and see which color seems to dominate the mix. Chances are, it will be the darker one, although in some lines, there are some pretty strong yellows and some pretty weak blues. What did you come up with? Adjust your proportions and mix them again until you have a sample where neither one seems to dominate. How much of the weaker color did you need to acheive that?
  8. Finally, mix a set of secondary colors if you gathered primary color biased pairs to work with, or mix tertiary colors if you gathered a set of primary and secondary colors in your materials. (Review this post if needed.) See how much you need of one color versus the other to create a secondary or tertiary color that neither color you mixed with dominates. Make mental or actual notes on which colors dominate a mix.

As you do this, you will begin to become truly familiar with the strength of the colors in your material. This will be absolutely essential when we get down to masterful color mixing. It also will save you a lot of wasted materials, allowing you to mix small amounts that don’t end up being large amounts because you have to keep adding the weaker color to get it where you want. In fact, when you start mixing with unfamiliar colors or a new brand, do this exercise to become quickly familiar with the variations in colors. And if you end up with some really yummy new colors doing these exercises, save the sample and note the proportions so you can mix it for a future project!

 

Worst Year Ever

2020. Worst … year … ever. I’m just putting that out there. It started with friends getting choked out from the terrible fires in Australia, then there was the pandemic, then the economic fallout, then there were the not new but spotlighted tragedies that led to racial protests and riots, and now, closer to home, my family and I are trying to fathom our own personal tragedy.

Many of you who follow me on Facebook already have heard that we lost an important family member last week–a brother-in-law who my siblings and I grew up with. He was no less than a brother to us and he married the sister I consider my closest confidant. Theirs was the kind of relationship we always said the rest of us aspired to have and they were the two I came to in my darkest days. It just breaks my heart to think of him gone and to watch my sister and her kids as they try to comprehend this loss and rebuild their homelife without him. So, I am here with them in Colorado now, having driven through the night the Wednesday before last when his previously hopeful fight with cancer went suddenly very wrong. Now my siblings and I are just trying to help them ease into this awful new reality, in a world that is already so full of uncertainty and chaos. There is a lot to do. There is a lot to talk through. It has been, and will be, my priority for the next few weeks.

There is not much more to say at this point but I did want you to know why last week got missed and why there might be some irregularities in my posting and the answering of emails. I am still a one-woman business at this time, unable to hire anyone due to changes in California laws, not to mention the pandemic. So, while I do what I can for my family here, I can continue to fill orders and write these posts but timing might be a little off here and there. There is a comfort in the familiarity of writing these articles and dealing with day-to-day business things but there are definitely moments when the circumstances of our lives right now don’t allow for a regular schedule. I know you will forgive me if things get wonky and I thank you ahead of time for your understanding. I believe I will be back in California by mid-August and will figure out my new normal then.

 

I do hope you all are staying well, safe, and healthy and are caring for each other as best as we can in this crazy year.

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So Much Color Bias

July 12, 2020
Posted in

Have you ever tried to mix a color that seemed really straightforward, like mixing blue and yellow to make a nice green or blue and red to make a nice purple but it came out a bit muddy? It happens a lot with pigment-based art materials and the reason for this is something called color bias. Sounds kind of scientific, maybe even intimidating but it’s actually a very simple concept. Simple but exceedingly important. It may even be the most important concept to understand when it comes to mixing pigment-based art mediums.

So, what is color bias? It is a characteristic seen in a not quite exact hue that tells us what other hue it leans towards. In other words, you can call a particular color a yellow but if it is not a true yellow, the color bias characteristic identifies whether that yellow has a touch of cyan in it or a touch of magenta, because if it’s not just yellow then it’s going to have at least a touch of another primary, leading it away from that true yellow hue point on the color wheel.

It’s not too difficult to identify color bias, especially if you have a color wheel at hand. For example, a lot of people think turquoise is basically a cyan. It’s close but isn’t quite cyan. Look at a CMY color wheel and this example of the color turquoise. Do you think this turquoise has a touch more yellow or a touch more magenta than a true cyan? An easier way to determine this is to see if it’s closer to blue or closer to green on the color wheel. It should be pretty obvious that it leans closer to green. And green has cyan and yellow in it, right? Therefore, the turquoise must have a touch of yellow in it to make it lean towards green. The direction that it leans is its color bias.

Although it is important to realize which primary a color is leaning towards, since it’s easier to identify something that’s only a couple spots away on a 12 hue color wheel, identifying the bias of the primary color is usually described in terms of how close it is to the next secondary color. So, we would say that the turquoise is a cyan with a green color bias. Here’s a visual chart of color bias in colors that we would, on their own, name simply as yellow, magenta, are cyan, but the ones on the inner side of the circle are not true primary colors.

You can talk in terms of color bias with other hues besides primaries, but when it comes to color mixing, the concept is most important for your selection of primary colors that you choose to mix from. However, when we get to talking about identifying complex colors in order to mix them, (which I plan to get going on next week), determining the bias of secondaries becomes pretty essential. In other words, you can say a red has a yellow or magenta bias, but at that point you are identifying which of the primaries are dominant rather than thinking about which ones are added in since red has both yellow and magenta in it already.

