The eighth and final session of the Color Relationships 2 class for Fall 2016 was held on Wednesday, October 19. The majority of class time focused on the critique of the final assignment, Freedom!, which, as the title suggests, had a wide range of interpretation. Dick shared some of his personal thoughts on education and continual learning; we went over a brief end-of-class test; and we watched a short video to finish off the series. See the full post for photos and class materials.
The eighth and final session of the Color Relationships 2 class for Fall 2016 was held on Wednesday, October 19. The majority of class time focused on the critique of the final assignment, Freedom!, which, as the title suggests, had a wide range of interpretation. Dick shared some of his personal thoughts on education and continual learning; we went over a brief end-of-class test; and we watched a short video to finish off the series.
Critique – “Freedom!” assignment
True to the title of the last assignment, the class brought in a variety of work which showcased the range of interests and talents in this group. There was much to talk about, and each selection of work raised unique discussion points. For brevity, I organized a few key points that Dick made during critique, followed by a photo gallery of each student’s work.
On creative problem solving: “Get to know the phases of problem solving. What phase are you at in your work?”
On knowing your boundaries and constraints: “What is your theme? Do you know your boundaries? Once you set up the theme, everything either supports it, or goes against it. What is not part of the conversation? What goes against your theme? … It’s all about consistency, and if you are consistent in your theme, the choices make themselves.”
On how to critique: “When critiquing, get specific. Don’t just say you like the colors – what [do you like] about the colors? What [do you like] about the design? Does everything belong? Does it act as a unit, or as separate pieces?”
On design: “When we design, all we have to do is look at nature: what begins, is carried out [through the whole structure] … It has unity. It all relates.”
Class gallery
Jane brought in fabric samples that she dyed herself. She had full chroma pieces, and also a couple examples of mixed colors. She also shared some color chart sheets, which are made up of individual fabric squares organized very methodically.
Chenta brought in a felt piece she made this past week. She had written down her boundaries, and included a well-crafted artist’s statement which further helped explain her piece. She also shared an unfinished shadow study, and a past work from a 2012 series of felt “geodes” in a variety of sizes.
Elizabeth Ann shared a collage she assembled from digital photographs, with a theme of “backlit”.
Susan brought in several pastel and pencil studies of Maui landscapes, exploring the problem of how to apply veiling in pastel. She also had explicitly defined her “fence posts”, and used a matrix to guide her color selection to keep them related. She plans to use the fence posts concept in the future to help her focus on individual technical or creative options.
Keri shared with us a mixed-media piece, using metallic paint, multicolored threads, and different kinds of fabric. It incorporated several of the visual phenomena studied in this class in an abstract composition.
Joyce also brought in fabric work, sharing with us a small woven study which attempts to portray translucency and ‘Make one color look like two’. She also brought in two samples of past work.
Leonard shared two watercolors he did over the past week. He was exploring the concept of films in the balloon piece; and the visual phenomena of translucency and volume space, along with the theme of rest, comfort, and security, in the church exterior.
Reflecting on the course
To help the class recognize how far they had come in learning to see color objectively and independently, Dick played a video clip from the Interaction of Color iPad app of Christopher Farr speaking about his own color expertise. He provided a handout with some questions to provoke this discussion.
Dick shared some personal thoughts he had written out a few years ago, about Albers’ effect on his life, and how important it is to keep learning and keep growing.
To sum up, Dick shared an image he found on the internet, with the message to keep utilizing these lessons once the class is over: “If you don’t use or incorporate these lessons [into your work], they will be washed away like footprints in the sand.”
At Dick’s request, Valérie Richter shares words and images from a year-long exploration of luminosity.
Dick says, “Every artist for whom color is important must see and read this account, for it provides a guide and inspiration for us all. I am so very proud of Valérie’s mission and her support group, Karen, Holly, Craig and her classmates.”
At Dick’s request, Valérie Richter shares words and images from a year-long exploration of luminosity. Enjoy!
I have always been fascinated with color and I like to constantly learn. After taking Dick’s Tri-hue Watercolor class and then the Color Relationships class, I truly believed that he was teaching something that would open a new world for me, to see color and create color relationships as I had never done before.
An early stripe study, 2015
Stripe studies from 2015
Stripe studies from 2016
Study, June 2016
After taking those two classes I got very curious and decided to give up my 150 tubes of watercolor paint and just use the primary cyan, magenta and yellow, and start searching for the luminosity that Dick talks about. Armed with three tubes of paint, I began my journey.
My first attempts, to apply his method in painting flowers and landscapes, weren’t very successful. Dick encouraged me to put aside shapes, subject matter, and composition, and focus for awhile on painting color for color’s sake, by simply painting stripes. As we have heard him say many times, “discard the precious stones for the time being and take on some stepping stones”.
The very first layers of yellow, cyan, and magenta establish vanishing boundaries
Dick teaches that vanishing boundaries (top) and halation (bottom) are the only two ways to achieve luminosity with pigments.They can be established early in a watercolor (left side) and will remain after additional layers are applied (right side).
As I started these stripe studies I had a list of themes/tools Dick had introduced in class: vanishing boundaries, halation, tone, values, color themes, film, veil, gradation, harmony, how to affect one color with another one, and “what if”… I would pick one or two at a time, to avoid getting lost by trying to do everything at the same time.
Each progressive stripe attempt taught me something – either to do or not to do!
As I instinctively put colors together to see the results, sometimes it came out to be a really fascinating color relationship that I had never achieved before, and sometimes it didn’t turn out anything at all like I thought it would.
I learned I needed to go through those mistakes and not think of a mistake as just a mistake. I needed to go through the mistakes and learn from each one. Until I could, in my way, be able to control those colors to get the various color relationships I wanted, try to repeat them, register them and add them to my “toolbox”.
I admit, it was hard sometimes to stick to one theme/tool or technical effect, and not be influenced by my color likes and dislikes.
Dick also reminded me regularly of the importance of cropping, as it was unrealistic to expect perfect harmony on a full sheet while doing these studies. Cropping allowed me to isolate and see the color interaction better.
This took a lot of dedication, passion and time, plus of course Dick’s expertise, teaching skills, guidance and patience to let me discover things through my own experience instead of revealing them to me. All this is allowing me to make it my own. He is truly a great teacher, in the best sense of what teaching is.
