Author: saravipond

The brief for our Unit 3 final assignment is to make a painting from our own experience which is important to us, using colors from a complementary scale. Complementary colors enhance each other’s intensity when placed right next to each other. Conversely they cancel each other out when mixed together which results in a wide range of brown/grey hues in a complementary color scale.

I experimented with a couple of complementary scales and wasn’t too keen on the red/green scale nor the blue/orange scale (there are multiple others as long as you pick opposite sides of the color wheel) so in the end I chose the yellow violet scale. I felt that the yellow was the brightest color on the wheel and the violet is quite a dark hue so this scale could give me a lot of options. Color theory tells us that yellow is a very dominant color compared to violet and for a balanced composition the ratio of yellow to violet would be 1:3. I’m not sure that I particularly want to create a balanced composition – but it’s good to know never the less. The tricky part again is choosing the subject. I cast around what I can see around me, what I have seen in the past – blasting through 20 years of digital photo albums for something that I felt inspired by.

In the course of going through our digital photographs I came across this one – which was a very high resolution scan of a painting which is very familiar to me. Ever since I can remember this painting was hanging on the wall in our home. My mum’s best friend Thelma emigrated to Australia before I was born and they strayed in constant touch throughout their lives. Thelma sent this painting back to my mum called Lemon Tree in Kelly’s Back Yard and it was a touchstone that allowed my mum to picture Thelma’s life in Australia. It was pretty much the only artwork we had in our house. I inherited it when my mum died and it has hung on our wall for twenty years and more. I had a strong suspicion that it wouldn’t match the specific criteria for the project – even though it is something I have seen most days for 60 plus years – and checking with Elizabeth my suspicions were confirmed – a project for another day, much the same as my other project which I was looking to produce for our primary assignment in unit 2.

our first exercise in unit 2 involves creating a color wheel. We have 5 colors to use: white and black from before, plus phthalo blue, hansa light yellow & quinacridone magenta.

This is what the final product should look like. The wheel shows the three primary colors, red blue and yellow, and three secondary colors green orange and violet, plus another six tertiary colors which each sit between the primary and the tertiary colors. We need to mix the paints we have to get as close as we can to the small swatches of the sample colors we were provided with.

Of the 12 colors at the first attempt (which took about 5 hours or so) I was reasonably happy with the red, orange and yellow ranges, plus violet, but I clearly need to work on the blues and greens more. In class Elizabeth pointed out that my basic blue was too dark and did not “pop” so I had to start again with that color, as it would upset the balance of the whole wheel. Spent quite a long time trying to nail the yellow green and I believe I have got a decent approximation now.

I worked on the basic blue and am much more satisfied with it now and was also able to complete the greens.

This is my web page for FIN 120 – Painting and Color Perception

I am looking forward to this course, though with a degree of trepidation. To date I have completed 10 units of Fine Arts courses as part of my journey to my Associate of Arts, but of those 10, only two courses – FIN 110,Drawing and 2D language and FIN 140 Creative Process, both in 2019, challenged me to make physical marks on paper, many of the other courses were digital format, which I found myself more comfortable with. I find myself now enrolled in the Fine Art Diploma program, which I’m sure would be a great shock to my school art teacher in 1966, Mr. Hussein, who took the charcoal out of my hand when trying to visualize Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poem “Xanadu” which had left me bemused, and suggested that art was not the course for me. Sarah Vipond persuaded me otherwise and I shall always be grateful to her for that.

It was interesting to learn that our first unit of this course in “Color” perception involved the use of black and white paints only, but we learned that the purpose of this was to get a greater understanding of the concept of “value” and also to become comfortable with expressive mark making. Our first assignment related to value and abstraction. We made a series of marks on paper, one with a white back ground and another with a dark background. These building blocks were to be taken forward to create a collage.

Above are the three building blocks. I managed to misunderstand the instructions, which were to make two cropped details and mount them separately on a piece of white paper. One of the studio examples I seem to recall showed the cropped details incorporated into the final collage and this is what I did. I need to be less hasty and reflect more on what is required and how to achieve it. We were also to take other strips from our source material and incorporate them in our collage. I was quite happy with my cropped details, but struggled a little to see how to incorporate them well into a collage.

Here are the two cropped sections, I liked the way the drips of very dilute paint left only the outline of their presence and also in contrast to the organic drips the other section was much more jagged

So here is the completed collage. During the critique everyone was very kind, as they always are in fine art critique, finding positive things to say, and I particularly liked Pam’s thoughtful comment that the completed piece was a little violent, which was not my intention, though in retrospect I think my mark making tends to comprise quick short strokes and I think that comes through in my self portrait as well.

For the final assignment I plan on creating a street scene incorporating one point perspective. I plan to draw the scene and then transfer the images to cardstock or possibly a stencil to then collage the image. The reflected scene below was my final project for FIN100 using a stencil. I may possibly incorporate some stamps in the collage. I’m going to experiment with some ink and other media to create the sky and may make the whole drawing into a 3D image. You have asked for a series of planning sketches but I find it hard to work that way, Below is a gallery of images to give some sense of what I am aiming at

OK so I have an outline now – need to start figuring out colors and materials for collaging

starting to take shape now and I’m pretty excited

Trying to incorporate atmospheric perspective as well as linear perspective by collaging foreground darkest to background lightest and using a light color to indicate sunlit side of buildings. I thought about collaging the sky but will explore using ink or watercolor

First time working with watercolor – will take a risk and apply direct to the drawing. First have to remove the temporary collaging though….

now lets get the collage back

Now to add a few more lines to add to the linear perspective

and throw in some fun elements and different media. The cat looking out of the window viewed from behind is a reference to the mid term drawing looking out and looking in. The graffiti and Banksy is a reference to last terms art history project. The Edward Hopper is just one of my favorite paintings, the vine is using another medium – this time felt tips – and what’s a city street without a taxi?