Week 3 of the Get Your Paint On class

This week of painting has been real interesting.  I am learning so much about myself and paint as a whole in this class.  The instructors, Mati and Lisa, are great!  Only through painting have I discovered more truths about myself.  I recently read a real good book about my Chinese symbol, the Cat, and it fits me to a tee.  It has also opened my eyes about who I am and what I am about and it has made me feel better about accepting that self more.  I am who I am and that's OK.  I like me!  Painting has helped me see those things about myself even clearer.  And I want to explore more of me and my painting.

This week's assignment was on color and we learned to mix colors to match colors that we like.  Another discovery!  It was not easy for me.  I am a learner of basics first.  I have to understand the basic first before I seem to be able to go to the next step.  So I searched the internet, read all I could, ran to the library until I had some basics to start from.  I have a grey palette made by Jack Richeson & Co that I use and the inside cover gives some color basics and mixing basics.   I wanted to share a few things that I thought were useful.

3 parts to color:  hue, chroma, and value
  1.  Value is the lightness or darkness of a color.
  2.  Chroma is a measure of how pure or saturated of a color.
  3.  Hue is the name of the color, such as; red, blue, green, etc.

 - Adding white to a color lightens the value, makes the color temperature cooler, and sometimes changes the hue.
 - Adding black will the darken the color and alters it's hue.
 - Mixing a color with its complementary color "greys" or neutralizes the color (I thought this was interesting since I have made a lot of "grey" in my mixing sessions).
 - Placing a color's complement near it in a painting will add visual interest.

Here is my week 3 painting.  I used the colors of my loveseat as my inspiration for this week's assignment.  Even though I love my loveseat, I have discovered that I love red better in paintings so I want to try my hand with red next week.

Get Your Whatever On next week for yourself...