 

Leaning on Color Bias for color mixing

Now why is this important? It takes us back to when you try to mix a color and it comes out a bit muddier than you expected or hoped. The reason is almost always due to one of your colors you were mixing with having an unfavorable color bias.

To explain that, I need you to think back to last week when we talked about toning down colors with complementary colors but, as I mentioned then, it didn’t always have to be its exact opposite, as long is that additional color added whatever primary was missing so that the resulting color actually had a little bit of all three primaries in it. In pigments, three primaries together make some version of a mud color so toning down is a way of making a color a tiny bit (or quite a bit) muddy.

Notice how the word mud is used to describe the combination of three primaries and also is typically the word used to describe a color mix that doesn’t come out as bright as you’d hoped? Well, it’s no coincidence. These two things are identifying the same concept. In both cases, the result is a color that includes some portion of all three primaries.

Let’s say you want to mix a nice, bright violet. Being quite comfortable with your CMY color basis, you optimistically grab a chunk of fully saturated magenta and a good pinch of a cyan and confidently mix them up, expecting a beautifully saturated violet. When it comes out looking like mauve and no adjustments to the proportions of the two colors get you your violet, you can absolutely conclude that one or both of the two primary colors you mixed with have a bias leaning towards the one missing primary – yellow.

At this point, you hold up your magenta to your color wheel and see if it leans more towards red or more towards blue. If it seems a true magenta or leans towards blue then it has no yellow in it and would not be the culprit. However, let’s say you conclude your magenta leans towards red. Sigh. Red trots away from magenta on the color wheel towards yellow so it has yellow in it.

But don’t conclude that it was just the magenta that was the problem. Pick up your cyan and see if it leans more towards green or more towards blue. If your cyan is looking a bit more like our notorious turquoise, meaning it has a green bias and therefore has a bit of yellow in it, you’ll know the yellow that toned down your planned violet color mix came from both of what you thought were true primaries.

This is extremely common in pigment-based mediums as it is very hard to create a true primary so you can just assume that most of the primary colors you choose in your art mediums will have a bias. Now, don’t think that means you are doomed to dull colors all the time. You’re not at all! Knowing this simply gives you back control. That turquoise, even though it is not a true cyan but a cyan with a green bias, will mix beautifully saturated greens with a yellow that itself has a green bias.

Plus, toning down colors is not at all a bad thing, not if that is what you are after. Colors that are toned down a bit tend to come across as more sophisticated and far more natural looking, as you can see in this pretty palette here. Now that you are aware of color bias, you can intentionally choose to mix a color from two primaries, one with the bias that leans towards the missing primary, and create a rich, but very slightly toned down color.

Understanding and identifying color bias will allow you to better anticipate the outcomes of your color mixes. It’s you taking color control!

Now, color bias does not help identify other things that desaturate a color, such as a tint (the addition of white) and shade (the addition of black) or toning resulting from the addition of gray (the addition of black and white) but were not going to go there quite yet. This idea of color bias is so important that it is the only thing I’m focusing on this week.

 

Name That Color Bias

So, I’m going to suggest that you focus on your color bias education the rest of the week and just simply ask yourself what the color bias is in any color you see that you like that you are inspired by, that you want to use in your studio, or even in your attire or home decorations. And you can do this with any color. Just identify the color as a primary or a secondary then ask yourself which way it is leaning.

In fact, look at the tertiary colors on your color wheel. Many of them have an easily identified color bias primarily because their bias is in their name. Look at yellow-green for instance. If someone showed you a shirt that color, what would you call it? You’d probably just call it green. And yes, it is green with a yellow color bias.

So do the same kind of thing with any color you come across. If the color pops in between two of our 12 color wheel colors, just pick the primary or secondary color in that pair of colors you feel it would be wedge between and name it that color with its color bias. For instance, if you found a color that lands right between violet and blue on the CMY color wheel, call it blue (a secondary color) with a magenta bias.

If the colors you are trying to identify are heavily toned down or seem to be tinted or shaded, if you have the Color Wheel Company’s CMY wheel turned over and use the shade and tint samples to find the hue on the color wheel.

For instance, the key hue of a peach color might be hard to identify until you look at the tinted versions of orange and red. The tinted oranges look a bit peachy but not quite. It certainly doesn’t lean towards the tinted yellows but it looks a touch like the tinted reds so it’s key hue land somewhere between orange and red. In this case, we will call it a red with a yellow bias. Or you can you call it an orange with a red bias since, in a lot of our minds, orange is a secondary (from our previous RYB view of color) even though it is not on the CMY wheel.

It is not so important that you identify things according to them being primary or secondary – that’s just to keep it simple for you right now. It’s far more important that you train your eye to see that colors tend not to conveniently fall into just one of those 12 identified hues on the color wheel.

