Friday, May 30, 2014

Solving Problems

Painting is all about solving problems. This assignment is the perfect example of that.

I recently finished another optical mixing assignment - a self-portrait, as you can see. I first had to paint a monochromatic version of the self-portrait to get the drawing and values right...otherwise, it would be a lot more difficult when I started adding the dots. (When I painted the pumpkins/gourds for a previous optical mixing assignment I wasn't diligent in making the shapes and values accurate before I started adding the dots so I had to adjust the drawing and value with the dots as I went. That was very time consuming and difficult).

I chose to paint myself in green because I discovered from my last two optically mixed paintings (I don't have a decent picture of the second assignment so I haven't posted it - I will sometime) that green was the color I had to keep adding. It's a valuable color because it has yellow in it and it's tricky adding yellow to the dark sections of the painting because yellow is light in value. So by adding green, you are adding yellow and I can cancel out the green by adding red (because it's the opposite of green and when combined evenly it makes gray).

As I painted I would step back and assess the painting, deciding which color it needed. At times the skin was too orange. The opposite of orange is blue so I'd add some blue dots...then it would sometimes feel purple. The opposite of purple is yellow so I'd try to add yellow. Or I'd add green because it has yellow in it. I could cover some of the blue dots with green and that might solve the problem.

It was a challenge to keep the drawing accurate while adding the dots. I think the original green painting looks more like me than the completed one, but the assignment was about color so I'm satisfied. I have learned a lot from optical mixing.

By the way, I was pleased to find that the green self-portrait only took me 45 hours, which is a long time, but considerably faster than the previous self-portraits I've done (hooray!). It took an additional 25 hours to get all those dots right.