Module 1 CHAPTER 6

COLOUR MATCHING

A more difficult return to my coursework after the New Year than I had anticipated, although Activity 1 will undoubtedly prove very useful in the future. After maybe not performing as well as could be expected in chapter 5, I decided to go a bit all out on the colour matching in Activity 1 and found I had thus completed some of the Extra Activity as a result.

6.1

I started off by finding various pictures with a range of colours to match. I decided to work with three pictures to get a good range of colours and also experiment as much as possible with this activity:

I cropped the image of the roots to get a good range of warm colours

These three images gave a full range of warm and cooler fruit/veg colours to work from including lots of shades and tones/tints.

Colour matching the images was a lot more consuming that I had expected, although I know I was probably being a little fastidious about it. The activity struck me as being one that would prove really very useful and I felt it was worth doing it as best as I possibly could.

I used watercolours throughout.

The roots

This gave me a range of warm tones to work with and I used paynes grey with some sepia to get the shades I was looking for. Had a bit of a crisis locating colours on the colour wheel and woke up one morning with a bit of a quandtry about where brown is located. So I hope you are happy with how I placed colours on the wheel.

My workings and colour wheel

I was satisfied with this colour matching.

The Berries

These provided a range of cool and acid greens and blue violets with a cooler pink. Bar the blackberries themselves I found the colours largely a straight mix of watercolours without adding back to make shades.

I'm afraid I lost the colour wheel for this exercise, but my matching papers are included in the last picture. I had a few problems with the berries as the ink on the photograph brushed off a little. Now that I look at my workings I can see that I did use quite a lot of black for making shades and that it was only the impression of the clarity of these colours compared with the roots made my feel they were 'un' shaded.

The Courgettes

Lovely clear yellows and greens with a little additional colour for the garlic and some warmth from the table. Alas I was so involved I forgot to take photos while I was matching this picture.

I think you can see from the wheel above that I had a few problems placing the garlic, not knowing quite how to describe the base colour for it.

All in all I had a good time with this activity.

7.2

I was expecting to really enjoy this activity but I think after working so intently on the first activity I found this a bit unsatisfying, however the colour papers made from the remaining colours was another thing altogether.....

The Roots

The Courgettes

I liked the range of colours in this pattern, I would find this useful to work from.

The Berries

It's interesting but when I look at this activity I find the berries pattern the most interesting as it has the most unexpected range of colours.

Extra Activity

As I wrote at the start of this chapter I found that I had already covered some of the things listed in the extra activity such as using different colours. When I looked at using complementary colours etc I found that these were generally covered by one of the other pictures I had chosen.

However I made some alternative patterns

Used the circular pattern as a base for a wash with the remaining colours for the courgettes (very little was left)...

... and I made some colour washes with the remaining paint from the berries and the root veg patterns.

First the berries

then the root veg

I was surprisingly taken with these colour washes I think primarily because they had been done with colour ranges that I wouldn't automatically have thought about when I was doing the chapter on coloured papers. However I think they work really well and show in a completely unexpected way the diversity of colours from those original three pictures.