Altered Book Lesson 8 - Colour

This fortnight's lesson covered the subject of colour and the colour wheel.  I found this part of the lesson particularly interesting as I had never looked at it this way "When the light rays hits an object our eyes responds to the light that is bounced back and we see that color. For example a red ball reflects all the red light rays."  For my page I firstly created a background with all the colours of the spectrum in watercolour pencils on a wavy edged blank card, hence the crease in the middle.  Then using pieces cut from magazines I made a colour wheel showing the primary, secondary and tertiary colours, 12 in all. (Thanks to the Nestlé Family for the template)


Primary Colors: Red, yellow and blue, primary colors are the 3 pigment colors that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of other colors. All other colors are derived from these 3 hues.


Secondary Colors: Green, orange and purple, these are the colors formed by mixing the primary colors.


Tertiary Colors: Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green & yellow-green, these are the colors formed by mixing a primary and a secondary color. That's why the hue is a two word name, such as blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-orange. 


In visual experiences, harmony is something that is pleasing to the eye. It engages the viewer and it creates an inner sense of order, a balance in the visual experience.  The balance in the spectrum above is the darker colours are at each end with the lighter colours in the middle.  The same with the colour wheel the cool colours are to the left and the warm colours to the right.  My wheel does not show monochromatic colours but in looking for scraps of magazines to use it made me very aware of the many hues and slight variations each colour has.  Paint chips in DIY stores really demonstrate this aspect perfectly.  Finally I put a magazine photograph of a Christmas candle in the middle to not only tie it into my altered book theme but to represent white light, the source of all colour.


Some Formulas for Color Harmony can be found at Jill Morton's page http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory where she gives great examples of the basic formulas for harmony - complimentary, analogous. She also has a Pinterest page which is interesting.

As part of our homework we have to create two backgrounds that show a colour classification.  On this page I chose to use hues of blue to illustrate monochromatic variation, ranging from dark blue at the top to light at the bottom of the page.  I decorated the page with items of primary colour, red, blue and yellow twisted wire stems with blue crystal flowers, a magazine page large butterfly with yellow blue and red gems, and two lace butterflies coloured with yellow and red mica powders (the red looks a bit pink in the photo).

For my second page I wanted to show the effect of adding white to three colours on the wheel.  My background is two coloured papers in pink(red and white) that have been stenciled and stamped with other hues of pink.  The roses are made from pink, lilac (purple and white) and peach (orange and white) ribbon, the tags and strings are other shades of pink and peach and the bows are another complimentary pale pink.  The only deep shade on the page is the dark purple bow in the top right hand corner, which makes it stand out from the rest. 

Off to play with scraffito, thanks Elizabeth for the lesson.