Looking back now at my first studies, after applying myself for a year at painting stripes of color, I realize that I was oblivious at the time to already getting some vanishing boundaries, halation, and special relationships. I wasn’t recognizing them.
Dick’s encouragement to forget about doing a complete painting has caused me to not only paint the colors, but to see the colors. It makes me appreciate those accidental tones I was getting since I realize now how hard it is to get them.
As I look back over the past year’s studies I am excited at all that I have learned and accomplished and look forward to continuing exploring color. After much repetition it begins to stop being an accident and continues to grow until you cannot not do it. It is very hard to explain what happens as you practice; it is a mixture of technique and feel. The feel can’t be taught. It has to be experienced.
As I begin now to add shapes to my studies, I realize I have a long way to go, but that’s okay because I am enjoying the journey, and there is no end to it.
“While walking my dog at Giggle Hill this morning, looking mauka, I noticed the vog creating a very graphic & 2 dimensional example of ‘veils’…”
Dick thought students of color would enjoy seeing this photo sent to him recently by a former student.
“While walking my dog at Giggle Hill this morning, looking mauka, I noticed the vog creating a very graphic & 2 dimensional example of ‘veils’ very effective in conveying depth. Simple iPhone capture.” ~ Tony Novak-Clifford, 2013 Color Relationships student
The more you learn about color and your world, the more you can see.
To learn more about atmospheric veiling and how it magically and naturally conveys depth, look at some of the posts tagged with volume color or some of the other tags at the bottom of this post.
The fifth session of the Color Relationships 1 class for Summer 2015 was held on Tuesday, August 25th. Our last session for the Color 1 series was a visual delight, from viewing the range of materials and various interpretations of the homework, to our guest speaker Valérie sharing her recent watercolor explorations. We heard a philosophical take on Dick’s theory of teaching and the shared contract of the responsibility for in student/teacher relationship, discussed the value of experimentation, and wrapped up with a delicious “graduation” potluck lunch and an hour of socializing.
The fifth session of the Color Relationships 1 class for Summer 2015 was held on Tuesday, August 25th. Our last session for the series was a visual delight, from viewing the range of materials and various interpretations of the homework, to our guest speaker Valérie sharing her recent watercolor explorations. We heard a philosophical take on Dick’s theory of teaching and the shared contract of responsibility in the student/teacher relationship, discussed the value of experimentation, and wrapped up with a delicious potluck lunch and a fun hour of socializing.
Class overview
Tattoos and Albers’ legacy
We started off with a surprise: one class member, Lisa, had found such inspiration from this series that she had gotten a brand new tattoo of CMYK color circles! After Dick recovered from his shock, she revealed it was actually a temporary tattoo by Tattly, a company that specializes in temporary tattoos created by designers and artists. While checking out their selection, she found the beautiful CMYK circles and brought one for every class member. It seemed a perfect graduating gift for such an eye-opening series! While these tattoos only last a few days, the knowledge gained in these sessions will be informing everyone’s work for years to come.
Lisa’s brand-new tattoo!
CMYK temporary tattoo fun
After that we introduced our guest speaker for the day, Valérie Richter, who would be presenting her recent watercolor studies that explore luminosity, color relationship, and Dick’s “tri-hue” method of mixing transparent color washes. Before beginning the critique, Dick went through Albers’ book again, pointing out some of the examples and discussing Albers’ influence on his students. Dick talked about the importance of learning to put the lessons together to create the most visually effective work, and finding a way to take what you’ve learned and apply it in new and insightful ways: “[Vanishing boundaries] was Albers’ assignment, and I don’t understand why he didn’t incorporate it into his own work. What we have done in the class has already gone far past what Albers achieved, and so what’s next? It’s his own saying, ‘Learning never ends.’”
When asked if Dick ever considered putting out his own book on color theory, he responded that his videos and his online materials are his contribution to the field. “I made a whole DVD on this, with all the lessons, the tutorials, everything … and it’s great, because you get the interactive aspect, you can hear my voice, and watch the animations; everything’s there. I understand that some people like books and they like turning the pages and all that, but this is the future, folks: technology. And if you don’t accept that, then you’re living in the past.” As Dick explained later in class, it is his goal to ensure that his students become independent thinkers. He does not want us to simply fall in step with what is already accepted, but to push beyond the current boundaries and keep moving forward. What revelations are out there yet to be discovered? We will never find out if we stay within our comfort zones.
Homework critique and examples of vanishing boundaries
We moved upstairs for our homework critique and discussion. Since this assignment allowed for a choice of media, it was exciting to see how students explored the theme of vanishing boundaries within a range of materials. It was a chance for some students to jump into experimenting with how they might integrate these lessons into their own work, which has been a question on many people’s minds. Understanding the concepts is one part of the teachings; figuring out how to apply them to your own work is another challenge entirely.
We started with the students who had brought in non-digital work.
Keri used fabrics and thread as her media of choice:
Keri’s quilt of vanishing boundaries
She also brought in a quilt she recently completed based on a Charley Harper design
Chelsea used pastels:
An older work done in pastel
Tracy brought in acrylic paintings and photographs, and a few small studies she was playing with. She also brought in photographs of another artist’s work, and a close-up of the brushstrokes in the image:
An acrylic painting from her water series
Another painting from the water series
An example of another artist employing vanishing boundaries, with a close up of the brushwork
Elizabeth Ann brought a few watercolors studies, and a book (seen on the couch) by another watercolor artist, Mark Adams, as an example of work that inspires her:
Then we viewed the digital examples.
Lisa’s work:
Gail’s work:
Patty’s work: Debra submitted different images which demonstrated her process in approaching the assignment, and also how she might apply the lessons to her own work: Suchi’s work, along with a photograph that she enhanced in Photoshop and used as inspiration for the landscape rendering:
Stephanie’s work, showing how she used one matrix to create two very different compositions:
The goal of the teacher-student relationship
Stephanie also mentioned her appreciation for Dick’s commitment to teaching, which she experienced after she had submitted her initial study. Dick had given her feedback, which at first she felt was a reprimand that she had done something ‘wrong’, but on further reflection realized Dick was communicating that he had not done his job as a teacher. This led to a brief reflection by Dick on the role of the teacher, and the ‘contract’ that is the teacher-student relationship.
