
And Color is what this class is all about. We'll be looking at color as it is used by several artists and learning to see more color in the world around us.
In last fall's class we discussed elements such as shape and composition and really stressed 'value'. Now we're going to dive into what I feel is the most exciting - COLOR!!
The first artist we'll be looking at is Stephen Quiller. And coincidentally, this artist lives in the mountains of Colorado and paints many snowy January-type scenes full of exciting color.
When he started painting he felt the first thing he was most interested in was technique - learning to handle the media. Then when he became more familiar with that he moved on to composition. Then to expression. In order to express his ideas he found that color became very important and he began to work with structured color schemes. And the more he worked with these the more exciting color became for him. And he realized that he was actually training his eye! He feels that the more the artist knows about color, the more personal the color can become.
And his wokshops are all about training the artist/student eye and leading them into seeing color in nature they may never have seen before. And applying the color more harmoniously into their paintings.
Haven taken Quiller's class, I grew exponentially in my sense of color and in understanding of its use. I'm hoping this will happen for you this year. Be sure to ask questions if you don't understand what we are working on. I'll lead us through the process with some exercises as well as some of your own original paintings.
This first week we'll be creating a color wheel. While this sounds like elemental stuff that you may already know I think you'll pick up some information that may be new to you. I know I did when I took Quiller's class - even with an extensive education in art.
Then we'll work with a monochromatic color scheme. The above painting was done in Quiller's class as an exercise in monochromes. While you may think of this scheme as only being one color plus black and white the definition of a color is actually very more encompassing than you might originally think. We'll be going into that in this class.
I'll post more about this after class meets so I can include any questions or discussion we have in class.