Sketchbook Assignment #3

Good/Bad Color Compositions

• Due March 1 when you turn in your sketchbook for midterm grading.
• Design a composition that utilizes a five-color palette, with one dominant color.
• Using gouache, produce two versions of this design in your sketchbook, each on a different page.
• In each composition, the design will remain identical, but you will use different colors.
• One which uses five colors chosen from your "Good" colors
• One which uses five colors chosen from your "Bad" colors
• This composition may be representational, done from observation of life or a photograph, abstract, or nonrepresentational.
• If you work from observation, you are allowed to incorporate tints and shades of your colors.
• If you work in an abstract or nonrepresentational manner, use only the five colors unaltered.
• Remember that one of the five colors should be dominant.

 

 

 

Color Interaction Studies

Assignment #5

Guidelines

• In Assignment #5, you will be doing your own experiments done within the parameters of Josef Albers’s method.
• This will require that each page have a series of paired concentric squares.
• Each square will be 2”x2” with a ½” square in its center.
• Use the measurements provided here to organize each sheet of 9”x12” Bristol board into 8 pairs of concentric squares with a 2”x9” space at the bottom for writing notes.
• After you draw the grid onto each page, erase all lines that cross into the margins around and between each pair.  
• This is to ensure that the colors you place on the page will only be interacting with each other and the pure white of the paper without interference from your graphite lines.

5A (pg 70)

• Try to make alter only the value of a single color by changing its surroundings.
• 4 pairs in which you alter only the value of achromatic grays.
• Hue and saturation are not present, so this is a fairly simple task.
• 4 pairs in which you alter only the value (and not the hue) in full color at various saturation levels.
• The presence of hue this time complicates the experiment.  Try your best not to alter the hue of your central color.

5B (pg 70)

• Now try to achieve a shift in hue but not value.
• `8 pairs in which you alter only the hue (and not the value) in full color at various saturation levels.

5C (pg 71)

• Now.try to achieve a shift in both hue and value.
• 6 pairs in full color at various saturation levels.
• Try to invert the procedure and attempt to make two different colors look as much alike as possible.
• 2 pairs

5D (pg 71)

• Now create a composition using the principle of simultaneous contrast.
• Try to give specific colors within the composition at least two different identities throughout your design
• The book says to use cut paper collage, and you can, but you may also use gouache.
• For an example, see page 72.

Free Study

• Create at least one composition on 9”x12” Bristol board that either carries over ideas from the color interaction assignments you’ve just done or conduct color experiments of your own.
• This composition can be in a format of your own choosing.

Color Terminology for February 13

• Afterimage – A common optical effect in which an additional color seems to appear at the edge of an observed color.
• Successive Contrast – The name for the visual phenomenon that creates complementary afterimages of a color after gazing at it for a brief but sustained period of time.
• Simultaneous Contrast – The effect two neighboring colors have upon each other as their afterimages interact along a shared border.
• Optical Mixing – An effect that occurs when color fragments are organized in a tight pattern, appear to fuse and, from a distance, appear as a single mixed color.  Optical mixing is facilitated by the effects of simultaneous contrast.
• Inherent Light – The light that seems to flow from within a color.

Beginning Color Studies: Assignments

Due: Monday, February 13

Assignment 1: Chromatic Gray Studies

• 1A (page 47)
• Make a small gouache painting (6”x6”) using at least six shapes not including the negative space color. 
• Use only chromatic grays.
• Mix using two complimentary colors or my mixing a prismatic color with one of your chromatic darks and/or white.
• Make the value range (the range of lights & darks) broad.
• Try to include chromatic grays form a range of hues.
• No color should be used more than once.

• 1B (page 47)
• Make a second study (6”x6”) also using only chromatic gray.
• Make the value range narrow this time.
• All the values should congregate around the dark, middle, or light part of the value continuum.
• Maintain a broad hue range.

Assignment 2: Muted Color Studies

• 2A (page 50)
• Make a small gouache painting (6”x6”) using at least six shapes with no repeated color. 
• Use only muted colors.
• Keep hue and value ranges broad.

• 2B (page 50)
• Make a second painting (6”x6”) in muted colors.
• Make the value range narrow.
• This will somewhat limit your hue choices.

Assignment 3: Prismatic Studies

• 3A (page 51)
• Make a small gouache painting (6”x6”) using at least six shapes using only prismatic color. 
• Make hue and value ranges broad.

• 3B (page 51)
• Make a second painting (6”x6”) using only prismatic color. 
• Make the value range narrow
• This will greatly limit your hue choices.

