Building Color: Color with the Gusto of a 5 year old
Today's challenge is inspired by the exciting and wonderful pieces you have been sending to the blog for comment and review.
What we are going to do today is focus on building color.
Building color is a fun and relaxing exercise, and getting more practice at this will open us up to more color manipulation as we go along in the challenge.
In the last two years, I have been fortunate to take a series of classes on particular mediums with illustrator Michele Noiset. In Summer 2013, I took her course on colored pencils (Professor Kuhlman in LCS also took this course. She is taking the sketchbook challenge with all of us, right now.) In Summer 2014, I was able to take Professor Noiset's course on pastels.
She is an amazing illustrator, who works with children's books as a working artist, but she also has developed a much more adult series of illustrations/book covers for novels. This work she has done with pastels.
Here are two of her professional websites for you to peruse to see how she builds and develops the depth and texture of her colors.
Children's Illustration http://michelenoiset.com
Contemporary Book Covers in Pastel http://www.michelenoisetpastels.com
Your challenge for today is to relax and play with color:
- Take a ruler and pencil/pen. Divide your sketchbook page into 9 equal squares, 3 rows of 3 squares.
- In the very center square, working with COLOR PENCILS, fill this in with your favorite color. Build the color as deeply as you can. Make it the most vibrant "blue" or "red" that you are able to create. To do this, you will want to go over the color multiple times. You can do this by using a method called scumbling. Scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry to see a definition of what the scumbling technique involves.
- You have 8 remaining squares in which to experiment. In those squares, you will want to build vibrant colors based on your chosen favorite color, but the kind of colors you develop are up to your experimentation.
- Suggestions:
- Mix colors, starting with your favorite and adding different colors--add some red to your "blue" and observe what happens. Add more red in another square, or a new color, like purple.
- Add white to your color, working from the darkest color to lightest--so start with your "blue" and mix with white. What happens? Add some blue on top of the white, and what happens?
- Lay a thin layer of black and then add your "blue" over that. What happens?
- What happens when you mix the complement color on the color wheel with your color? (Google a color wheel to help you with this.) The complement is the color directly opposite on the color wheel--for "blue" that would be orange.
- Work with varying the progression of the color from its lightest value to its darkest value. Do this by varying the pressure you use to produce the color.
- These are just suggestions, but your goal is to experiment with your color to build vibrant colors that are variations on the theme of your chosen color.
Our goal with this exercise is to build our confidence with playing with color. Go darker and bolder and try not to be nervous about continually working at building a deep, rich color. We tend to work too light (maybe too timid?) when we first start out. Color with the gusto of a 5 year old: Deep and bright and vivid.
Scumbling
(This example and definition comes from the link presented below. Though talking about working with ink, this link provides some great discussions on various pen/pencil techniques.)
This challenge was hard to me because I am not very good at scumbling. But each time I did, I began to get better and really pick it up throughout the nine squares.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this challenge because it was simple and coloring in the squares was sort of relaxing.
ReplyDeleteI found this challenge to be very relaxing and enjoyable. I found myself having flashbacks of kindergarten and elementary school days while working on this challenge. Working with multiple colors was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed playing with color and seeing how the different layers make such a difference in how the original color then looks. Working with colored pencil was something I thought I would be frustrated with because it is difficult to build color with them, but this time I found it relaxing.
ReplyDeleteThis activity was great for experimenting with color. I was able to make efficient blends with colors that looked good together. It was a relaxing and fun time, I was able to calm down from a stressful study.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge wasn't too hard for me. i really liked it a lot, especially because i got to use my favorite color orange. You don't get this chance to play with colors like this too often in life so i am really enjoying myself
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was different working with different layers of colors. I used my favorite color blue for the center square and attempted to make it as dark as possible. It was fun to mix the different colors in the other empty squares as well!
