hello and welcome to the last of the art class dumps! this one isn't particularly exciting as far as artwork goes, but it was still fun to do :) plus, there are some good things to learn too! this week we finally looked at color!! we used gouache paint (which is like a mix between acrylic and watercolor; it acts like watercolor, but it is opaque!) to do three different color/mixing exercises, outlined below. 1. this is the color wheel! i made two circles and then divided the space between them into twelve sections. then, i took the three paint primary colors- red, blue, and yellow- and filled in three of the spaces, with three spaces separating each color. then, i took two of those primary colors and mixed them together to produce the colors in between the two primary colors! this created the secondary colors- orange, violet, and green- as well as the tertiary colors- red-violet, red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, and blue-violet. those are the main twelve hues! some interesting things that i learned about primary colors and paint mixing will be discussed below :) 2. this is a study in tints and shades! the four squares shown above demonstrate a scale of tints- i started with blue, then gradually added more and more white to create a lighter color. for the below squares, i added more black to create a darker color. you may have heard before that adding black to make a color darker doesn't always look very nice, and i think that is demonstrated here- it turned the nice yellow into a murky greenish color. i wouldn't want to shade yellow with that! while it is often useful to darken a color with black, it is also possible to use different hues to shade, and that often creates a livelier result. you can use the same ideology for lightening a color as well! 3. lastly, this is a study in values. here we have a scale from black to white, in which i added white to black to gradually make lighter and lighter values! having a wide variety of values in a piece of art is very valuable ;) puns aside, it adds depth and contrast and it is very important to include! an image made with just the four lightest shades can look flat and muddy. now, let's explore a few interesting concepts i learned about color! first of all, color via light and color via pigment are two different things. your computer screen mixes different primary colors to create the right color of light than you will mix for paint. the primary colors for light are red, green, and blue instead of red, yellow, and blue! consider that color is all based on light. the wavelengths in light are either reflected or absorbed by objects; so, the color that we perceive an object to be is determined by the light waves that are reflected off of it. grass is not actually green; we only perceive it as green under traditional lighting. under the night sky, it can be a dark blue. in the early sunrise, it can be yellow and orange. color is all determined by light! i find it fascinating ;w; therefore, light is an additive way to mix color (when you mix two different colored lights, you get double the color wavelengths). however, when you mix paint, you are using subtractive methods (you are absorbing more light because of the two colors, therefore reflecting less)! that is why mixing paints can sometimes result in muddy, less vibrant colors than their original pigments. you may notice, for example, just how bright that original blue is in my color wheel! however, by mixing it with red or yellow, it is dulled. that is why even though you can hypothetically mix all of the colors possible with the primary colors along with black and white, many artists choose to use a bigger variety of pigments. i absolutely love learning about the way that color works! even though i'm not very good at color theory, i am working to improve :) finding colors and color palettes that go together is an art all on its own! like i said, this is the last of my art class projects :( that is because this is my last week of school! i'm going to graduate highschool in five days!! what! i'm thinking of making some art to celebrate seeing as i can't have an actual graduation ceremony :') i hope you are all doing well with your school and staying safe and at home!! now that i'm done with these projects, i'm getting a little antsy for new project ideas. let me know if you have any tutorial ideas or anything you'd like to see! <3
