museum faves

field trip

Just a reminder that we'll meet Friday at 4 pm in front of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's 8th and G street entrance. The closest metro stop is at Gallery place/Chinatown on the red and green lines. Bring your sketchbooks to record your thoughts observations.
See you then!

color systems

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This week we examined a range of color systems. We looked at monochromatic, complementary, triadic, analogous, vibrating, and melting systems as well as our chance palettes and intuitive systems.  We created four camouflage pieces utilizing these systems.  The results thus far are varied although incomplete. Pictured here are Kimmie's intuitive palette, Ryan's chance palette, Denika's complementary palette, and Christina's triadic palette.

At the edge of color

Today we looked at our compositions which approached black and white, the edges of value. Each composition consisted of at least 12 stripes. The first composition was formed from 12 variations of shades that push to the edge of color, almost becoming black. The second composition pushes tints of colors to the lightest edge before becoming white. We documented our tints and shades on a separate sheet of paper. The results were exciting and subtle. Pictured here are some of our works. The dark composition is by Christina Fullwood. The light composition is by Denika Robison. Other artists who have worked in this vein include Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Ryman.

Just a reminder, for Friday you need to document the colors you see at specific times of day on a grid of at least 8 sections. You need to do two observations during your time period. These observations will be used as the basis for next Wednesday's experiment.

12 am-1:59 am: Ceid; 2 am-3:59am: Stan; 4am-6:59am: Tim; 7am-9:59am: Pat; 10am-12:59pm: Christina; 1pm-3:59pm: Ryan; 4pm-6:59pm: Kimmie; 7pm-9:59pm: Denika; 10pm-11:59pm: Sean.

See you Friday!

If by chance...

After reading about and discussing John Cage's ideas on chance, we worked with our own chance encounter, creating chance color wheels. The range of colors generated by our group ran from bold, flaming hues to subtle delicate washes. After randomly pulling new colors out of a bag, we systematically arranged them around color circles. The results were an exciting brew of new color combinations, many of which we may have never initiated on purpose. Pictured here are Pat Yinkey's and Tim Lambert's chance wheels. This week, we are using colors from our chance wheels for a new composition. We await the results. To read more on John Cage, check some of these links. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-cage/about-the-composer/471/
http://ronsen.org/cagelinks.html
To see interviews and performances, YouTube has a good selection.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=john+cage&search_type=&aq=f

Kind of Blue

Today we discussed associations and symbolism of the color blue. We uncovered some interesting, and even paradoxical ideas connected with blue and looked at some works by artists that use blue in dynamic, suggestive, and powerful ways.

Works viewed include James Turrell's Daygo, 1990; Islamic tilework from Isfahan; Do Ho Suh's Reflection, 2004 (shown at left); Joseph Cornell's Tilly Losch, ca 1935, Yves Klein's work with International Klein Blue, Hiroyuki Shindo's installation, Shindigo Space 07, 2006; the quilts of Lutisha Pettway and Annie Mae Young; and Anne Hamilton's Indigo Blue project. The SFMOMA created a terrific website about this piece and we looked at and discussed the short videos. Check it out at http://www.sfmoma.org/msoma/artists/hamilton.html

In class, we worked on compositions in which we divided our board in to six quadrants and created blue lines in each quadrant where each line was a variation in hue, saturation, and value of the color blue. No two blues were the same. Each quadrant became a color study in the relationship of these variations.

For homework, we are completing our line work studies and will examine them at the start of the next class. We are also preparing camouflage patterns to use in a series of four color studies next week. Those that did not turn in their responses to the reading Blue Tigers by Jorge Luis Borges may do so on Wednesday.

Enjoy the weekend!