Some Experiments in Color

A few weeks ago, I rambled about a workshop I'm taking with Barb Smucker on color.  She started by talking about gray scale value, moving to limited palettes, and then to color.  (If you live in the Cincinnati Metro area and ever have an opportunity to take a workshop with Barb, I'd highly recommend it.)  My reinterpretation of her lessons in value are here.


From there we moved to intensity paintings, which if I understand correctly should be neutrals (and very similar in value) against a clean bright color.  I'm not sure I've got that quite right.  I took two old paintings, and one I added color using Caran d'Ache crayons the other I added grays using opaque watercolors. They both came out sort of interesting.  I'll definitely try the crayons again.  Still thinking on the opaque watercolors.   I think I need to add a more intense red to the painting with opaques.

We also looked at hue, or paintings where the emphasis is on color and color alone.  The amount of value is supposed to be close to nil.  This is harder than you might think, and you can see my experiments in watercolor here.  She had us try this, though by doing a collage, and here is my experimental collage--where the value changes should be minimal and the color is the emphasis.

The paper is shiny, which is affecting the photograph, and I took the pic before I glued everything down..  Sigh.  I'm also not quite careful enough for glue--I had glue on about 5 surfaces inside of 30 seconds after I opened the jar.