Every morning when I wake up, I see the trees outside my window. Their appearance changes with the season and the weather. Now the limbs are bare, their lines vary in width and weight. I like seeing the changing color of the sky between the branches.
That is where the inspiration for this assignment is coming from.
Many artists have found trees beautiful and inspiring both in line and in color. As we are scheduled to work with warm and cool colors this week, I thought we could use the trees as our subject matter.
First, let's look at some other artist's work.
Vincent Van Gogh
The first two drawings are by Van Gogh.
Strong in line, beautiful shapes, textures, and value variations.
These two paintings are also by Vincent Van Gogh.
The one above has a strong warm palette with some accents of cool colors. The one below is predominantly a cool color composition, again with warm accents.
Georgia O'Keefe
There is a balance between warm and cool in this dramatic composition. The red is strong, but the intensity has been lowered by pushing toward the red-violet or red tones.
This warm palette also has a hint of yellow-green that adds light and softness to a dry landscape.
Wolf Kahn
These paintings and pastel drawings are by Wolf Kahn. The painting above has a warm palette. The green contrasts with the magenta and intensifies the warm effect.
These next three pastel drawings are dominant in cool colors.
Piet Mondrian
Mondrian used the tree as a starting point for many abstract compositions.
Mondrian abstracted the tree shape and used a monochromatic cool palette.
This painting, called Red Tree, also is predominantly a cool composition,
but the red tree is the focal point and emerges out of the dominant blue by contrast.
This is also a Piet Mondrian paintings, with a warm palette.
Drawing II, Week 14, Warm and Cool
Colors
Trees are the inspiration and subject
for this project.
If it is
a beautiful day, you can draw them through direct observation. You could find
or shoot reference photos of trees. You could invent tree-like lines and
shapes. (I would still recommend looking at a lot of trees first.)
Materials: pastels, color pencils,
markers, or oil pastels, paper
Two Compositions
We will
do 2 compositions, one warm and one cool in color palette.
Studies
Start
with some color studies in warm and cool. Make sure you understand what your
warm and cool palettes are. Try overlapping and mixing color swatches before
you begin your final drawings.
Warm
colors:
Yellow,
Yellow Orange, Orange, Red Orange, Red, Red Violet, Violet (sometimes cool)
Cool
Colors:
Yellow
Green (sometimes warm) Green, Blue Green, Blue, Blue Violet
To get richer colors than just
putting down the color of the crayon, pastel, or color pencil, try mixing
colors. You can then vary the hue, value and intensity of the color.
Color
Experiments with Warm and Cool Colors
1.
Warm
colors plus white, gray, and black
2.
Cool
colors plus white, gray, and black
3.
Colors
overlapping to get more variety (yellow + orange = yellow orange)
Layering
colors
•
Layer
colors to get a richer, varied version of the hue. For example, instead of using a straight blue
hue, layer violet over the blue to make blue-violet, or layer green over the
blue to make blue-green.
•
Mix
in a complementary color (colors that are opposite on the color wheel) to get a
lower intensity, duller, more neutral color.
•
Adding
gray, white or black will also lower the intensity of the color and may also
change the value (lightness or darkness of the color).
Contrast in
Composition
While
warm colors together or cool colors together can give a lot of unity to colors,
it can also be monotonous. Add some contrasts in color to give the eye a break
and to lead to focal points in the composition.
•
Cool
line and warm shapes or warm lines and cool shapes
Document
your compositions and upload to Blackboard, Week 14, Warm
and Cool Colors.
Post
in Week 14, Warm and Cool Colors, blog. Comment on your process
and reactions to working with trees and color.
Comments
Post a Comment