So, grab your color wheel or print one out and take it around the house or studio with you and start working on your bias. The good colorful kind!

 

A Bunch of Notes

That was really the whole the lesson but there are some things that I want to bring up in case that conversation presented you wtih up some questions or difficulties. These won’t be of concern to you all but there are some interesting tidbits that others might find of interest as well.

Color Deficiencies

I hate to think of anyone being frustrated trying to learn colors. Up to this point we’ve been dealing with some pretty straightforward color concepts but color bias, a simple concept as it really is, it can be very difficult for people who have any level of color deficiency (also referred to, in its extreme, as color blindness.)

So, if you find you are having a lot of difficulty identifying color bias, you may want to see if you have any sight issues with color. There are tests online like this one that can give you an idea if this is an issue:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/are-you-actually-color-blind

If you find you have any issues, speak to an optometrist. There are some corrective lenses that can help some people or they may think there is an underlying condition that, once treated, may reduce the issue, or keep it from getting worse.

Don’t worry if you have some color sight issues. You can, of course, still make art. Some really big artists have been color blind. Claude Monet, of all people, was colorblind later in life! He had to label all his paints to know what to use. Luckily, our art materials come labeled these days!

What’s about Warm and Cool for Color Mixing?

If you have had color training before, you may have heard of these leanings I’ve talked about this week as warm or cool versions of primary and secondary colors. That is the traditional terminology but I always found that so confusing so I teach it using the other name for it – color bias. However, if you’ve already learned color bias in terms of warm and cool, I’m not going to dissuade you of its usefulness but keep in mind that in my teaching of color concepts and color mixing, I will reserve the talk of warm and cool for choosing color palettes.

About Your Choice of Color Primaries

Throughout these articles I refer to CMY as the color basis for the primary colors we work with mostly because it would be far too confusing to include both CMY and RYB in these conversations even though I promised you could continue to use RYB. And you still can.

Now, if you want to stick with RYB (red, yellow, blue) that, by the definition of primaries, will be saying that red and blue cannot be mixed from other colors. But if you are going to work with CMY, then cyan and magenta are primaries instead which would mean that cyan and magenta can’t be mixed from other colors. How can it be possible that red and blue as well as cyan and magenta can be considered primaries which are defined as hues that can’t be mixed from other colors? Are there really five primary colors? Or is the definition wrong?

Ack! How confusing!

Strangely enough, the definition is not incorrect and you can’t work with five primary colors. You will always need to work with only three. I know. It doesn’t seem right.

The fact is, either set can work but one tends to work better than the other especially with certain materials. With natural pigments, RYB may actually work better primarily because most lines of paint colors were developed to support RYB. The reason this happened is that, back in the day, when all pigments were taken from nature, there were not really any natural pigments that were pure enough to show what the purest hues actually were. They came close with particular versions of red, yellow, and blue. Modern-day chemistry now provides us with a pure cyan and magenta that allows us to work with pigments based on the science of light and color which is why I encourage CMY as the color basis from which you work. However, tradition has led makers of conventional artist’s mediums to create colors based on the older, classic pigment paints although some of that is starting to change and you can find versions of cyan and magenta in usually at least one line of a particular artist medium.

Understanding this and the conversation we just had about color bias, I think it becomes rather apparent that CYM mixes will give you the best options for brighter colors plus better color mixing control, even when making toned down and neutral colors. But if you want to stick with RYB – just think red instead of magenta and blue instead of cyan and then work off of a RYB color wheel. Otherwise, the concepts were pretty much the same.

 

Where are all the Pics?

Okay, I have to run. I apologize that there aren’t nearly so many pieces of art as examples this week. It’s been a difficult week for my family and getting work done was not always my priority. In have two very close family members that are having particularly difficult health battles, one which got quite bad this week. We remain optimistic but it has been rough.

Neither of these loved one’s health issues are directly related to this pandemic, but the complications of trying to ensure they don’t get sick is certainly not helpful. This is part of the reason I’ve been asking that people think about wearing masks as signs of caring. When you have someone – or several someones – that you love who you know are almost certain to die if they catch this virus, the wearing of a mask really feels like a matter of life or death, and when others will do so to be supportive of people they don’t even know, it’s nothing less than heroism.

So, please, be one of our heros. If it has been recommendedwhere you live, and you are at all able, wear a mask when you’re out. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

Support This Blog!

If you appreciate the articles and the work put into presenting these for you, and you are in a good financial position, you can help support my work by purchasing publications on the website or you can contribute in a one-time or monthly capacity.

The sale is still on for books and past Virtual Art Boxes so you can get that special pricing on publications as well! 20% off all books and 25% off VABs.

I’ve got some special extras in the works for my monetary contributors to show you how appreciative I am of your generosity! You all are amazing. Check in next week for more info on those bonuses. Thank you so much!

 

 

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Connected to Color

June 14, 2020
Posted in

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?

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.

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.

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