Trihue Watercolor, Week 6

The sixth sessions of the Trihue Watercolor class for Winter 2018 were held on Wednesday, February 21 and Sunday, March 11. The white light homework was critiqued. The new topic for this week is colored light. Dick gave a demo of colored light shining on white paper and on an arrangement of different colors and values. Colored light and shadow work to unify a scene, because all colors are affected equally. Shadow colors are the complement of the light color, plus black (because all light contains a lot of white light) and any ambient light (outside, the blue of the sky). Sunset provides an opportunity to observe this phenomenon, with amber light and rich blue-green shadows. For more detail, be sure to read the post linked to in the “Other resources” section.

Color Relationships 2, Fall 2016 week 2

The second session of the Color Relationships 2 class for Fall 2016 was held on Wednesday, September 7. We critiqued the homework (Create the illusion of a colored film over two or more colors), and discussed the next visual phenomena: veils. What are their characteristics, where do you see them in nature, and why would an artist choose to use them in their work? See the full post for class photos, videos, and more.

Color Relationships 2, Fall 2016 week 1

The first session of the Color Relationships 2 class for Fall 2016 was held on Wednesday, August 31. A group of 10 students met to continue their ongoing study of color, its appearance in the visual world, and how to re-create these phenomena through an understanding of color relationships. In this first session, the class went through a review of Color 1 lessons, a study of films and how they modify other colors, and discussed their first assignment. Please see the full post for class materials, including videos and slide presentations.

Drawing Foundation 2015 week 8

The eighth session of the Drawing Foundation class for Fall 2015 was held on Thursday, November 5. We covered a lot in the class, including: more lessons learned from the index cards; the importance of pride in your work; the subtleties between literal interpretation versus artistic interpretation; a drawing by the great Michelangelo; figure-ground combinations and reversals; and much more. Read on for the full class review.

Drawing Foundation 2015 week 7

The seventh session of the Drawing Foundation class for Fall 2015 was held on Thursday, October 29. We discussed the importance of visual clues and how that contributes to visual literacy; what does it mean when we say art is ‘stylized’; the variation of personality found in line quality; and the new challenges in drawing a complex object (in this case, a plant).

Color Relationships 2, 2015 week 1

The first session of the Winter 2015 Color Relationships class was held on Friday, January 9. This series of lessons will address the visual phenomena of films, veils, volume color, white light, and colored light. We will explore how we perceive these phenomena, and what strategies we must develop in order to recreate them in our media. We reviewed concepts of arrays and halation that were fundamental to Color Relationships 1, held in the fall of 2014. Then the class was challenged to create an illusion of a black film, using only swatches of opaque gray. The solution was given and discussed, and a new challenge assigned for homework: Create the illusion of a colored film over two or more colors.