ECC Handouts

Make and abstract study of each of your previous color study drawings. This should only take one minute per drawing. Choose the abstract design you like best from one of the five drawings. Make you abstraction using rectangles, circles, ovals or free-form blobs. The shapes can overlap.

Then make a drawing using the same composition, but completely different subject matter. Draw from life. Use a still life you arranged yourself, or a collage of different photos you have assembled. You can use any color combination you choose. The colors should reflect the mood of your drawing.

Show me your sketch of the new composition before turning it into a detailed drawing.

Part 1. Draw a Still life in local color . Draw the actual colors of the objects. Touch at least three sides of the sheet of paper.

Part 2 Draw still life using analogous colors - any four color along side each other on the color wheel. Use the tints and shades of the four colors too.

DO NOT USE BLACK FOR THE SHADES. Use a dark blue or combination of dark colors.

Part 3. Make your own still life set up which you can carry back and forth to school. Draw the still life in pastels using a combination of split complementary colors and their tints and shades. Choose a color combination that projects a mood. See the handout for explanation of mood.

*Hint: Draw a value scale and draw the colors you plan to use alongside, matching dark colors with dark values, medium value colors with gray, and light and white values with the lightest colors and tints.

Part 4. Draw your still life using a triad color scheme. Along with the color scheme, use chiaroscuro to emphasize the central portion of your composition. Chiaroscuro is a value change which looks like a spotlight on the composition, light in the center, and slightly darker around the outer edges.

Part 5. Draw your still life using a tetrad color scheme. Use color intensity, complementary colors next to each other, and light and dark value contrast to set up a push and pull in space.

The color wheel system explained below is based on the traditional pigment mixing system using a subtractive approach. Since Sir Isaac Newton in the 1700’s physicists and color theorists have devised systems to explain hue relationships. Wilhelm Ostwald, Arthur Hoener and Albert Munsell each have come up with variations of color wheels and each seems to be correct depending on the situation. Joseph Albers did an intensive study and figured out that color is “relative”. In other words, color is not absolute and its effects will vary in direct relationship to the hues that surround it. Colors do not operate effectively unless 2 or more are used together.

We are surrounded by many different forms of invisible energy including radio waves, ultraviolet, infrared and X-rays. The visible spectrum is energy called electromagnetic radiation that wee see as light. All color is contained in light. Without light there is no color. Separate wave lengths and frequencies of light are identified as the individual hues of red, blue, yellow, orange, violet and green. Pure light appears invisible because each of the individual hues in light will balance and cancel the effect on any single hue. When all the hues are balanced, they are referred to as white light.

You have probably seen experiments where a ray of white light is passed through a prism. The wavelength of light separated into individual hues. A similar phenomenon occurs when the light refracted through falling rain creates a rainbow. Color TV, film and photography deal with refracted light and the method of mixing is called “additive”. In the additive approach to color mixing the balanced addition of other colors will lighten the mixture until eventually a white is achieved. Painter work with reflected light which bounces off the surface of objects. Using a grapefruit for illustration, imagine that a stream of light his the surface. In the grapefruit’s surface a substance called “pigment´ will absorb some wavelengths of light and reflect others. The pigment in the grapefruit absorbs red, blue, green, etc. and reflects only yellow. Paint or colored pencils contain pigments that approximate the particular wavelengths or colors seen in refracted light. Mixing pigments is a “subtractive” approach because the addition of other pigments will progressively reduce or subtract the energy of the light seen.

Black, white and grays are referred to as “neutrals” or achromatic values”. White is a balanced combination of all the hues. Black is the absence or total absorption of light. Grays are essentially impure whites. Grays have a balanced combination of all light wavelengths but the amount of light is reduced.

What are three basic controls of color? To adequately describe color, three things must be understood. The three controls are called the attributes of color. HUE VALUE INTENSITY.

HUE this control refers to the specific name given to each wavelength of light, location and relationship on the color wheel and whether it is seen as warm or cool.

2. Value - Each hue reflects light. Chromatic value refers to how light or dark a particular hue

seems to be. Achromatic values are black, white and grays. Some hues seem lighter or darker and the following chart gives you an indication of the relative reflective characteristics of chromatic values when compared to achromatic values.

By adding white to a hue you will increase the amount of light reflected from a surface because you will be seeing white plus the color. The addition of white to a hue is called a TINT. To decrease the amount of light reflected from a hue, you would add black or a darker gray creating a SHADE of that color. The effects you have learned about the use of lighter or darker achromatic value also applies to the use of chromatic value.

INTENSITY - refers to the brightness or dullness of a particular wavelength of a hue. The pure hues on the color wheel are the most intense that they can be, in other words the brightest. In the case of yellow and violet, if taken directly from the color wheel, they will be of equal intensity. Both hues are reflecting as much of their single wavelength of light as possible. The value of each hue is different because the yellow is a light value and the violet is a dark value.

Actual changes: These are real changes that occur when hues are physically mixed.
1. Adding a neutral to a hue will tint or shade the hue and this reduces the intensity. You will be seeing the hue plus black or white so it will lack purity.

2. Adding a complementary will dull a hue because it is similar to adding gray to the hue. This occurs because mixing complementary hues is equivalent to mixing all the primaries together.

1. Putting complementary hues next to each other seems to intensify each hue and sharpens the edge between them. Analogous relationships tend to dull each color and blur the edges of each.

