New Series: How do you feel?

Bubbling with Joy by April M Rimpo

Bubbling with Joy

Watercolor on Yupo

Varnished

12" X 12" Brushed Silver Frame

$375

Effervescent by April M Rimpo

Available for Purchase

Effervescent

Watercolor on Yupo

Varnished

12" X 12" Brushed Silver Frame

$375

Available for Purchase

United (diptych)

Watercolor on Yupo

Two 18" X 12" paintings in

24" X 18" Gold Metal Frames

$1125 for diptych

Available for Purchase Now

Contact April if you are interested in purchasing separately ($625 each)

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Fanciful" 20" X 16" fluid acrylic

Fanciful by April M Rimpo 

Fanciful

Fluid Acrylic

20" X 16" painting

27.5" X 23.5" framed with white mat

Available at HorseSpirit Arts Gallery

Phone: 410-461-4505
Email: info@HorseSpiritArtsGallery.com 
Open: Open 6 days a week, check their website for hours

Everywhere you turn in the center of Brussels, Belgium are pinnacles, spires, amazing carvings and building facades. This particular set of spires makes me think of the castle in Disneyland and wonder what was the inspiration for that castle when it was designed. 

There was something about the juxtaposition of these apparently older buildings with more modern structures with nothing but squared or corners and deep-set windows. Perhaps if all of the buildings brandished spires they would become less special and the fantasy will diminish.  All I know is they were dreamy to me and just needed to be recreated for you through my eyes. 

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

Result of "Windows" Color Theory Survey

Windows by April M Rimpo

You may recall my post from April 1st where I first showed my painting "Windows" and described how colors can impact how we perceive the emotions conveyed by an image. The original post is here. I've repeated the image of "Windows" here and the numbering scheme used to collect responses.

To identify each image I used this numbering scheme: Left column is identified as L#, where the image # is 1 to 5 counting from top to bottom.  Similarly, an image on the right would be R#, where # is 1 to 5 from top to bottom. For example the man's eyes on the upper left would be L1.  His companion painting is in the middle on the right and would be labeled R3.

Here are the questions I asked in the survey along with the answers I received from about 20 people. Not statistically significant but enough to look for trends. The number in parentheses preceding and answer is the number of people who gave that answer.

Which image feels

1. most serious or intelligent?
   (2)L2, (4)L3, (2)L5, (4)R2, (3)R3, (1)R4, (5)R5
2. most joyous and full of wisdom?
   (13)L1, (5)R3, (1)R4
3. most self-sufficient, alive and confident?
   (1)L2, (3)L3, (1)L4, (1)R1, (1)R2, (1)R3, (5)R4, (5)R5
4. most peaceful with inner strength?
   (1)L1, (3)L2, (4)L4, (2)R1, (2)R2, R3, (2)R4
5. saddest?
   (4)L2, (5)L3, (1)L4, (3)R1, (1)R4, (1)R5 

Below are the color theories I researched and the emotions they said are associated with each color. Let's see how the answers to the survey relate.

Serious and Intelligence - Per Color Wheel/Color Theory bright blue & indigo are closely associated. However yellow is also associated with intellect and Kadinsky says orange correlates with being serious. This question received a large variety of answers with  L3, R2 & R5 receiving 4 or 5 votes. L3 matches the blue theory, R2 corresponds with the yellow and orange concepts. I suspect R5 was influenced more by the expression than the color. Two of the other answers given also had a lot of yellow. The other two answer given were more pink/red which can be associated with strength and determination which may be associated with being serious.

Joyous and full of Wisdom - Received 13 votes for L1. Per color theory yellow is associated with joy and happiness while gold adds the wisdom component, so the L1 answer definitely matches color theory. R4 also received one vote and this image also have a yellow/golden appearance. R3 received 5 votes; it is significantly red which matches Kadinsky's association of red with joy. Violet and bright blue can also be associated with wisdom, but none of the images have a lot of violet and the expression in L3 is not happy so that is likely why it was not selected.

Self-sufficient, Alive and Confident are attributes of red according to Kadinsky. Independence is similar in concept and is associated with violet according to color theory. This question received a wide variety of answers with R4 and R5 each receiving 5 votes.  Although several images are very pink, R5 does have the strongest red. The eyes in R4 are very violet in color and may have resulted in the large number of votes for this image. L3 was the next most voted answer with 3 votes and per color theory bright blue is associated with confidence.

Peaceful with Inner Strength - According to Kadinsky these are most associated with bright blue and green. Color theory associates blue with tranquility and calmness and specifically olive green with peace.  L4 received the most votes (4) has a lot of olive green accenting the eyes and nose. It is interesting to note that although L3 is all blue, it received no votes, but again the expression is more intense and does not communicate peacefulness. L2 received 3 votes even though it has neither blue or green. I'm guessing the expression has more to do with why this image received these votes.

