Radical Impressionist: A Mathematician Paints

Quail Creek Fine Arts Club Workshop on the Color Wheel and Color Theory: Dec 3, 2015. 9-12 am at the Creative Arts and Technology Fine Arts Club at Quail Creek, Green Valley Arizona. by Karen Halbert, Artist, Mathematics Profesor, www.karenhalbert.com Description:  I ntroduction to the history of color and color theories and color wheel, using some examples from websites.  Hands-on exercises in mixing and simple color wheel construction.   You may preview the actual proposed contents of the workshop by going to the posts listed to the right on this blog: Workshop Contents, Color Wheel Revisited and Color Harmony (new) . Updates made after Nov 28  listed in the Updates post to the right or scroll down.  Topics and exercises covered will include: The Artist's Color Wheel.  Color in space: hue, value, chroma.  From Newton to RGB. Historic and contemporary artist palettes. Color Harmony.  Other artist's tools: Brief demonstrations -  additional color wheels, the

The Artist's Triadic Color Wheel: Brief discu ssion of th e terms on the color wheel as an introduction to the workshop .  We will return to the color wheel later. This workshop will use this triadic artist's color wheel methodology of primaries (as well as the Munsell Circle's)  See: David Briggs:   The Dimension of Color for a description of more fully developed, technically accurate systems.  Many color wheels: From Newton to RGB   Newton's Prism: 1665 Newton's Color Wheel (@1700) Munsell Color Space (@1900) Munsell Color Tree ================================ Digression: What is Color?:   Briggs' Spectrum For an in-depth discussion of Color: see  What is color?   I n summary:  As proposed by Young and Helmholtz   in the 19th century, the trichromatic theory held that three receptors sensitive to the parts of the spectrum seen as red, green and blue or violet generated funda

We will be using the triadic color wheel from the Color Wheel Company to illustrate color relationships. a good resource is the book, Color is Everything, by Dan Bartges, a book with thorough descriptions of this tool (I will have it in the workshop for you to peruse).  Triadic Color Wheel from the Color Wheel Company: Study of the Triadic Color Wheel. The color wheel provides 12 hues around the circle on each side  On the one side we can see the effects of mixing red, yellow and blue and white and black with each of the 12 hues by rotating the wheel. This side also has a value scale that can be matched up with each of the hues to identify the value of each hue. The second side shows the tint, tone and shade for each of the hues. Directions are provided for determining analogous colors, complementaries , split complements, triads and tetrads. We will be discussing these at length. For a preliminary website link with definitions see:  http://www.tigercolor.com/col

Color Harmony using the Triadic and the Munsell Color Wheels: Examples are taken from  Color Harmony by Margaret Kessler .   (In the workshop Go to my Kindle version of Kessler's book for examples of  color harmony using the Triadic  and  the Munsell Color Wheels.) Doug Higgins' Website   (time permitting)  Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory   ( I have an older version of Quiller's book.)    Doug Higgins:  www.dhfa.net . Doug Higgins, "Canal at Pena Blanca" Oil 20" x 24" "High key analogous colors were employed for the reflective surface of the water. The Yellow of the house out in the light is complemented by the Purple Blue of the mountain. The dark Reds in the shade and the Red chimney are complemented by the Green grasses."    and this one - one of my favorites, painted very near my home in Santa Fe: "Old Buckman Road" OIl 24" x 30"     In the Buckman Road exa

Preliminary Exercise (added): This is an example of color mixing with paints, beginning with primaries,  red, blue and yellow .  We will use this exercise as a basis for additional color mixing.  For the two  pastelists in the group, try to find pastel sticks that correspond with the colors on this color wheel. If you try to mix all the colors from 3 primaries (red, blue and yellow) , you might try using cross-hatching or appropriate blending to produce the secondaries and tertiaries (as indicated)..Or select 12 pastels that most correspond with these wheel colors. In the following example I use these acrylic colors: Modern Primary Triad: Hansa yellow (HY), Quinacridone Red (QR) and Phthalo Blue (PB)  but choose whatever Y,R,B triad you want for this experiment/exercise. Exercise.   The goal is to mix 12 colors from 3 primaries, red, blue and yellow. First mix the primaries to get secondaries, violet, green and orange.  Then mix these to get the indicated &