Six Painting Series for Color Theory: Part 6

Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground 6
Matthew D. Hughes
Gouache on Bristol
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
2011

Here it is, the final painting in my Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground series. This time around, I decided to try and work looser and more painterly than I normally work. If you've looked at my drawings, I normally work in a very controlled manner. Looking back on this painting, it is still quite controlled, yet it is a departure from my normal endeavors to achieve extreme realism. Much of the reason I chose to work so loosely was due to the time constraint I had on this work. If memory serves, I think I had about a day to get this one done. I think I did it in about 5 hours. Despite the time crunch and being the fastest of the six paintings I completed, this one is probably my favorite.


I believe the reason I like this one so much is that it has an interesting composition. A close up of the rungs of a slide ladder, there is a great sense of depth on display. Although not deep space, the forced perspective gives the sense that you're actually looking down as you get ready to scale this ladder. Additionally, the progressive rhythm of the repetition of the rungs further enhances that illusion of depth.

Something else I just noticed while looking at this painting as I typed the above analysis is that the textile pattern on the rungs also further unifies the composition. Although it is not a pure, formal pattern due to the areas of corrosion and paint chippings, this is still a good example of a regular pattern that is repeated throughout the composition.

Upon first look, this painting appears to be a great example of a warm/cool color contrast. Reds and blues are typically used in that since. However, there is that small area of yellow. Even though yellow is a warm color, and could further be argued that this is about warm and cool, since it is used so sparingly it becomes more about the contrast of extension.

In the contrast of extension, a small amount of color is used to add an area of emphasis or create a focal point. Here, I used the yellow to further draw your eye down in the composition. The contrast of extension can also be applied by using objects. Consider a black and white photo of a small group of people talking close together while an unengaged man is standing off to the side. The lone person becomes an area of emphasis because he is not a part of the group. Although he is a person and thus a repetition of a "shape", since this guy is out of place be becomes the point of our focus because our minds wants him to be grouped with the other shapes that he is akin to. Our minds work the same way with color. In this painting, we expect the colors to all be reds and blues because these hues dominate the composition. However, since that yellow is so drastically different from the rest, it stands out.

Six Painting Series for Color Theory: Part 5

Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground 5
Matthew D. Hughes
Gouache on Bristol
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
2011

One of the wonderful things about the medium of gouache is its versatility. In this painting, I used gouache much like one would use watercolors. By laying down multiple layers of translucent washes, I was able to achieve some areas of nuanced color. Take the underside of the slide, for example. Here, I used cooler colors to show that this area is in shadow. By layering blue and red-violet washes, you can see both colors working together to imply the coolness of the shade while also conveying differences in the planes of the surface.

For this painting, the assignment was to use Itten's principle of the contrast of saturation. In this color contrast, the point is to create areas of emphasis through using differing degrees of saturation. A color in its pure hue can be desaturated through mixing it with its compliment or by tinting (adding white), shading (adding black), or toning (adding black and white). By juxtaposing areas of saturated color (pure hue) with areas of desaturated color, contrasts are created. Sometimes, art work that is considered a contrast of saturation may have minimal areas of fully saturated color. These works often appear much more muted and nuanced.

Back to the Future

Now that summer has ended and the fall semester has begun, I have had the time to look back on how neglected this blog has been. At this point in my school career, I am a Junior, but this blog has only gotten as far as mid-fall semester of my Sophomore year.

In the days and weeks ahead, I plan on making some updates here in order to get caught up to "real time". At that point, I intend to begin posting on a regular basis. These posts that begin after the "catch-up" will be less formal. That is, not every post will feature a finished work of my art. Instead, my goal is to show works in progress as well as thoughts and musings on art and life.

As always, I welcome your feedback on all previous and upcoming posts. Additionally, if you have any ideas of things you'd like to see me cover or explore, I'm open to suggestions. I'm completely new to this blogging thing, so all ideas are welcome. I look forward to sharing with you my journey as an artist and as a person.

Cheers!
Matt

Six Painting Series for Color Theory: Part 4

Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground 4
Matthew D. Hughes
Gouache on Bristol
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
2011

This painting represents a stylistic turning point for my work.

During the 2011 Fall semester, I was taking an Art of Journaling class in addition to Color Theory. The Art of Journaling class was designed to develop one's skills at perceptually documenting experiences through sketching. Through this class, I discovered my love to work with hatching.