ReplyDeleteThis was a decent activity that helped me work on my coloring skills in a more advanced way than I was capable of prior. My favorite color is green, so I experimented with variations around that to make an interesting end product. Overall, a relaxing challenge that helped me get some stress out through simply focusing on colors.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy working with colors to build up a texture. Eventually the colors can create the illusion of a three-dimensional form. I tried mixing green and red, which looked strange. Then I added yellow and it was less jarring. It's tricky to get a really smooth transition. I also used white to "burnish" some of these transitions which gets rid of some of the white spots.
ReplyDeleteI love working with colors and shading, so I really enjoyed this exercise! I think it's very interesting how mixing colors can create a hybrid of the two, and because of this, this technique is used frequently when drawing, especially if colors are limited.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was very interesting. It was cool to see how different the results could be depending on the pressure you applied to the pencil, other colors you mixed with it, and what order you mixed the colors.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge showed us how many colors we really have access to within our simple sets of colored pencils. Although it takes some extra time, almost any color can be synthesized with the base one were given. This opens up the window of artistic opportunity by expanding the room for creativity surrounding color.
ReplyDeleteI found this challenge pretty engrossing, I liked the range of shades you can get with one color. The activity did not make me think as much as previous challenges but I enjoyed it!
ReplyDeleteI was not a huge fan of this challenge because I am extremely impatient and building colors on top of each other took a little long. Plus my colors did not turn out as expected so that was frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI definitely had flashbacks to school days with this challenge. I felt like I had to channel that inner child in order to make this work. One thing that kept holding me back was the fact that I always remember that I had to stay within the lines, but after I got over that part, it became soothing. I spent way more time on it than I thought I would!
ReplyDelete~Desire' Marshall
This challenge was very intriguing. I learned a lot about how all the different colors mixed with blue react with one another. This helped me learn more about the color wheel and how each color compliments each other.
ReplyDeleteI am always a very timid drawer! this activity made me focus on becoming better with shading and working with multiple colors and experiencing!
ReplyDeleteI actually had a lot of fun with this challenge. I loved experimenting with the colors and finding different shades and textures.
ReplyDeleteThis activity was so relaxing, I enjoyed mixing colors and combing them to see which colors looked good with others.
ReplyDeleteI did not enjoy this exercise. I do not really enjoy working with colored pencil as my media. I enjoy how paint can build and blend color better. I also feel as though that I did not really create anything.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was relaxing but at the same time took a while to really develop each square.
ReplyDeleteThis activity was fun for me because I like working with colored pencils. It was cool to see the colors develop darker to lighter and vice versa. I played with all of the colors and then compared them all to one another. Overall it was fun to play with color shades.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this activity in experimenting with different colors and shades. I was really able to see how many different colors I could create through the use of only a few colored pencils.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge had a simple concept but was time- consuming. It took a while to decide how to fill ALL 8 squares.
ReplyDeleteI did not enjoy completing this portion of the Sketchbook Challenge because I find it hard to work with colored pencils and it becomes difficult to press hard with the pencils. However, I did enjoy scumbling and did not realize it had a name! I find myself scumbling a lot whenever I doodle and in my drawings and it was interesting seeing how I could easily layer color in this process. I did like how my colors seemed to blend well even though they were very different to the initial red (like green and purple). I also noticed that the white didn't have an impact on my red, which I was surprised by.
ReplyDeleteI liked this sketch. I enjoyed shading the colors on the page and mixing different colors together that I usually would not put together.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this sketch because I absolutely love vibrant and bright colors
ReplyDeleteLike Alana said, this challenge was very time consuming but it was kind of neat working with some of the different colors.
ReplyDeleteI liked this challenge. It was time consuming but it was relaxing at the same time. It was nice to experiment with colors and making the colors deeper and more vibrant.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that the white conte did not blend with the colored pencils, it merely made a texture on top of it. This challenge would have been neat to do with paint since it blends better than colored pencils and would be the same color throughout. My colors mixed together varied because I had a difficult time using the same amount of pressure throughout the rectangles. Overall, I think the blue and purple looked good together.
