“Colour can be a lifetime of study, the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know!”
Julia Triston
Last week Dia and Bernice joined me on one of my organised workshops with Guest Artist Julia Triston. The workshop is held at a local community centre in Yate (near Bristol), my home town and the centre has been part of the community since 1840 first as a Union Workhouse, then a War Hospital, a Care Home and then finally handed to the community to be used as a centre with preschool, nursery, dance school, physiotherapy, conference centre along with rooms for hire. It is a fascinating place full of history and stories (including ghosts!) and I fall a bit more in love with the place every time I visit! This time was no different, look at the gorgeous lavender leading up to the entrance!
Julia was teaching a design skills workshop on “Analysing Colour” and it was a way for us to spend a bit of time re-investigating colour and looking at ways to use colour in our sketchbooks and in our own work. We started off with a discussion on colour – what is colour?; How is it used?; What words describe colour? And finally, what words describe shades of green – wow so many!
We each painted six 4” squares with a specific shade of green (Jade, Mint, Emerald, Olive, Lime, Parrot) from memory and once dry, Julia laid the squares in colour lines first without labels and then with:
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My 6 squares of green
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| Labelled green squares |
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| Dia painting her green squares |
It was fascinating to see how we each perceive colour and in fact, how very close we were from memory!
Moving on, we looked at the colour wheel, learning how to create primary colours and then using these created colours to create secondary and shades of complementary colours. We’d all made our own colour wheels before but using purchased primary colours so learning how to create our own was new to us and I can certainly see myself using this technique for my own work in future.
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| Making a primary red using Koh-i-nor watercolour paint |
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| Making primary colours and secondary colours |
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| Shades of complementary colours |
Using magazines to provide colours, we created two collages, one of warm colours and one of cool colours. We extended the collages by matching each colour with paint chart chips. I had a bit of extra time first thing on the second day and had a go at matching the colours with thread.
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Bernice has her right hand in a support cast while her hand heals.
It was a struggle but she managed to create her warm collage. |
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| Warm colours |
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| Cool colours |
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| Dia's warm collage and paint chips |
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| Dia's cool collage and paint chips |
On the second day we started to look at how we could use the techniques from day one within our own work starting from gaining inspiration for a new theme.
Like many artists, when I start a new theme, I gather sources of inspiration and create a scrapbook of images that fit the theme or make me go “oh” in relation to how I am intending to work. I use a sketchbook, keep a folder of images on my laptop or on Pinterest and I look at the colours but I don’t tend to study the exact shades or the proportions of each colour etc. This is what Julia asked us to do using a source of inspiration we had each bought with us.
Isolating a section of our images, we each worked out what the colours were and in what proportion. Using matching coloured threads on a piece of card, we created a thread chart in the exact proportions that was determined. I found it difficult to match my threads accurately so chose to have a go using paint chart chips, which was surprisingly accurate!
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| Inspiration Photo and Colour Proportions |
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| Inspiration Photo with thread and paint chip charts |
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| Bernice's inspiration photo, paint chart chips and colour proportion list |
As on day one, we used magazines as a source of colour and this time chose colours that matched the image colours as close as possible and created a collage using the same colour proportions. My image is of graffiti on a brick wall so I chose to make my collage more landscape like as I felt the colours worked really well for that type of picture. Once we had completed our collages, we took the exercise into fabric, creating a fabric collage using the as similar colours as possible. Stitch could be added to complete the collage further and I do plan to do this if I have time.
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| Collage using Colours from the inspiration photo |
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| My inspiration photo, paint chip and thread colour charts, collage and fabric collage |
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| Bernice's inspiration photo, paint chip chart and collage |
Finally we moved on to the last exercise which looked at creating new designs from a collage. Using my warm collage, I isolated a small square and made 6 copies of the square by just following and simplifying some of the lines. Using 3 colours in light, medium and dark shades, I was able to create new designs by crossing the boundaries of the lines I had drawn. It is a very simple exercise but very effective. Julia also suggested ideas of how to extend this exercise further and I plan to have a go at these in the next few weeks.
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| Creating new designs |
It was a packed two days and we came away feeling we had learned something new and with more confidence in using colour in our work. I’m keen now to get going with looking at colour more!
Becca