“Well, I don’t do you a service at all by giving false praise. My whole mission is to go from a ‘pretty controlled parent’ to ‘total freedom’, and a lot of art teachers like to say ‘Do your thing, man, do your thing.’ No, I don’t agree with that: it’s like asking a baby to survive on its own. The baby is going to die if you don’t feed it, you don’t clothe it; but you also don’t want that baby at 30 years of age living at home and being dependent on you. I believe in taking a student from dependency to independent; and if we, as teachers, make them more dependent on us, then we haven’t done our job. You can’t grade something you can’t teach. You can only measure by what our task was, and so this is a contract, where I’m going to teach you color, and what is your responsibility? And if you don’t do it, then it’s my job to make sure I’m getting through to you.”
He summed up the success of the class by congratulating them on how well they came through on these assignments: “I can’t tell you how much it means when I see how far we’ve come, especially in this last week. It is just so exciting to realize that you can achieve this level of work – ’cause you can’t fake this, and you either get it or you don’t.”
Valérie’s watercolor studies and the importance of cropping
After our coffee break, we were treated to Valérie’s recent undertaking, a commitment to studying color. She is practicing with watercolors, and as a transparent media, they can be very useful in creating color harmony. Dick talked about how one of the obstacles in our way is usually the desire to create something “perfect” or something that we are too attached to: “So often when we get engaged with subject matter, we don’t see what is happening with color and shape … She was at a point where she needed to stop making ‘precious stones’ and start making “stepping stones” to expand her vocabulary in color, and then go back to what she was doing.”
Valérie spoke about her process, the way she layers colors, and spoke about some of the revelations she has had that are changing the way she thinks about and approaches her work. “If you want to learn about colors, you have to drop completely painting ‘something’: just work with colors. And once awhile I think, ‘I’m going to try to do the ocean.’ So I was layering the colors, and I got stuck, and you get stuck because you’re trying to fit into this little thing, instead of having the freedom to just play with all those colors. So when I saw that I was stuck, I threw away the picture, and I thought ‘Just play with it, be bold, and go for it! It’s not precious, and you’re going to mess it up.’ So every time you learn a little something. But you have to let go.”
Her revelations are mental adjustments, or, as Dick would describe them, behavioral changes. As she works with the colors, she is learning all the time, and learning to let the process happen naturally. “You also have to try to focus on one thing at a time, because there are so many: between the harmony, the toning, the vanishing boundaries, the halations – you can’t try to do it all at once. So focus on one aspect at a time, and little by little … But it just takes putting in the hours. You start seeing it when it’s right, like values: before, I thought I had to learn values, and work at it, but as you do it, as you paint, it just comes to your eyes.”
Dick brought out his white ‘L’ guides and demonstrated the value of cropping. “When we do something like these studies, the cropping is very much a part of it, because we are not creating a composition, we are doing studies. These are not works of art, they are more ‘what would happen if?’ So I want to put a couple down and go over them with the cropping tools, and show you how you can hit on a particular color theme or an idea for a piece.” Dick likes to refer to it as the ‘cuisine’ of a piece, similar to a tasty entrée where the chef blends a multitude of flavors, yet keeps the dish balanced. It is about looking at the Gestalt, the play of interaction, and finding the right balance that allows “all voices in the choir to be heard”.
We finished off the class with a couple short segments of video, one from the introduction to the Albers’ app, and another from the juror for the Art Maui 2015 show, to show again the danger of listening to so-called ‘experts’ without questioning their reasoning and using our own intelligence. Then it was time to eat, to mingle, and wrap up another successful graduation of “Color Snobs”!
The fourth session of the Color Relationships 1 class for Summer 2015 was held on Tuesday, August 18th. We critiqued the transposition examples seen in Albers’ book, reviewed the homework submissions, enjoyed a poetry reading, and heard from Kit Gentry about the incredible use of value as it is employed in his paintings. We moved on to our last assignment (an exercise in freedom!), and Dick talked about considering how we might put these color concepts to use in the future.
The fourth session of the Color Relationships 1 class for Summer 2015 was held on Tuesday, August 18th. We critiqued the transposition examples seen in Albers’ book, reviewed the homework submissions, enjoyed a poetry reading, and heard from Kit Gentry about the incredible use of value as it is employed in his paintings. We moved on to our last assignment (an exercise in freedom!), and Dick talked about considering how we might put these color concepts to use in the future.
Class overview
Color examples from The Interaction of Color
We began class by looking over the transposing/transformation samples in Josef Albers’ book, The Interaction of Color. Dick asked the students to view the images objectively, going over them square by square.
Dick: “Of all of the reds which is the darkest?”
Class: “The dark red.”
Dick: “And which is the lightest?”
Class: “The pink.”
Dick: “So of all the contrasts between the squares, which would be the greatest? The one between the dark red and the pink. Now take those colors, and transpose them into blue: shouldn’t that border be the same then? So the strongest [most contrasting] border should be at the same place.”
But Dick also used this example to show that the color transposition was wrong. As Dick realized many years ago, the examples Albers included in his book (which were pulled from his own students’ work) are not accurate, and therefore much of Dick’s teaching is designed to get his students to learn how to discern between true color relationships, and those that are false.
Dick: “Now look at the blue and look at the red, of the ones we’re talking about, the place of greatest contrast. Is the blue lighter or darker?”
Class: “The blue is darker.”
Dick: “And let’s move to the left: is the blue lighter or darker?”
Class: “Its still darker.”
Dick: “Now go across the border between the two top reds; look at the strength of that contrast. Is that maintained between the blue?
Class: “No.”
Dick: “Do you see how that’s softer? It’s not as strong a contrast.”
This discussion is similar to one we had a couple weeks ago, after viewing the video about Albers’ ‘Homage to the Square’, narrated by the curator of a Midwest museum. We are learning that we cannot trust every “expert” that comes along. Dick’s message is that he’s teaching us how to make our own judgments, backed by knowledge and understanding of the rules of color interaction.
But even though the book’s example is incorrect, Dick again praised Albers’ genius in exploring this tricky subject, and inventing such original assignments to teach others about the many facets of color interaction. Dick marveled at Albers’ ingenuity in designing the format for this assignment, so that it both shows multiple value contrasts and gives the viewer the ability to properly gauge them. “That’s what makes this such a damn good format, because it gives you the opportunity to make these comparisons. And so we can check another color in the same way, against its neighbor above or below, and to one side. And ask, does that contrast match?”
