Monday, 30 January 2012
Some ideas on the characteristics of color
According to Kandinsky color can sound, smell ("scented colors"), taste, they can be rough or sticky, smooth or uniform, soft (e.g. rose madder) or hard and dry (e.g. cobalt green). "Generally speaking, color is a power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings".
The following lines expressed by Kandinsky made me think about my painting 'yellow pink and blue'..."The eye is strongly attracted by light, clear colors, and still more strongly attracted by those colors which are warm as well as clear... Keen lemon-yellow hurst the eye in time as a prolonged and shrill trumpet note the ear, and the gaver turns away to seek relief in blue and green. ... Yellow if steadily gazed at any geometrical form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the color an insistent, aggressive character.". Looking at my painting, the eye is invited and rests on the pink-red left hand side, disturbed and chocked by the lemon-yellow centre which overwhelms the whole painting partly due the large surface it covers, and finally obtains releif in the deep dark blue on the right.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Saturday, 26 November 2011
age old debate: disegno or colore (e.g. Michelangelo vs. Titian).
another debate: which is the essential element defining a form - its drawn shape or its color. It depends on the object. Our brains provide a structure and a simplicity in our understanding of the world around us which as a result leads to making all things recognisable by the simplest representational symbols. E.g. if a child draws the simplest form of a tree, despite coloring it read, I would say the shape rather than the color will define what it, or more correctly what we would understand it to represent. That is what I do in my paintings, a play on how the mind recognises and categorises everthing; the read tree is seen as a painting of nature, of a tree, the pink sky and etc. On the other hand if i paint a blue surface (see Blue Circle painting) and by chance use horizontal brush strokes, the mind will quickly pick it up as the sea, the horizon. I would say in this case, the element defining the object - or again more correctly what we would understand the painting to represent - is the color blue.
about the use color vs. representation of nature: 'a painter had better start from the colors on his palette than from the colors in nature', Van Gogh in freely admitting the artificiality in his art. one color I miss is the brightest of all whites, the deadly lead white now replaced with zinc and titian white...
an early utterance about complementary colors: 'there is a certain friendship about colors so that one joined with another gives dignity and grace' Leon Battista Alberti, Della Pintura (On Painting).
another debate: which is the essential element defining a form - its drawn shape or its color. It depends on the object. Our brains provide a structure and a simplicity in our understanding of the world around us which as a result leads to making all things recognisable by the simplest representational symbols. E.g. if a child draws the simplest form of a tree, despite coloring it read, I would say the shape rather than the color will define what it, or more correctly what we would understand it to represent. That is what I do in my paintings, a play on how the mind recognises and categorises everthing; the read tree is seen as a painting of nature, of a tree, the pink sky and etc. On the other hand if i paint a blue surface (see Blue Circle painting) and by chance use horizontal brush strokes, the mind will quickly pick it up as the sea, the horizon. I would say in this case, the element defining the object - or again more correctly what we would understand the painting to represent - is the color blue.
about the use color vs. representation of nature: 'a painter had better start from the colors on his palette than from the colors in nature', Van Gogh in freely admitting the artificiality in his art. one color I miss is the brightest of all whites, the deadly lead white now replaced with zinc and titian white...
an early utterance about complementary colors: 'there is a certain friendship about colors so that one joined with another gives dignity and grace' Leon Battista Alberti, Della Pintura (On Painting).
Cennino Cennini Il Libro dell' Arte (The Craftsman Handbook)
Central theme of the book is the use of color described as ' the glory of the profession'.
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