The color I decided to use was black. I chose black because it’s a color that almost everyone wears when they can’t match a color with anything else. Black is a color that represents absolute, constancy, eternity, power, and mystery. It also associates with anything dark such as death, fear, depression, etc. Though dark colors like black usually represents being in a bad place mentally, according to clinical psychologists it means dignity if it’s a person’s favorite color.

Black is usually used for depth and variations of hue during projects that involves other colors. It was Most artists first used black in Neolithic Cave Paintings and was mostly used in Ancient Greece and Egypt as “the color of the underworld.” It was first known as the color of mourning in the Roman Empire and as time passed and things began changing it started being associated with death, evil, magic, witches, etc.

 

 

This monochromatic painting project that interested me the most was this watercolor painting. I found the painting from Pinterest done by “lesliepaints.wordpress.com”. The painting had great context to it, where I can tell it’s the New York City Skyline. The creator used various lines and shapes that repeats but in each unique to the areas where it was used. There weren’t any geometric shapes that I found while viewing the painting. The shapes are more of organic shapes than geometric shapes since there aren’t any that are perfectly rounded or squared. The value of on the bottom half of the painting to create the water effect and the reflection effect was my favorite part of the entire painting since personally creating something with a reflection effect is something that takes time and lots of practice. The low-key and high-key values helps to create the image to tell that the image is the skyline of New York City.

 

 

I found the second image on creativebloq.com, the name of the painting is “Phosphorescent”, the creator behind this painting was Charlie Bowater. Bowater is a woman that works with black and sometimes white paint. Like the first image I liked, this image also has low-key and high-key values that gives it more descriptions and details to it. There’re more details in this painting than the previous one. I chose this image because although it uses the same color, there’s a dramatic difference between the two. This image is more eye-catching since it has a hint of the gold on the Phosphorescent’s forehead.

 

Monochromatic painting is where an artwork or project is created using only one color throughout the entire process, but different shades of the color can be used. I first learned about it when I was around the age of 10 in an art class that I took in middle school. It was where everyone chose a color and had to do a portrait of themselves, I chose to work with black since it was a color that would constantly catch my eyes even to today. This year during COVID, I’ve seen various people create portraits of themselves, their friends, celebrities, etc. using only one color which inspired me to attempt to do more paintings or projects monochromatically.

 

[Images that I chose will be emailed.]