He advised the class to continue this exercise after the session ends: “And the fine-tuning of value perception is like a conductor knowing if an instrument is off-key: they can recognize the difference between a note that’s correct, and a note that’s flat. And after awhile, you start to hear it, and then you get finer and finer in your discrimination.”
Poetry and color games
After closing the book, we had a few administrative announcements, and then a special treat: one of our classmates had composed a poem about color! Suchi had been so impressed with the new color revelations she encountered in the first class, she had gone home and later found herself writing a poem about our newly discovered color terms. Dick asked her to read it aloud to the class, which she graciously obliged, and we were all the lucky recipients of a spontaneous poetry reading:
Following that was more fun: another color chip game! This one had the goal of finding two or more matching values from the pile of chips. Dick’s only word of caution was that he had designed this game the night before, and then printed a sheet out on his home printer, only to find that the colors seemed very off from what he was viewing on his screen. He tried it again, and again, and finally gave up trying to perfectly match the screen image. So his instructions made the game even more challenging: “What I’m going to do is put out some color chips, and out of four in a family there will only be two of them which are of equal value. But since the color was off, we really have no idea if we have any of equal value.” Have fun!
But the class was up to the challenge, and found many examples of value matches, which Dick was pleased to see. “Really, I’m very impressed, you have all improved substantially over this past week … your eye for value, as compared to last week, has improved tenfold.”
Color composition with triangles
We then took a moment to look at a composition Dick had placed on the easel in front of the class. “Now, this has been up on the board for weeks, and I’ve been waiting for someone to mention or say anything about this piece, and no one has said a word. What do you see? Everybody stand up and come to [the opposite] side of the room, and tell me: what do you see?”
This is not the same pyramid piece we viewed in class, but has the same elements contained in the other piece: vanishing boundaries; halation; and a design that only uses one shape – a triangle.
The class took some time gazing at the piece, and when asked again what they saw, most people commented that they saw a pyramid, or more specifically, what looked to be an optical illusion of a four-sided pyramid. “But now, do you see any halations? Any vanishing boundaries?”
A few people said they did, and Dick asked them to go up and point out the halations. As each person got closer to the piece, they remarked in surprise at some of the triangles they had missed. In fact, the whole composition was constructed from triangles, but most were matching so closely in hue and value that they could hardly be seen from a distance, and are only noticed when up close. This “disappearance” of the triangles from a distance made the colors blend into each other, giving depth and a richness to the piece. There even appeared to be slight movement, as if we were seeing tricks of light and shadow. One student commented: “The longer I look at it, the more comes out to me. It’s really quite something.”
Critique
After our coffee break, we held the critique of last week’s assignment, ‘Transposing colors’. Many students lamented that the images on the screen did not match what they had seen on their monitors, which Dick agreed with. “I was thinking about it last night, all the different translations this image goes through, from your computer, you upload it to the website, to my computer, and now to my t.v. … So just realize that the final result, to hit it right on the button, via the internet and all the translations this color is going through, is near impossible. So I’m not that concerned [with the homework samples], I’m more concerned with whether or not you can see what the values are now, as they appear on the screen.”
So instead of critiquing the homework as it appeared, Dick would instead ask the author to discern which colors appeared lighter or darker on his screen, and which ones they would change to match in border contrast. Once again, Dick was happy to hear the class’ take on what we were seeing, and that even if the homework itself was not an accurate representation, the student’s value perception was right on target.
We followed that with a few short segments from Dick’s DVD, Dimensions of Color: ‘3D Colorwheel’, ‘Color is Relative’, and ‘Color Deception Fun’. [*note: Dick requested that another video be added to this post even though we did not watch in it class, ‘Color Luminosity’. You will find a link to it in the ‘Videos’ section below].
‘3D Color wheel’ we previously viewed on our first day of class, where we were introduced to an animated rendering of a color globe. Seeing the globe again weeks later is a fun way to see how far we’ve come, as students have put to use the terms “tints, tones, and shades”, and also now understand the incredible tools that arrays and matrices are for being able to link colors and get unexpected results.
At the end of the videos, it was time for Dick to dial in our guest for the day, someone whom Dick holds in high regard for his use of color relationships in his work.
Conversation with Kit Gentry
Dick introduced our special guest speaker, Kit Gentry, joining us via Skype from Michigan. Kit is former student of Dick’s, who took the Color Relationships series several years ago, which he credits with revolutionizing his artwork almost immediately. As a professional artist with a strong background in drawing and painting, Kit was able to take the lessons learned in class and incorporate them straight into his work. Dick had asked him to speak with us regarding the use of value in his paintings, which Kit uses masterfully to achieve stunning effects.
”I was drawing and painting for many years, and … [Dick] always marveled that I was able to assimilate the information as quickly as I did into what I was doing. My work changed pretty dramatically pretty quickly, even during the class. I attribute that to the fact that I had been drawing for so long that I had the concepts of value relationships worked out pretty well before I even came to take the class for the first time. So plugging in the color element became relatively simple because I understood value relationships, which I think made a big difference … because this is so much about value relationships and specifically about what you’re talking about today, equal values.”
He spoke about techniques he was incorporating into his recent work:
“In my own work right now, I’ve been focused largely on this idea of ‘the conservation of values’, which is something that you can see on display in many of the painters that we’re all familiar with: John Sargent is an example. These guys were trying to limit the value range of their paintings to only about 5 to 9 steps, which seems really, really limited. And it is, but what it recognizes is that paintings cannot have the full range of value that we would see in nature: say, the brightness of the sun to the darkest shadow, where there is absolutely no light at all. We can’t really get that in our paintings, so you have to figure out a way to make it work with fewer value steps available.
“For our purposes, its necessary to simplify and say “Ok, all the little things that are happening in that value area – say a shadow, or maybe a light area – you’re compressing the value range in there. And to show the subtle distinctions in there, you’re using changes in hue, instead of changes in value. So you can have an almost unlimited amount of stuff happening in a shadow as long as all the things you add into that shadow are of the same value. And that’s the sort of thing that you would see happening in my more recent work.”