ReplyDeleteI love colors! I had fun tying together warm and cool colors ones using neutral colors! I tried not to be perfect with filling in each square.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was very strenuous. This is because layering of different and colors of different requires extra work. Nevertheless, I discovered new things about the color wheel i never knew of which was nice to know.
ReplyDeleteI hate that we don't have a wide range of colour pencils. Many a times, the fact that we don't have more shades of a particular colour acted like a barrier for me. Apart from that, this activity was way more relaxing as we didn't have to think about what to draw. At the same time however, because of all the colouring and doing it over and over again, it became a little tedious towards the end.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was fun but my hand feels like it is going to fall off! I liked how I could really build one color in so many different ways. I actually accidentally spilled water on one of my colors and it made it look really cool!
ReplyDeleteToday's challenge was a little aggravating. At first, I was bothered because I could not create the color I wanted in the middle square. Then I was aggravated by how long it was taking to make the lines in my middle square go away so it looked like I hadn't colored it in with zig-zagged lines. However, once the first color was done, I had a lot of fun. One thing I enjoyed doing was using highlighter as a base color and then shading with colored pencil on top. That made some pretty cool shades!
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was very time consuming, yet relaxing. I liked being able to mix colors that I normally would not together. However, making the colors bright and trying to get rid of the unnecessary lines was a lot of hard work.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was a good way of introducing me to layering colors. I liked that we could experiment and try different things, and I did actually find it a bit relaxing.
ReplyDeleteI hate colored pencils... I'm glad my arm didn't fall off from coloring and layering so much to try and get a rich color to show up on the page. I love the color blue but I'd much rather paint it, use a marker, or crayon, or any other utensil to draw it.
ReplyDeleteHumorously, as I logged onto the blog to comment on the daily challenge, I realized that I completely misread the directions. This explains my difficult time choosing which random colors to mix and why it took so long to complete. On the positive side, I learned that after mixing what I thought would be a good combination: purple and yellow, I was left with an ugly brown color not to be reproduced.
ReplyDeleteThis exercise really helped me to explore the depth of color that each color can use, and also the use of other colors to create a new color or make the depth of a color even deeper. The exploration will absolutely help to make all other drawings more colorful and creative.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was difficult for me because I didn't like when the color wasn't completely even throughout the square. But I did like to just color, it was nice to turn my brain off and just focus on this sketch
ReplyDeleteI feel this challenge might have been a little bit more enjoyable if I could find my pencil sharpener. I used a pair of scissors to sharpen my main color pencil way too many times, my arm is beat! It was cool to learn different ways of darkening squares as I went on with each one.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this exercise because I felt like you couldn't really do it incorrectly. I liked being able to see the colors develop and gain more depth. I think that this will also help to develop my own pieces further. This was really helpful in allowing me to see and understand what the tools i have at my disposal can do. I didn't think there was a ton to learn about colored pencils but I was wrong.
ReplyDeleteI found this challenge to be really enjoyable. It was interesting to experiment with your favorite color. There were so many combinations to choose from to add to your color and you never knew how it was going to turn out so even though it took a while to finish, it kept me focused on the project. It was really cool to see how the colors built upon each other.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like how I couldn't evenly fill in the square without seeing lines. I had to keep sharpening my pencil. I liked being able to just focus on color in this challenge. Some of my color combinations turned out really cool.
ReplyDeleteI liked the direction that was given in this assignment. It gave us the ability to be creative but we still had to follow guidelines. Sometimes I wish I was using something similar to markers so I could fill the squares in more.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was extremely time consuming and difficult to complete. I had a similar experience to some of the other participants in that I struggled to use the colored pencils. I definitely prefer colored pencils for small spaces only.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this because mixing different colors together were cool to see. The only difficult part was trying to get my favorite color as dark as it could be.