Sadness was addressed by Kadinsky, who said violet invokes sadness. It was interesting that L3 received five votes, the highest number of votes. Color theory cannot justify that response as none of the emotions associate with blue relate to sadness. L2 received 4 votes and R1 received 3 votes. They both have some violet near the eyes and in the shadows by the nose.  R5 received 1 vote and has pale lavendar in the shadows around the eyes. Lastly R4, which has violet eyes and a violet shadow by the nose also received one vote.  L4 received one vote even though it has no violet. L4 does have brown, which corresponds to dull and inhibited which perhaps was seen as sadess. It is interesting to me that L1, R2 and R3 contain no violet and received no votes. So although violet was not a prevalent color in any of the images, it was present to small amounts and did seem to track with many of the answers provided.

It's interesting to me that in many cases the votes could be traced to the emotion suggested by either Kadinsky or color theory. However, the only emotion that was strongly correlated was "Joyous and full of Wisdom", where nearly 70% selected L1 and 26% selected R4, where a golden glow was prevalent in both images.

Many thanks to those who participated by answering my survey.*

Color	Kadinsky Color Emotion	Color Wheel/ Color Theory
Bright Blue	Peaceful,deep and supernatural	Tranquility, understanding, and calmness It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.
Red	Restless, glowing, alive and confident, joy, energy and triumph	energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.
Indigo	deep and supernatural	knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.
Yellow	warm, exciting, disturbing or madness	joy, happiness, intellect, and energy
Orange	radiant, serious, healthy	Dark orange can mean deceit and distrust. Red-orange corresponds to desire, sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression, and thirst for action. Gold evokes the feeling of prestige. The meaning of gold is illumination, wisdom, and wealth. Gold often symbolizes high quality.
Violet	morbid, extinguished […] sad	wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic, Light purple:romantic and nostalgic feelings
Green	peaceful with inner strength, stillness, passive, The absolute absence of movement, is good for tired people, but after the rest the feeling of calmness can become boring	Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, and jealousy. Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy. Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection. Olive green is the traditional color of peace.
Brown	dull, hard, inhibited, mix of red and black

* For those of you wondering why the "Most Tired" question, included in my previous blog, is not discussed here, that is because I brought the survey questions with me to two receptions where the painting was on exhibit and due to my oversight I left off the Tired question. As a result there simply weren't enough respondents who answered that question to include it in the results. 

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo 2015 All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Windows" 19.75" X 13.75" fluid acrylic

Some say our eyes are the windows to our soul, and thus the title of this painting is Windows. My goal with windows is to see whether the emotions associated with particular colors actually impact how am image is interpreted. So here you see two paintings of 5 pairs of eyes. Each is in a unique color scheme. 

Some are done in monotonic schemes where a single color is used at different strengths or mixed with only white or black. Others are triads, where only three pigments are used throughout the painting. A couple of the paintings are done in a complementary color scheme where two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are used. When complementary colors are combined you get dulled versions of the colors or a very neutral color that is neither warm or cool.

I suspect that because I've used these color schemes to paint eyes that the expression of the person will affect how much the color defines the emotion you feel when looking at the image.  That is the reason I've done two paintings of each image.

If you feel like helping me learn about the impact of color, please add a comments with answers to these questions. To identify each image in your answers please identify an image in the Left column as L#, where the image # is 1 to 5 counting from top to bottom.  Similarly, an image on the right would be R#, where # is 1 to 5 from top to bottom. For example the man's eyes on the upper left would be L1.  His companion painting is in the middle on the right and would be labeled R3.

Here are my questions. 
Which image feels

1. most serious or intelligent?
2. most joyous and full of wisdom?
3. most self-sufficient, alive and confident?
4. most peaceful with inner strength?
5. most tired?
6. sad?

I'll let you know the consensus of opinions in a separate post. Results are shown here.

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo 2015 All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"A Friendly Chat" acrylic on paper

A Friendly Chat by April M Rimpo

A Friendly Chat

Fluid Acrylic on Paper

It's interesting how the personality of a painting evolves from start to finish. When I finished the design I was thinking all about light and shadow and how I could really use this painting to show the influence of light on its surroundings. I started with a violet and yellow orange wash over the surface of most of the painting to separate the two sides.  

I liked how the figure on the right would be partially shaded and the other would be more subdued. I stuck to that part of the plan, but as I gradually worked through layers of the painting I let the result of the previous layer influence what I did next.

In between working on this painting I worked on a couple other paintings that were much more abstracted figures where the shapes were what was important and not the details, so the dichotomy of working a little on this and a little on those no doubt also influenced how this painting proceeded.

As time passed I decided it was the interaction between these figures "conversation" that was important; I wanted the gesture of their postures to communicate their intimacy and that the details would shift more to the flowers and their surrounding. My goal was to portray the beauty of this friendship through a lovely setting that captures their warmth. By the time I finished I wanted to know more about them and wondered what they are talking about. How did this painting make you feel?