Color Schemes

Frequently when taking art classes the instructor will discuss color schemes in your art.  Monotonic, Complementary, Adjacent, and Triad color schemes are those most frequently discussed.  Even though this is common knowledge I find I need to be reminded regularly or I drift off course, using too many colors to have good color harmony in my work.

I recently learned about a website called "Color Scheme Designer" that is intended for web designers, but can be quite useful to painters as well.  You can plan not only with the color schemes mentioned above but also Tetrad and Accented Analogic.  While playing on this site http://colorschemedesigner.com/ I discovered I had used a Tetrad design in one of my most successful paintings this year.  See if you agree?

For future reference I have added Color Scheme Designer to my links.

To view other posts on color schemes check:

• A favorite color scheme

2010 Exhibit at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County

I have two paintings, based on my travels to Guatemala, on exhibit in this Laurel Art Guild exhibit at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County.  I just love the native clothing worn by the women in Guatemala.  My work tries to bring these women to life.  The pieces in this exhibit show a girl relaxing before her day at the market and a contemplative age-worn women waiting outside her church.  I hope you get to enjoy this exhibition which runs until January 17, 2011.

"Guatemalan Girl": Never Stop Experimenting

Guatemalan Girl

This painting was done on nine 5" by 5" Aquabord that were 2" deep. Normally I work on either cold press or hot press paper using a lot of wet-into-wet techniques, so this was my first experiment with Aquabord. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I could blend colors on this medium.

My decision to use nine segments for this painting required me to design the piece taking into account the 1/4" gaps between the Aquabords. I wanted to make sure that each segment of the painting was an interesting painting of its own. That made placement of the girl critical and the abstraction of the patterns in her clothing important to ensure the viewer's eye continues to move through the entire piece.

Knowing galleries would not want to deal with hanging 9 separate pieces, I attached these to a piece of Plexiglas and drilled a hole in the Plexiglas for hanging.