2. Warm/cool contrasts will increase the intensity of each hue partially because it is a dark/light relationship.
3. If hues are placed next to a neutral that is opposite in value the intensity will seem to increase. If the values are similar between the neutral that is opposite in value the intensity will seem to increase. If the values are similar between the neutral and the hue the intensity will not seem as bright. A yellow on a black background will seem more intense than a yellow on a white background.

SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY -A split complementary will include 3 hues. The example shown above is red plus blue-green and yellow-green. Another example would be yellow plus red-violet. Split complementary relationships have about the same power to vibrate and sharpen edges as pure complementary relationships but they display more variety.

TRIAD SCHEMES -When 3 hues form an equilateral triangle on a 12 point color wheel you will have a triad relationship. This produces a contrasty, bolder more exciting quality in the composition. The boldest triad will the 3 primaries of red, blue and yellow.

TETRAD SCHEMES When 4 hues are an equal distance from each other on a 12 point color wheel a tetrad relationship will be formed. In a tetrad scheme the four hues will produce 2 pairs of complementaries and this leads to maximum contrasts in a harmonious and varied relationship.

Keep in mind that colors interact and the visual effects will be altered as you change relationships and variables. The variables with color pencils include the brand of pencil and the apparent waxiness, color and surface texture of the paper, techniques used in the application of strokes and pressure used to effect opaqueness or transparency.

a. Volume: Shading techniques can be used to give objects a three dimensional appearance. Chiaroscuro can be produced using different values of color to gradually indicate that a round surface is turning away from the light source. The effects can be created with pure hues that get lighter or with the aid of tints and shades. Abrupt changes in hue, value or intensity can be used to show angular volumes.

b. Push/Pull: Lower intensities, low contrast and darker valued hues generally tend to push back the space while high intensity, extreme contrasts and light valued hues generally tend to pull space forward. Remember that other factors such as overlapping may interfere with or enhance these effects.

3. ATTENTION; High intensity, light values and extreme contrasts help to grab attention. The opposite tends to minimize the amount of attention a color attracts. Size of the colored area and sharpness of edge are important and may have a substantial effect on the amount of attention that is attracted.

4. MOOD: The artist can set a mood by altering the value or intensity of a hue. High intensity hues seem strong and bold giving an exciting feeling. A adding tints to hues may soften their effect and produce a peaceful feeling. Warm and cool hues will obviously create associations with temperature. Each society may have cultural associations with color that can be exploited to set a mood. He has a yellow streak, they were green with envy, she saw red or I’m blue are some of the common sayings that illustrate these associations. The associations may not have universal application because not all societies will think in the same way. The ‘convention’ used to combine hues will often help to make an artwork aesthetically pleasing but often acceptance of these relationships changes as societies evolve.

5. MOVEMENT; Selective patterns within a field will draw and lead the viewers eyes around the field. Gradual changes in hue or value are the types of transitions that our eyes tend to follow. Overall pattern creates “Gestalts” and tends to unify the field.

(Special thanks to the Art Foundations Department at NIU for this color summary)

Look at paintings by Abstract Expressionists such as Willem DeKooning, Han Hoffmann, Abstractionist, Vassily Kandinsky. Make a full-page abstract drawing, using color shapes to show layers in front of one another. The warm colors should appear to be in front of cooler colors.

Notice that dark values of the colors make a layer appear to recede when placed next to lighter value colors.


Willem De Kooning

Vassily Kandinsky

Hans Hoffmann

Three factors have a part in drawing shadows: Source of light, direction of light, angle of light

Source of light Natural light gives parallel rays. Artificial light gives radiating rays.

Direction of light determines the direction in which shadows fall. When the source of light is to one side, shadows are cast to the opposite side. With light at your back, shadows fall away from you. When you look into the light, shadows are cast toward you.

Angle of light determines the length of shadows. A high source of light creates short shadows, low light produces long shadows.

Part 2.Draw a house in one or two point perspective. Repeat the drawing two more times and draw the shadows it casts with light coming from three different directions; from the right side, from the back of the picture plane, and from behind the viewer.

Part 3. There will be a still life set up in class with scattered light coming from a lamp. Draw the shadows from observation.

The ancient Greeks and the artists of the Renaissance found that certain proportions were visually pleasing. The Golden Mean is actually the ratio 1 to 6/10, and is found in the proportions of the human body and other organisms such as plants and mollusks. Fibonacci, the mathematician, expressed the proportion in progressions: 1 + 1 = 2, 1+2= 3, 2+3 =5, 3 +5 = 8, and so on. The progression involves adding the last two numbers together.

The simplest use of the Divine Proportion is placing the focal point of a composition two thirds down on a rectangle and two thirds across. Placing the focal point on these spots guarantees a pleasing composition.

Research the Golden Section on the Web or in books at the library and then make a drawing about the Golden Section, using the Golden Section.

Make a book, any size, preferably 9 x 12 inches or larger, in mixed media (at least three media)., with a minimum of eight pages, (I hope you make more.) using any variety of paper, colors, and drawing techniques.

The book must have a subject or theme. It can have text. It can have narrative. It can be a poem. It can simply be pictorial. All your design decisions should flow from the theme of your book.

I will demonstrate several methods of bookbinding. You may use a picture album and alter the cover. You may use good watercolor paper and sew the pages together, or poke holes in the paper and insert key rings, or take the pages to Kinko’s and have a spiral binder hold it together. You may want to glue the pages inside an already existing book, or fill a photo album.

Theme, imagery, consistency of materials, unity of mark-making,
Formal design concepts used