Dick also asked Kit to talk about his discovery of “viewing distance”, and what he was working on in relation to that:
“What I really want my paintings to be able to do is be continually interesting to view from different distances. So when you come into a gallery and you see that thing across the room, you want that thing to reach out and grab you, and to be interesting to compel you to come up close. And what I want is that you can go up close to the work, and find it just as fascinating there, at that range, but for different reasons. At that point you’re viewing all of these, really millions, of these little color interactions, and those interactions need to be so beautiful that you find reason to stand there at close range as much as you need to view it from across the room. But it is a very different experience; the painting comes across very differently at close range than across the room.”
Free color studies
We thanked Kit for his time spent with us sharing his work and his insight, and Dick invited him to sit in for the rest of the class, as we went over our last assignment for the series.
This assignment turned out to be completely different from any of the other ones we have had thus far. It is a slight variation on something that Albers used to assign his students, which he referred to as “free studies”. For Albers, it was a way for students to take a break from the rigorous structure of his traditional color exercises, and explore the interaction of color in a looser and more personal way. In Albers’ own words: “… after such systematic exercises, a need for independent work arises, and free studies are encouraged. With them one may play with colors as one pleases…”
For our studies, the “free” part of the work is in content and design, and also materials, so students are encouraged to use whichever materials appeal to them. The only constraints are to create a composition that incorporates vanishing boundaries and halations. “If you like to do digital work on the computer, you can use that; you can do paper inlay; you can paint or use pastels: whatever is your ‘cup of tea’. The only criteria being that you inject vanishing boundaries, and halation, hopefully.”
Dick showed a couple of examples of sketches he has done on his iPad, utilizing arrays and matrices. Again he went over the requirements needed to have successful vanishing boundaries: “And if you look at this, I think you can clearly see, that the colors are different but equal in value: those are vanishing boundaries. They will be most successful when you put colors that are very similar together, rather than different. I would prefer that you choose colors that are very close in hue, a composition in which vanishing boundaries will occur.”
And Dick stressed that he didn’t want to see anything fancy or “cute”, as he is not interested in seeing shapes. Instead, he wants the shapes to disappear through color interaction, to let the play happen between ground and figure, object and viewer. “I think that one of the things that was so profound in working with Albers, is that he didn’t try to tell you ‘Look how clever I am with shapes’. He wanted you to experience color. So if the first thing I see is shape, then I know we are on the wrong track. Don’t be cute with it, you can have all the fancy shapes you want, but it will be a lot of time spent in vain, because I’m not going to be looking for it. I’m going to be looking for vanishing boundaries and halation. So consequently, shapes shouldn’t even really be seen, although they’re there.”
The reason for a free study as the last assignment has implications that go beyond our classroom: “I want you to make a transition from being in class and having student assignments, to making this knowledge your own. I want to see that you can take these principles and apply them in your own way.”
It is something that Dick admits he has struggled with throughout his teaching career, and he wonders what is missing that would allow students to take these lessons and incorporate them into their artwork. “I’ve been wrestling with this for years, is why can people understand vanishing boundaries in class, and then they leave class and it never again surfaces in their work? How do I prepare you to use this as your own – whether you’re an interior designer, or a painter, or a ceramicist, or whatever – so that you can take this knowledge and find a way to plug it in? How long does it take before it becomes a part of what you’re doing? How many of you will learn to use it as Kit did, and plug it into your own work?“
He cautioned that not stretching yourself as an artist, and not finding a way to play with these concepts, will keep you stuck at the same level as when you came in. “We all slide back to our comfort zone, and that’s your death knell … ‘One of these days I’ll do it, one of these days …’ So ask yourself: how might I address this issue? And if you can begin to bridge that gap … then maybe we can make a breakthrough there.”
One last tip for this week’s homework, something Dick repeats often: “Stepping stones; if you fill your pockets with precious stones, you’ll never cross the river. Stepping stones …”
Homework assignment
ASSIGNMENT: Vanishing Boundaries
1. Begin with an observation of nature to find evidence of vanishing boundaries. Record these findings with digital photographs, or a sketch, or however you can.
2. Look at artwork of your own and others for similar identification of vanishing boundaries (bring examples to class if possible).
3. Create a color study (or studies) that demonstrates use of EQUAL VALUE, primarily in the form of creating VANISHING BOUNDARIES. You get to choose the format and the materials, as long as you stay focused on color.
The criteria: to incorporate VANISHING BOUNDARIES first, and hopefully HALATION as well.
The subject matter can range from a simple shape of one color on a ground of equal value and closeness in hue, to many colors in a variety of shapes. The important thing to remember is that COLOR is the primary focus of the assignment, and shape is secondary. Shape should not be the first thing the viewer notices; in fact, the boundaries around shapes should “disappear” due to color interaction (think of Dick’s triangles that we viewed in class, and the way many of the triangles were hardly seen until pointed out).
These studies can take be done in a variety of materials, ranging from inlaid paper or magazine collage, to digital work, to painting or pastels – this gets to be your “cup of tea”! The main concern is to find a personal format that incorporates arrays and/or matrix format as a source for your colors.
An animated building of a 3D color wheel with identifying text. The full dimension of color relationships can be viewed in this animated movie. This is part of Dick Nelson’s DVD “Dimensions of Color”, used as his teaching device for the serious student of color. Having studied with the 20th Century master of color Josef Albers at Yale, Dick has incorporated many lessons from his mentor and added some of his own color revelations.
We perceive the hue and value of colors according to their surroundings. This video demonstrates just how relative color is and provides an explanation.
Here are two ways color luminosity can be achieved. This should dispel the notion that the French Impressionists achieved color luminosity by way of full chroma color application. See with the truth with your own eyes.
Wow, only our second session and we are fast covering ground! In this class, we moved right ahead, learning more about arrays; the importance of recognizing the difference between hue and value; how to look at your work objectively; and most importantly: HALATIONS! The following post summarizes our exciting class activities, the importance of critique, the new homework, and the fun videos we watched (no shortage of laughter!). Read on for more …
Wow, second session and we are fast covering ground! In this class, we moved right ahead, learning more about arrays; the importance of recognizing the difference between hue and value; how to look at your work objectively; and most importantly: HALATIONS! The following post summarizes our exciting class activities, the importance of critique, the new homework, and the fun videos we watched (no shortage of laughter!). Read on for more …
Class overview
Color Chip Game
The second class of the Color Relationships Summer 2015 met again at Dick’s house on Tuesday, August 4th. After meeting one more student who was absent from the first class, we started right off with another game: Color Chip Array. Students paired off and had to sort through a pack of 4-5 colors to find the appropriate “relatives” and discard the hues that didn’t belong. The instructions then called for something interesting: “When the array is determined, create a format which produces a HALATION.” Well, what the heck is a halation? Before Dick would give the answer, he wanted the class to figure it out for themselves (no surprise there!). Teams worked on the arrays for around 10 minutes, then had to share their results with the rest of the class.
