One way to use broken color is to create optical color mixing, which is to put colors side by side, instead of mixing them together. Viewed from a far-ish distance, the colors visually mix. Viewed a bit closer up, the difference in colors visually pop and vibrate, giving the sensation or the impression of light.
Think that vibrating colors are one of those made up arty things? Take a look at this red/green wrapping paper. See how the trees and green are visually jumpy?
The grayscale version appears to have less vibration, and less light.
The technique of broken color goes back as far as the practice of weaving color rich tapestries (1600’s), is mentioned in Michel Chevreul’s “A Colourist’s Guide to Margarine” (1839). It was highly utilized by the Impressionists, and is still popular in painting today.
Alex Katz painted by Chuck Close, Alex II (1989)
Tom Thompson
1877-1017
One of the “Group of Seven” Canadian Painters
Notice too, how the underpainting was orange. You can see the orange peeking through each brush stroke. Imagine if the same painting was on white gesso. Not as good.
Anni Albers
1899-1994
[caption id=”attachment_15184″ align=”aligncenter” width=”650 Detail of weaving by Anni Albers
PS. I was joking about Chevreul’s Colourist’s Guide to Margarine, but only slightly.
You are invited to participate in an exquisite corpse style animal block printing project. Brian Lane of Print Zero Studios is collaborating with artists Peter Foucault and Chris Treggiari for a series of printing events at the Getty Museum in LA this July and August. The project is responding to their current exhibition “Book of Beasts: …
Welcome to the 30SAL Creative Challenge! Broaden your creative skills Every day this January we’ll post a creative challenge to our V. Notes blog. Subscribers will receive these posts in their inbox. Designed to foster a wide variety of creative skills, our challenges are not restricted to any style or genre, and medium is artist’s …
Last quarter I saw a profound shift in artwork at the school. It happened in Jonathan Harkham‘s Still Life class. Jonathan Harkham is an artist and educator who is joining us from his studio in LA. On the first day of class I noticed there were some nice student paintings, then increasingly through the weeks …
On day 15, halfway through our 30 day challenge, I introduced inverse perspective, in which objects grow larger as they’re farther away. Beautiful examples of inverse perspective can be found in Chinese, Japanese, and Indian artworks, as well as Byzantine. Here are a few by adventurous artists who responded to the challenge:
Broken Color
Weave
One way to use broken color is to create optical color mixing, which is to put colors side by side, instead of mixing them together. Viewed from a far-ish distance, the colors visually mix. Viewed a bit closer up, the difference in colors visually pop and vibrate, giving the sensation or the impression of light.
Think that vibrating colors are one of those made up arty things? Take a look at this red/green wrapping paper. See how the trees and green are visually jumpy?
The grayscale version appears to have less vibration, and less light.
The technique of broken color goes back as far as the practice of weaving color rich tapestries (1600’s), is mentioned in Michel Chevreul’s “A Colourist’s Guide to Margarine” (1839). It was highly utilized by the Impressionists, and is still popular in painting today.
Alex Katz painted by Chuck Close, Alex II (1989)
Tom Thompson
1877-1017
One of the “Group of Seven” Canadian Painters
Notice too, how the underpainting was orange. You can see the orange peeking through each brush stroke. Imagine if the same painting was on white gesso. Not as good.
Anni Albers
1899-1994
[caption id=”attachment_15184″ align=”aligncenter” width=”650
Detail of weaving by Anni Albers
PS. I was joking about Chevreul’s Colourist’s Guide to Margarine, but only slightly.
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Last quarter I saw a profound shift in artwork at the school. It happened in Jonathan Harkham‘s Still Life class. Jonathan Harkham is an artist and educator who is joining us from his studio in LA. On the first day of class I noticed there were some nice student paintings, then increasingly through the weeks …
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On day 15, halfway through our 30 day challenge, I introduced inverse perspective, in which objects grow larger as they’re farther away. Beautiful examples of inverse perspective can be found in Chinese, Japanese, and Indian artworks, as well as Byzantine. Here are a few by adventurous artists who responded to the challenge: