Last quarter Keith Pfeiffer and I taught a series on color. As promised, this was not a typical color theory class. Here are a few of my favorite student works from one of my favorite exercises.
These paintings are made with compressed values, and some are entirely all one light/dark value. Some of them are so compressed, if you were to take a black and white photograph, the image disappears. One of the students called them invisible paintings.
1 value painting by Chris Harvey
Chris Harvey’s painting in b/w
This idea of painting with compressed values came from Monet’s Impression, Sunrise painting (1872) that launched the impressionist movement. The painting is almost entirely one value, with complementary orange/red and blue/green – the orange bold, and the blue neutralized into a grey.
Monet’s Impression, Sunrise painting (1872)
These invisible paintings produce an incredible vibrating magic when they implement two simple strategies.
Strategy 1: Painting with neutral colors and compressed values can give the painting a dim look, like peering into a scene at dawn or twilight.
Strategy 2: Adding intense color to this dim scene gives a surprising and stunning vibration that feels like light, or energy. These bold colors effectively replace the white of light. With or without the bold vibrating colors, compressed value paintings vibrate like they’re magic.
Strategy 3: Complementary colors, or colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel like red and green or orange and blue give each other a special supercharge. When one is bright and the other is neutral, as in Monet’s painting above, the effect is a powerful glow.
Gil Mendez
Gil Mendez
Christine Clark
Lucy Garnett
Laurie Churchill
Rita Parks
Susan Gregory
Janet Sekijima
Janet Sekijima
Janet Sekijima
Janet Sekijima
Cheryl Chudyk
Cynthia Hardwig
Cathy Hiyashi
Erin Power
Aren’t these fantastic? I love sharing ideas and seeing what people make with them. A good class can be a wonderful sequence of collaborations.
Interested in taking a class like this? Check out my upcoming classes:
Children with jack-o-lanterns, a sketch by Katie Jo Keppinger, in Thursday’s class for drawing and painting. I love Keppinger’s marks, bold and sensitive like Kathe Kollwitz, moody as Edvard Monk. This drawing uses a variety of edges and plenty of dark values and contrast to produce the sensation of glow. Organic circles, strong angles, and …
[image_with_animation image_url=”8958″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Alex Walker, an Especially Enjoyable student in my Intermediate Studio class, decided to work on making his brushwork more direct and decisive by doing a study of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Henry James. Since his pilgrimage to see it in London brought the sad news that the painting …
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American seascape and landscape painter. Homer worked primarily in oil and watercolor paints, creating a prolific body of work that chronicled his working vacations. During the cold winter of 1884-5, Homer traveled to Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas. He painted a series of watercolors as part of a commission for Century Magazine. The fresh …
As a young child, Pippin attended a segregated one-room school in Goshen, New York. When he was ten years old, he answered a magazine advertisement and received a box of crayon pencils, paint, and two brushes. At age 15 Pippin left school to care for his ailing mother. She died when he was 23, and …
Faves from Color Class: Compressed Values
Last quarter Keith Pfeiffer and I taught a series on color. As promised, this was not a typical color theory class. Here are a few of my favorite student works from one of my favorite exercises.
These paintings are made with compressed values, and some are entirely all one light/dark value. Some of them are so compressed, if you were to take a black and white photograph, the image disappears. One of the students called them invisible paintings.
This idea of painting with compressed values came from Monet’s Impression, Sunrise painting (1872) that launched the impressionist movement. The painting is almost entirely one value, with complementary orange/red and blue/green – the orange bold, and the blue neutralized into a grey.
These invisible paintings produce an incredible vibrating magic when they implement two simple strategies.
Strategy 1: Painting with neutral colors and compressed values can give the painting a dim look, like peering into a scene at dawn or twilight.
Strategy 2: Adding intense color to this dim scene gives a surprising and stunning vibration that feels like light, or energy. These bold colors effectively replace the white of light. With or without the bold vibrating colors, compressed value paintings vibrate like they’re magic.
Strategy 3: Complementary colors, or colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel like red and green or orange and blue give each other a special supercharge. When one is bright and the other is neutral, as in Monet’s painting above, the effect is a powerful glow.
Aren’t these fantastic? I love sharing ideas and seeing what people make with them. A good class can be a wonderful sequence of collaborations.
Interested in taking a class like this? Check out my upcoming classes:
Depth in Drawing & Painting begins 1/21
Light and Shadow, Color and Form begins 2/25
See you soon!
Related Posts
Effects of Light: Children with jack-o-lanterns
Children with jack-o-lanterns, a sketch by Katie Jo Keppinger, in Thursday’s class for drawing and painting. I love Keppinger’s marks, bold and sensitive like Kathe Kollwitz, moody as Edvard Monk. This drawing uses a variety of edges and plenty of dark values and contrast to produce the sensation of glow. Organic circles, strong angles, and …
Looking Closely at JS Sargent’s Portrait of Henry James
[image_with_animation image_url=”8958″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Alex Walker, an Especially Enjoyable student in my Intermediate Studio class, decided to work on making his brushwork more direct and decisive by doing a study of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Henry James. Since his pilgrimage to see it in London brought the sad news that the painting …
Winslow Homer in Cuba
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American seascape and landscape painter. Homer worked primarily in oil and watercolor paints, creating a prolific body of work that chronicled his working vacations. During the cold winter of 1884-5, Homer traveled to Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas. He painted a series of watercolors as part of a commission for Century Magazine. The fresh …
Horace Pippin
As a young child, Pippin attended a segregated one-room school in Goshen, New York. When he was ten years old, he answered a magazine advertisement and received a box of crayon pencils, paint, and two brushes. At age 15 Pippin left school to care for his ailing mother. She died when he was 23, and …