The game proved to be a bit more difficult than originally assumed, and many of the color chips had been chosen so that the colors were remarkably close in hue with subtle differences. Keeping with the metaphor of a “family”, Dick brought up a good technique to use when determining if colors are related: “When looking at color, ask, ‘What’s in this?Who’s the father? Who’s the mother? What are the values of the parents, and is one parent lighter than the other? Is the child progressing towards one or the other; that is, is it going lighter or darker?”
This is all about learning to identify what makes up a hue; that is, what ingredients does it have in it? Is there magenta? Is there yellow? Is there black, or white, or a complementary color? Dick stressed this point a few times throughout the class, that it is important to learn how to label colors so you can talk about them in a logical fashion. Don’t just come up with a clever name for a hue; learn to identify what primaries have gone into it, and in what proportion, and if they were modified in any way (with black, white, or if it’s been toned).
Halation
From this discussion, we narrowed down which hues belonged in which families, and which color chips could be discarded. Dick then introduced another technique for identifying color relationships: halation. Halation is a term that Dick was introduced to through Josef Albers, and although Dick remembers hearing Albers use it, there is no reference to the term in the entire Albers book. However, the term stuck, and it is a most appropriate word for the incredible, almost magical effect that occurs when colors are in true relationship to each other.
Dick demonstrated the effect by having the class gather around the table, and slowly pulling one color chip away from the rest of the array. If you watched closely, you could see the other color showing up along the edges of the chip, like a shadow moving across the paper, or as Dick described it, “like the wake of a ship.” Once you see it, you can’t believe that you have been ignoring this phenomenon your whole life! It appears to look like a trick of the light, or that some clever person has delicately airbrushed a light wash of color over another one, but when you see the demonstration, there is no faking it.
1 + 1 = 3
This is why halation can be such a powerful method of checking to see if the hues you are working with are truly in relation to each other: you will either see the halation between them, or not. This was also a powerful demonstration of one of Albers’ favorite quotes: ‘1+1=3’. Dick used the example of a hand: “A hand is not just four fingers, a thumb, and a palm – no, it’s so much more than that. It’s more than the sum of its parts. So one color plus another color is not just two, but has a sum, an effect, which is greater than its parts.”
Dick explained that this term would be an important part of today’s lesson, and was one of the key aspects of creating color harmony. Later in class during the critiques, the use and importance of halations became more apparent as it turned out to be an integral part of proper relationship, and is a phenomenon that is best understood through practice rather than simply discussing it.
Critique and objective analysis
We started with Chelsea’s homework, since she had chosen to go with the ColorAid paper, which meant she did not have the luxury of having Illustrator create an array for her, and had to make one herself from selecting color chips. Dick had cautioned how difficult this would be, since the colors are not organized, and as we have already seen, color perception can be easily thrown off by the other colors that surround it.
However, Chelsea had done a masterful job with her array, finding a closely related color family that truly reflected her parent hues. This led Dick to point out the practical use of the halation effect: “If your array is done properly, you should see halation between every color except which? The parents.” Why not the parents? “Halation can only occur if it is surrounded by other colors on both sides – you can’t have it isolated like the parent/anchor colors. It has to be inside two others.”
The class could clearly see the halation between Chelsea’s “children”, and the strong parent colors added to the effect. Dick also critiqued the formal qualities of the work: the design, the proportion of colors to each other, and how Chelsea was able to communicate her intentions through purely visual means. This is another one of Dick’s goals in this class, to educate his students on forming a coherent visual language. As he put it: “I’m playing the same role that Albers played with me: he questioned everything. Albers could be so objective. And I want you to think about that: what does placing this line here do? Does this help it? Does this hinder it?”
After our coffee break, we continued with the rest of the critiques, all done with Illustrator. Before starting the critiques, Dick made sure to reiterate what he was looking for in the assignments: “There are only two things I’m concerned with: HUE and VALUE. So when we look at the homework, continue to ask yourselves, ‘Is this a hue change or a value change?’”
After looking through several examples, students were getting faster at recognizing when the effect was one related to hue or one related to value. Some of the best examples made use of both attributes, which demonstrated the importance of knowing the difference between them, and how to use them effectively. The class could also clearly see when halation was occurring in an array, and when it was absent. Dick stressed again the importance of using that effect to gauge how well the relationship is working between the parents. If the array is in proper harmony, you will see halation appearing between the children.
And from there, the questions about hue and value become more specific to the assignment. “Continue to ask: is it a value change, or a hue change? See if changing one or the other strengthens or hinders the work.” Along with that, we saw examples of how the size, shape, and proportion of children colors to parent colors can dramatically affect the reading of the final piece. “How about the size of the area, the size of the child? Too much, too little? Why? Pay attention to that, because you want to influence as much as possible.”
Anomalies in Illustrator
We also got to see a few examples of how the Illustrator program doesn’t always produce predictable results. The computer program is not perfect, and does not always calculate a color array that would match real world results. Again, watching for hue and value consistency will go a long way in finding harmonious color relations. For example, if a child appears to get darker than both of its parents, then the array is wrong and needs adjustment. Use your discernment when looking at your arrays: if the colors do not follow a logical pattern, or you can’t see halation between the colors, change them. Dick cautioned, “Don’t be too dependent on this application to give you accurate results.”
Overall, Dick was very impressed with what the class turned in for homework assignments, and congratulated everyone on their understanding of hue and value effects. And because they did so well, he decided to combine the next two homework assignments and have the class complete them both for next session. This will allow us to have extra time to go over some advanced color concepts at the end of the course.
Videos
Before launching into our new homework assignments, we watched another one of Dick’s Vimeo presentations, “Red & Blue are not primary colors.” This involved demonstrating the luminous colors that are created when all three primaries are used in varying strengths, and the incredible variety of color that occurs when these hues are next to each other. As Dick said, “There’s no way to have dissonance when all colors are in harmony. You will see halations and luminosity by relating the three primaries to each other.”
