Process

Colored Pencil Color Exploration:

We had to do 3 6×6 grids: Cool, Warm, and combination/random.

For the random grid, I put and mixed primary colors, secondary colors, and muted colors.

For the warm grid, I put reds. magentas, pinks, yellows, and oranges to show summer heat.

For the cool grid, I wanted it to be a winter/Christmas theme. The green square represents trees, and the cool colors is the snow/cold.

For some colors, I took advantage of the white paper to make some colors lighter by just using light pencil pressure.

Pressure was taken advantage of to allow certain values and saturations of colors.

Digital Exploration:

I took 2 pictures of cool palates(forest and ocean waves) and 1 picture of warm palates(autumn) from royalty free stock image sites. I put these pictures in Photoshop and put the mosaic effect on them and choose the number of pixels I wanted to be displayed. What I wanted to achieve with these grids was find contrast of light and dark hues and saturation.

Painting Versions of Primary and Secondary Colors :

We had to paint a 5×5 grid with 4 versions of primary and secondary. We were limited to red/magenta, blue, and yellow. The secondary colors are created by mixing primaries.

First version is making the color have high saturation using a little bit of white

Second version is making tints by adding more whte

Third version is adding grey to the color. Grey is created by mixing equal amounts of black and white. Adding grey to a color is called tone.

Fourth version is a complementary color, meaning to make the color opposite of the color you choose in the color wheel. Also, we add a little bit of white to the complementary color.

The last remaining squares could be any color we want.

Saturation Tints:

I choose red/green and yellow/purple for saturation tints. What you are trying to achieve in this part is show complement progression from left to right or right to left and show 2 levels tints of those complementary progression colors at the bottom. Red, blue, yellow, and white are the only colors allowed. Complementary progression is achieved by adding a complementary hue to a hue. The color gets darker/changes more by adding more complementary hue. In the middle of the grid, I see a grey or black color. The more tinted a color is, the more muted it gets.

For my red/green, from left to right, the second and third columns should be switched around.

For my yellow/purple, on the top left, two of the swatches look a little bit similar.

Hue and Value Simultaneous contrast

We had to understand light and dark hue values and make a middle hue look like two colors within the value of light and dark hues. We also had to show stable and ambiguous shapes within the contrast. I did see the middle hue having two colors within the values. For some people, it can be a little hard to see the middle hue having two colors. The two with the colors boxes on the bottom have more supporting value colors on each side to show more examples or to better understand this type of contrast. It took me some time to see which colors best fit with this type of contrast.

Color Interaction

We had to have 4 sections of light hues, dark hues, low saturation hues, and high saturation hues in a big box. We need to use design principles elements and stable and ambiguous shapes. I had trouble finding low and high saturated hues. I was thinking that the saturations were almost similar to light and dark.

Final thoughts and reflection:

For the random color pencil grid, it was hard to think of new colors at first but with the use of pressure and thinking about the amount of color I should add, it made making new colors easier and I was able to finish the grid.

I think the painting part was okay. It was relaxing but time consuming. There is some uneven paint in some squares, and some whites are showing. I could have used tape or paper, but I was afraid that some of the paint would get ruined by them. Acrylic paint dries fast so I probably should have waited in between paintings. Mixing the colors to match the color wheel or the color you want was tedious. The paint on my palete paper dries up fast so I had to add some water or remix some paint. An advice given to me was to pile up the paint to a blob so it doesn’t dry out fast.

The overall project was okay, and I liked it. I learned about hue, value, saturation, tints, tones, gradation, shades, and learning to mix paint.