Lesson 5: Tell me again why are we doing this exercise? ~michellechoongkhoo

April Fool's Day, 2010 saw our group laughing and (I speak for myself ) fumbling with the technicalities of getting the color shades right… complementary, split complementary, achromatic monochromatic, analogous/harmony, tetrad,triad, tint and lowkey…..oooohh, all the terms and squinting to get the right shades from my color wheel was causing my poor head to throb ….

One hour into the exercise , this is a shot of my classmates diligently working on their respective color wheels while I just had to take a breather to get away from the headache~

I heard Shairin piping aloud for the 2nd time…."errr, someone pls tell me again WHY are we doing this exercise" …and with that everyone just burst out laughing!!!.

Just to be on the safe side, I just had to ask Ms Shia whether she was pulling an April Fool's joke on us, hahaha.

This is my takeaway on lessons 4 & 5 on the color wheel/tonal scales :

primary colors : are yellow, red and blue. They are so called because all other colors can be derived from mixing them.

secondary colors : are orange , violet and green derived from mixing 2 primary colors with equal intensity e.g yellow and red produces orange

tertiary colors : are the different shadings of primary colors mixed with different intensities of another color e.g less yellow and more red produces dark REDorange, while more yellow and less red, produces YELLOWorange.

Every color has a complementary color that lies opposite in the color wheel.
e.g the complementary color of Yellow is Violet , the complementary of orange is blue etc as per above chart.

And today's exercise was to see the effects of a color (in my case, I chose orange) when we put it next to its:

a) complementary (blue) generates a vivid contrast

b) split complementary (one shade up and down of blue),

c) tetrad :combo 1 (4 shades up from orange , 4 shades down from blue)

:combo 2 ( 2 shades dowm from orange , 2 shades up from blue)

:combo 3 ( 2 shades up from orange , 2 shades down from blue)
B&C, generates various cool or warm contrasts

d) triad : 2 shades away from both orange and blue, generates a fresh effect

e) tinting of all the triad colors, a pale effect

f) mixing of all the triad colors, a dull effect

Summary from my book sounds logical because I can see the effects as we went thru it :

same tones of color next to its complementary will exite it to its maximum vividness yet if the complementary is mixed into the color, it will be reduced to a brown or dull effect.

But I'm guessing lots of practise will be required before all can sink in fully... before I can thoroughly understand the effects of mixing the different combos and can judge how to apply the tonal scale values !!!
Hopefully, by the time, we actually get to dab our brushes into the watercolors, I may get a clearer picture.

Art lessons still fun for me? You BET~ smile

links abt color spectrum
links abt primaries & secondaries
links abt printer's primary CMY