Exercises 1-4

Exercise 1 

This exercise requires painting an anachromatic scale, mixing black pigment into white to create a tonal scale.

Starting at white and ending in black

Although the photograph doesn’t clearly show, the two greys on either end of the scale demonstrated how the eye perseves tone; the grey closest to the white appeared much darker than the grey closest to the black, even though it was the same shade.

I did reflect that a mid time grey is actually darker than initially persevered it to be. Without painting the scale I would have painted (incorrectly) a  much lighter grey.

This neutral grey will be used to prepare the ground for the next two exercises.

Exercise 2 Primary and Secondary colour mixing

This exercise requires primary and secondary colour mixing, and understanding the concepts of Hue – (colour) Chroma  (intensity of colour) tone  (how light or dark it is.) The colour mixing is based on the RYB colour wheel. Firstly I identifed the warmer and coolers shades of red, blue and yellow from my colour palette:

Then arranged them into their warmer and cooler shades:

I mixed  cadium red with crimson to make a primary red, and used firstly lemon yellow and coeruleum blue to make a scale;

The scales set out in the exercise:

• lemon yellow to red, with a secondary orange in the middle
• yellow to blue with a secondary green in the middle
• cadmium red and coeruleum blue (which does not make violet)
• lastly, magenta and cyan to make violet.

 

I did these  again, using ultramarine blue and colbalt blue:

 

Finally, I created a scale of colours using the same sequence as above but maintaining a constant tonal value by adding white,

Yellow to red, yellow to blue and finally red to blue:

Using (top) cerulean blue, bottom colbalt blue

 

Exercise  3  Tertiary colours

Exercise Tertiary colours

Graded scale of secondary colours,

orange to violet OR green to orange, OR  orange to green (mix in white for equal tones)

The middle colour loses chroma to become tertiary (grey/muted).

 

Exercise 4 Complementary colours

This exercise looks at colours on the opposite ends of the colour spectrum, using warmer or cooler shades of red, blue, and yellow to create the full colour spectrum.

In this case:

Warm colours – napthol crimson,  cadmium yellow m ultramarine blue

Cool colurs –  cadmium red,  lemon yellow, cobalt blue

I also repeated this process using CMYK colour model, using magenta, cyan and process yellow.

Chevreul’s coulour wheel

Chevreul’s colour wheel using traditional and cmky paint colours

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next exercise is to match the complementary colours together and again, creating a tertiary colour from mixing the two together.

Note the tertiary (muddy) colours that result.

 

 

Reflection:

I underestimated how long this relatively simple exercise would take to do. I think it was helpful, as it clarified aspects of colour mixing that I had just created habitually. I included the CMKY approach to colour mixing as sometimes I use this method as well as the RYB approach.