ReplyDeleteI liked the creative element of creating the tools we worked with. As I was drawing, I made a connection to a periodic table of elements and thought about the tones and complexities of color. I couldn't get the clear vibrancy I wanted from the pencils and was aching for fingerpaints.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed doing this sketch. Found it very frustrating in the beginning but once I became patient I enjoyed what it offered and found it relaxing.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge took a lot longer than i expected. I did not like using the color pencils cause it took a long time to color in the page. I tried to make the middle the darkest part and then have it go lighter and lighter as it gets to the end of the page.
ReplyDeleteI didn't enjoy this challenge as much as the others because it was much more time consuming. I was frustrated that it took such a long time to get the deep colors I wanted to create, but it was nice to play around with colors as well as shading.
ReplyDeleteI loved this challenge. I chose the color red as my main color and it was very interesting to see what I could build on top of that color. It took a lot longer than I thought it would because I kept building color on top of the color I already had, but overall it was enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge took a while!! I never realized how much work it took to build a good color. It was frustrating at times to get the color I wanted. My favorite color schemes to work with were red, orange, and yellow to create a fire look.
ReplyDeleteI think this challenge was very frustrating for me because I don't like color pencils. I am an impatient person and it seemed as it took forever to this challenge. Even though I didn't like it, I like how all the colors were very bright at the end.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was time consuming but was also fun at the same time. I got to do a little bit of scumbling and mixing colored pencils together.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I did not like this sketch. I despise colored pencils. I think it’s really difficult to build color with them and they’re never as vivid as I want them. I like markers and crayons so much more. However, the best part about the sketch was when I tried to fade the color from light to dark. I loved seeing all the variations that one color could make. Also, it was interesting to experiment with pressure and how much pressure you use with the colored pencil affects the actual color. I put the pink in as my favorite color, but I later found out that I really enjoyed working with the light blue. The color is so nice and bright without being overwhelming. Also, I tried to work with complementary colors. I mixed orange with blue and really enjoyed the color outcome.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really enjoy this challenge because I kept breaking my colored pencils. I attempted to get the best out of all the colors I used but honestly couldn't really get to where I wanted them to be. This challenge was definitely a change of pace but at the same time it was helpful because it made me work on building color with one of our most frequently used mediums.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time this took for the result was somewhat lack luster however I see how doing this exercise is important. I feel as though my comfort with colored pencils increased, which should help me throughout the rest of this challenge.
ReplyDeleteI had a lot of fun doing this assignment. It was very fun and free flowing ,so much so that I did not know what I was creating until the very end of the drawing.
ReplyDeleteWhat a time consuming challenge this turned out to be! Although it took a lot of time to do it actually was fun and relaxing coloring and trying to darken the main color I chose, blue. I also find it interesting how mixing blue with other colors could create totally different colors. For example, I got purple from mixing blue with red.
ReplyDeleteI am a very impatient person and throughout this challenge I found myself extremely frustrated because of how long it took. Compared to the other challenges this was by far my least favorite, especially because I didn't find it visually appealing either.
ReplyDeleteI thought this sketch was a fun and creative exercise. What I enjoyed most about it was the fact that I didn't have to focus on drawing one thing in particular, but many squares that build off my imagination.
ReplyDeleteAccording to me this was one of the hardest task because it required a lot of effort in coloring. However I spent more time on this task then the others. This was somewhat closer to perfection and was very basic. 9 squares and color each one to show the texture that can be made using color pencils.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was very annoying and my wrist cramped multiple times but the final paper actually turned out looking awesome.
ReplyDeleteThis assignment was worth the work. I felt that assignment required a lot of effort and patience. But the end result was worth it. It was nice seeing the all that work turn into a pretty cool design.
ReplyDeleteI did not enjoy this challenge that much, it required a lot of patience. However, seeing the colors all mixed together was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like this challenge very much, it was very tedious and frustrating for me. It took a lot longer then I originally anticipated.
ReplyDeleteI liked this activity because I love the neatness look and I love working with colored pencils to show off my favorite colors.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very bright and creative assignment since I was able to draw with all the primary and non-primary bright colors I could think of.
ReplyDelete