Assignment 4 : Combination Saturation Studies

• 4A (page 53)
• Make a small gouache painting (6”x6”) using at least six shapes. 
• Make hue and value ranges broad.
• Include colors from all saturation levels:
• Prismatic
• Chromatic Gray
• Muted Color

• 4B (page 53)
• Make a second painting (6”x6”) using at least six shapes. 
• Keep hue and saturation ranges broad.
• Make value range narrow

Free Studies

• Page 57
• Design your own composition within the guidelines below.  All other choices are yours.
• Guidelines:
• Make a group of related compositions (no less than 2)
• Use gouache, but the paint application can e more irregular in surface quality and opacity if you would like.
• You may also use collage, if you like
• Cut or torn painted paper
• Magazine cutouts
• Cut photographs
• Etc.
• Do not exceed 8”x10” on any individual study.
• Explore any of the color concerns we have discussed so far (hue, value, & saturation) in any way that you see fit.
• Keep the visual language consistent within the group.

First Sketchbook Assignmnets

Sketchbook Assignment #1: Good/Bad Color Mixing

• Experiment with mixing colors.
• So you don't overuse your gouache, mix using the technique we went over in class.
• No more than four colors can be mixed into each color you create.
• When you have a finished color, look at it and determine if it is a "good" color or a "bad" color.
• How you define these terms is up to you.
• You will occasionally come across colors you don't feel strongly about either way.  In those cases, classify it as "good" or "bad" arbitrarily.
• Create two charts in your sketchbook, one for "good" colors and one for "bad" colors.
• In each chart, create a column of squares, no less that 1"x1", on the left side of the page, leaving space between squares.
• Use as many sheets in the sketchbook as it takes to complete the assignment.
• Fill each square with a color that you have mixed and designated as "good" or "bad"
• To the right of each square, write down your "recipe" for that color.
• Include the names of each color used and the proportions of each.
• Continue until you have TWELVE GOOD COLORS and TWELVE BAD COLORS and their "recipes" entered into the sketchbook.
• 24 colors total.
• Materials:
• Gouache, all colors
• Sketchbook
• Water
• Round & flat brushes

Sketchbook Assignment #2: Color Mixing 1st Attempt

• Attempt to mix a color to match each of the colors I have on the sheet of watercolor paper I have given you.
• So you don't overuse your gouache, mix using the technique we went over in class.
• No more than four colors can be mixed into each color you create.
• Fill each empty circle next to a colored circle with what you mixed.

Due March 1 when you turn in your sketchbooks for midterm.

Color Terminology for January 23

• Hue – The name given to a color to describe its location on the color spectrum based upon its wavelength.
• Value – Th relative quality of lightness or darkness in a color.  The only structural aspect of color visible in a black and white photograph.
• Saturation – The relative purity of hue present in a color.  A highly saturated color vividly shows a strong presence of hue; conversely, low saturation refers to a weak hue presence.
• Luminosity – The amount of light reflected form the surface of a color.  Value is a measure of luminosity.
• Chromatic Gray – Subtle colors that result from considerably lowering the saturation level of prismatic colors.  Chromatic grays weakly exhibit the distinguishing quality of the hue family to which they belong.
• Achromatic Gray – Grays that are created by mixing black and white.  Achromatic grays have no evident coloration when seen against a white background.  Black and white are also achromatic.
• Muted Color – Rich but softened colors that reside on our color wheel between prismatic color and chromatic gray.
• Monochromatic – A color scheme based on one hue.  Monochromatic schemes can include a range of values and saturation levels and may also stretch the definition of one hue to include several different versions of it.
• Analogous Hues – Hues that lie adjacent to each other on the color wheel.
• Complementary Hues – Hues that lie directly opposite each other on the color  wheel.
• Grayscale – A graduated representation of the value continuum broken down into a finite number of steps, usually teen, eleven, or twelve achromatic grays.
• Saturation Continuum – A graphic representation of the infinite gradations of saturation that exist between any two complementary colors.

Color Terminology from January 19

• Spectrum – Colors as cast upon a wall by a prism, or as seen in a rainbow in the form of pure colored light.
• Hue – The name given to a color to describe its location on the color spectrum based upon its wavelength.
• Overtones – A term borrowed from music to describe the secondary hue “bias” of a primary color.  An awareness of overtones is particularly helpful when mixing color.
• Triadic Hues – Color relationships based on any three equidistant hues as shown on the color wheel.
• Primary Triad – The primary triad is so called because, theoretically, all other colors can be mixed from it.  In subtractive color the primary triad is composed of red, yellow, and blue, which are equidistant from each other on the color wheel.
• Secondary Triad – In subtractive color, orange, green, and violet.  They are called secondary because each can be made by combining two primaries.
• Earth Tone Primary Triad – A primary triad of chromatic grays (so called because of their resemblance to pigments found in nature).