Hatching is a linear style of creating volume and value through the building up of parallel lines. Another style of linear modeling is cross-hatching where the lines are allowed to intersect. Similar to regular hatching is cross-contour hatching which also uses lines that run parallel to each other, but instead all the lines going the same direction, the line work follows the contours of the object they are describing. The regular, parallel hatching is the style which I have adopted for my own. Not only was hatching preferred by Renaissance artists for its ability to describe the volume of a subject rather than it's texture, but it is also a fast method to work with while sketching. This assignment required a linear application. Naturally, I gravitated to my new-found love of hatching.

This painting represents Johannes Itten's warm/cool color contrast. Compositions that are dominantly blue and red are typically warm/cool contrast. However, hues such as blue-green and red-orange can also demonstrate warm/cool contrast. The thing to remember about warm/cool contrast is that it must feel warm in some places and cool in other places. Warm areas will contain any of the hues from the warm side of the color wheel--yellow, yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, red, red-violet. Cool areas will contain any of the hues from the cool side of the color wheel--violet, blue-violet, blue, blue-green, green, yellow-green. This painting is a good example of warm/cool contrast because one can feel the heat of the areas that are hit by the direct light. Conversely, the areas that are in shadow actually feel cool, as if one can escape the heat by retreating to that shadow.

Six Painting Series from Color Theory: Part 3

Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground 3
Matthew D. Hughes
Gouache on Bristol
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
2011

Of the six paintings in the series, this is the one that took the longest. The reason for the it taking the longest should be self evident: pointillism. 

Yes, the required style for this assignment was pointillism. Although I personally like the optical effects that are achieved through the use of pointillism, this style is so tedious, monotonous, and time consuming that I have to question if the outcome is worth the  cost. The only reason I can see that would drive me to visit pointillism again in my artistic journey is if I were to come up with some completely original fantastic twist on the style that warranted re-exploration. Until that time comes, pointillism will continue to gather dust on my shelf of stylistic tools.

Ok, enough about pointillism. Let's talk color. For this composition, complementary color contrast was required. Johannes Itten's complementary contrast is probably the easiest to employ. This ease of use comes from the ability to choose any hue and then merely pair it with the hue that is directly opposite it on the color wheel. Therefore, Yellow-Green is paired with Red-Violet, Yellow with Violet, and Orange with Blue. As is the case in this painting, complementary contrast is not limited to the use of only two  complementary hues; there can be multiple complements in action.

Six Painting Series from Color Theory: Part 2

Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground 2
Matthew D. Hughes
Gouache on Bristol
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
2011

The second entry into my Playground series is an abstraction of a spring found on a teeter totter. The cubist abstraction was a stylistic requirement of the assignment. Prior to this painting, I have never worked with cubism before; my style of choice is normally realism. Designing a composition incorporating cubist elements was actually quite enjoying. Working in a different style that is more about abstraction can actually be quite liberating. Instead of being so preoccupied with correct proportion, I was able to work more intuitively.

Johannes Itten's theory of color contrast employed in this painting is Light/Dark Contrast. Through tinting, shading, and toning, contrast in color is achieved. Although I have created a light/dark contrast in a monochromatic (only one color used) painting, light/dark contrast can also be achieved in a polychromatic (multiple colors) painting.

Six Painting Series from Color Theory: Part 1

Mid-Twentieth Century American Playground 1
Matthew D. Hughes
Gouache on Bristol
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
2011

* Accepted into the Oklahoma Art Guild's Oklahoma Friendly art show.

Color is one of those subjects that one can learn all about in a short amount of time, yet it can take a lifetime to master its application.

In addition to creating the standard color wheels in class, we also had to paint a six-piece series to demonstrate our knowledge of Johannes Itten's color contrasts. The subject of these paintings was to be either a series of self-portraits or a series based on an object. Since I sometimes like to be different and push the boundaries of what my faculty will allow, I decided to view the term "object" in a  different light. I substituted the word "noun" for "object". Changing that term was liberating. Instead of being constrained to portray a singular object in different views and abstractions, I decided to use a singular object that is made up of other singular objects: a playground. This playground is close to my home and my son's favorite place to go play.

The assignment for this painting was to use Johannes Itten's Color Contrast of Hue. Contrast of Hue is when most of the colors in the composition are at spectral intensity (no desaturation through shading, tinting, toning, or mixing a color with its complement) which creates contrast. In addition to this required use of color, the style of the painting was required to be flat-match contrast. Therefore, volume had to be conveyed through areas of flat color instead of modeling.