Dick also demonstrated the Huedoku app on his iPad to show the incredible effect that halation can have: once again, it’s either there or it’s not. There is no way to deny the truth of that statement once you see the game in action; and a color palette that at first sings and glows, then becomes flat and boring once shuffled around randomly. Place the chips in their proper positions, and the whole thing comes alive again, with unbelievably radiant color squares.
Last, Dick shared a YouTube video about Albers’ paintings, narrated by a curator of a museum. It turned out to be an interesting example of an “expert” who was actually making stuff up! The video included commentary about “colors migrating across borders” and “uneven lines” allowing “colors to jump across [their] boundaries.” Dick pointed out how dangerous it is to blindly believe those who claim to be “experts”, without questioning and finding proof that what they say is truly correct. “Unbelievable, folks: now this is a curator at a museum talking about these paintings. We must be very careful about who is our authority, and if they can’t prove [their theory] other than ‘it migrates across the boundary by the unevenness of the edge’, I mean, come on … You experienced this morning the incredible sensation of a halation: that is interaction. That’s what Albers is all about.”
And although we did not watch this video in class, Dick requested to include on this page one of his own videos talking about Albers’ famous series of paintings and prints, “Homage to the Square”, which was Albers’ preferred method of exploring color relationships. He completed hundreds of these images throughout his life, and his impact on the visual arts was so influential that one painting was even commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp in 1980, with his famous maxim underneath: “Learning never ends.”
Homework assignment
→ REMEMBER: The halation effect tells you whether or not you’re on the right track. You should see halation in your color array if it is done correctly.
**Just a reminder, you do not need to do B&W value studies! ONLY COMPLETE AND SUBMIT COLOR STUDIES.**
This week, there are two homework assignments:
Making 3 colors appear as 2, or appearing as a reverse ground (see PDF below). Create several solutions to this assignment. If you have access to the Interaction of Color book or app, this exercise comes from chapter VI, “1 color appears as 2 – looking like the reversed grounds”.
Making 4 colors appear as 3. This exercise comes from Albers chapter VII, “2 different colors look alike – subtraction of color”.
A descriptive analysis of the work of Josef Albers by a former student Dick Nelson. This is followed with Dick’s animated collection of his own color studies which incorporate Albers format and his principles of color interaction.
Class materials
Slide presentation: Making 3 colors appear as 2, or appearing as a reverse ground
The second session of the Color Relationships class for Winter 2015 was held on Friday, January 16. We critiqued the solutions to the film illusion assignment (Create the illusion of a colored film over two or more colors), and had an introduction to veils. The new homework assignment is to create the illusion of one or more veils over a set of two or more colors, incorporating an actual veil (a piece of tracing paper or the like) into the study. Films and veils are two visual phenomena that help to unify and create emotion in a piece, intriguing the viewer and inviting their participation.
The second session of the Color Relationships class for Winter 2015 was held on Friday, January 16. We critiqued the solutions to the film illusion assignment (Create the illusion of a colored film over two or more colors), and had an introduction to veils. The new homework assignment is to create the illusion of one or more veils over a set of two or more colors, incorporating an actual veil (a piece of tracing paper or the like) into the study. Films and veils are two visual phenomena that help to unify and create emotion in a piece, intriguing the viewer and inviting their participation.
Homework assignment
The new homework assignment is to create an illusion of a veil, as detailed below. In addition, be on the lookout for examples of veils in daily life, in artwork or photos, in magazines or on the web, to share next week. WikiArt.org is a convenient place to look for images of paintings. Check stock photo sites, Flickr, Facebook, etc. for examples from life, or better yet, take your own photos!
Here’s an example of a past student’s solution to this exercise:
Class recap – some key ideas
Critique – illusion of a film
Homework solutions: Illusion of a film
Checking the illusion with a real film
The assignment was to create the illusion of a colored film over two or more colors. The students found doing it, both in Illustrator and in opaque paper, challenged them to observe very carefully and critically, and to think about what colors were needed to make it look right. During critique, Dick helped the class recognize for themselves where the illusions were consistent and where they were ambiguous, and how the contrast of a film over a light color is greater than when it is placed over a darker color.
Regarding the composition of the studies, Dick commented, “I wonder whether you’re putting too many girders on the bridge. Can you say more with less? I think back to Albers – ‘Simplify, simplify.’ The most eloquent way to say it is the simplest.” He asked the students whether a more opaque or a more transparent film was more aesthetically pleasing to them, and suggested the notion of “whisper”. You’ll need to experiment with variations to incorporate films into your visual vocabulary.
Why study films? While creating these film illusions is almost magical, and Dick has always loved magic, the importance of knowing how to recreate the visual phenomenon of films goes beyond artistic sleight of hand. Shadows behave exactly like films, so an artist who recognizes that can create realistic shadows and convey time of day. It’s especially easy for a watercolorist, who can glaze with a single shadow color throughout a work. This contributes to unity and realism in a work. Beyond that, though, films can be used to set a mood. During the Baroque period, artists were interested in conveying emotion and life the way we perceive it. They discovered that glazing over a whole painting with an amber glaze would unify it, and create a warm ambiance, like at sunset. A film can unite colors that otherwise have no relationship and make them relate. In Dick’s opinion, only a fraction of the current artist population has any visual literacy in films. “Nature is relationship” and visually illiterate artists don’t see or convey natural relationships.
Multiple film illusions created by a past student, demonstrating the impact of context – surrounding colors.
All of the colors in this piece are solid, opaque colors. On the left, it looks like we’re seeing a squarish magenta film over a pink background and a yellow circle, because we don’t see any pink coming through the yellow, the pink is darker and more saturated under the square shape, and the circle looks red. On the right, it looks like we’re seeing a similar squarish magenta film over an orange background and a green circle, because there is no hint of orange coming through the green, and the orange is redder in the square shape and the green is toned to almost gray.
When the left-hand pink flap is lifted, we see a white background with a magenta rectangle, a red semi-circle, and a yellow semi-circle. There is still a film illusion, but it is ambiguous whether the magenta or yellow is the film, or both are, because we can sense white showing through both, but the magenta seems more solid and the yellow more transparent. When the right-hand orange flap is lifted, we see a pale green-gray background with a red square on it, and what appears to be a round green film over both. Here, the rectangle reads unambiguously as opaque because we do not sense any pale green showing through it, and the round shape reads as a green film because the portion over the pale green background is darker and more saturated, and the portion over the red is darker and more neutral.
Because the top background flaps have holes cut in them the shape of the overlapping square and circle, we are actually looking at the exact same colors with the flap closed and with it open, very effectively demonstrating how relative our perception of color is.
Introducing veils
Dick said that if you understood the film assignment, the next, veils, will be a snap. He asked for observations of veils “here, now”. Some answers included clouds, atmosphere, sheer curtains, vog.
Observing a veil over a set of colors
A past student’s veil illusion
A wedding veil is a familiar example of a veil. Why do brides wear them? They partially obscure, creating mystery. It captures our imagination. We can’t help but wonder what’s behind the veil. As an artist, you don’t have to spell everything out for the viewer. If you leave something to their imagination, it involves them more; they participate in the experience of the painting.
Reverse print aloha shirts
Dick talked about “reverse print” aloha shirts as an example of how veils can unify. They are purposely constructed with the bright print on the inside and the more muted “back” side of the fabric on the outside. The tinting effect harmonizes all of the colors, unifying the design. Notice the muted appearance of the shirts in the screen shot to the right.
There’s more emotion in a work when everything is unified. Films and veils are two visual phenomena that help to unify and create emotion in a piece, intriguing the viewer and inviting their participation.
Class materials
Here is the presentation on veils. Notice the parallels to, and differences from, films.
Abstract versus representational: Do you have to choose? Nine artists explored their use of color, and discussed goals, difficulties, solutions, and ideas. Evidence mounts of increasing color awareness and sophistication.
The fifth color residual session was held on Saturday, May 31, 2014. Three guests and five regulars contributed to stimulating discussions between artists, sharing goals, difficulties, solutions, and ideas. Evidence mounts of increasing color awareness and sophistication.
Opening comments
To set the stage for the session, Dick shared a quote from educator Jerome Bruner on effective surprise. “When a work takes your breath away,” elicits an “Aha!” or “Wow!”, “for me, that is the measurement,” Dick said. The illustrations accompanying the quote demonstrate how knowledge of color relationships – color relativity – can create an “effective surprise.” The color of a narrow strip of flat color can appear to be different, depending on its background – here, a narrow gray strip on a light-to-dark gray background, and on a gradient from purple to green (complementary colors).
Several people shared their experiences with trying to apply the color relationships lessons in their work. Valerie described it dramatically as feeling like “jumping off an airplane with a parachute and a manual.” Bonnie, who has been painting all her life, agreed, saying, “You think you understand it intellectually, but it’s incredibly hard to apply…It’s easier to start by using it in non-representational art.”
Dick also mentioned that his colleague and friend, prolific Canadian artist Robert Genn, had recently died. Dick subscribes to his “Twice-Weekly Letters” sent to artists all around the world. Robert’s daughter Sara is continuing their publication. In her announcement of his death, she wrote, “Dad’s dream has been to reach artists of all stripes – individuals with a common joy, journeying in this life-enhancing, inexplicable affair of the heart. He wrote, ‘We have no other motivation than to give creative people an opportunity to share ideas and possibly broaden their capabilities – to get more joy and understanding from their own unique processes.’” These color residual sessions provide such an opportunity for a few people at a time on Maui, and I encourage anyone who seeks that kind of stimulation and fellowship to subscribe to the Twice-Weekly Letters that will continue to be sent.
Sharing and critique
As a prelude to the critique session, Dick shared some favorite thoughts about critique.
Valerie used Dick’s Illustrator experiments with transparent overlays of primary colors as the inspiration for her own layering experiments in watercolor. Questions about saturation falling off, both as the watercolor dries, and with viewing distance, led to discussions about balancing the quantities of colors (which color is the lead actor? which are the supporting cast?) and how artists can provide a rich experience for the viewer both close up and from a distance. Kit commented that John Singer Sargent wore a hole in the carpet in his studio between his easel and the other side of the room, and that one of Kit’s college professors had a “de-magnifying” glass to get a sense of how a piece would look from a distance. Dick said they are (or were) a commonly used tool in printing production.
Betty Hay also took inspiration from Dick’s experiments, as shared in greeting cards last time, choosing key colors for two new landscapes. In one, she pushed the chroma for more drama, and consciously echoed sky colors from the top in foreground vegetation highlights in the bottom. In the second, she explored the subtle magic of luminosity created through vanishing boundaries. Who would have thought that gray could be so beautiful? This reminded Dick of one of Josef Albers’ favorite assignments to students: “Take your least favorite / mud color, and make it sing.” Of the second painting, Dick said, “That sky is one of the most exciting ones I’ve ever seen. I’m especially pleased when these are not just lessons in color, when you begin to plug it in. I think, Betty Hay, that you’ve opened a very important door for yourself and for us.”
After exploring color interaction and shapes in abstract watercolor studies the past few sessions, Patt tried a representational work for this session. Everyone thought her still life of pears was very successful.
Kari wants to make the switch from representational work to abstract. She’s starting by zooming in and focusing on small areas of photos, rotating them, and making their origin unrecognizable. She’s interested in creating luminosity. Dick challenged her to select some parent colors outside of her typical color schemes.
Emily brought in two watercolors, where she was experimenting with bolder use of colors, and trying out abstraction.
Bonnie has been using abstract work to start applying her color relationships learning, and is now trying to work out the color lessons in a more realistic oil painting.
Chelsea brought in two landscapes and an abstract, all using the pastel cross-hatching technique that creates a shimmering, impressionist optical mixture.
Kit shared an unusual photo of a rainbow, which he’d posted on Facebook with this comment: “Here’s a phenomenon that I can’t recall having seen before – a rainbow formed near Makawao town today, but seemed to appear behind a grove of Eucalyptus trees, forming a colorful backdrop. More typically, it seems to me, rainbows appear in front of objects, rather than behind them. Whatever the case, it happened today just as seen here.”
Chelsea also brought in a children’s book, unique in that it uses transparent overlays of the true primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) to physically show how they mix. The book is The Adventures of the Three Colors, by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, originally printed in 1971 and reprinted in 1980 (the edition she showed us).
Closing thoughts
Abstract versus representational: Do you have to choose? These artists have found both useful and expressive.
