Rebuilding Foundations: 2012 Colour Studies – Unit 6

Unit 6: Colour in Nature

Continuing with my self-directed study of colour by following the telecourse Colour: An Introduction.

(Check out all my colour assignments here.)

Here are my notes from completing this unit of study:

Click image to view the gallery for this unit:
Colour Studies 2012, Unit 6

The goals for this unit of study were:

  • analyzing colour and form in natural objects

My experiences while completing the assignments:

  • I haven’t drawn anything by hand in a long time. When it came to analyzing the structure of a flower for this unit ( picked a sunflower), I decided that I had to abandon my Blackberry Playbook tablet and use good ol’ pencil and pen in my sketchbook.
  • The Playbook tablet remained an excellent tool for recording the colours that I saw on the skin of yellow and red peppers as I turned them over in my hand. I painted the colours schematically (as mostly vertical strokes) using a fairly large brush, as if the surface of the pepper were rolled out flat like a map of the earth, instead of rendering the pepper’s surface volumetrically.
  • I learned a lot from this unit, appreciating the interior structure of the flower, seeing how small seed and filament-like structures extend out into the myriad of pollen-bearing pieces, densely packed into a spiral form in the near-black centre of the flower. Amazing.
  • I felt an empathetic and emotional response to the flower itself: the visual energy I felt from the beautiful, bright ranges of rich yellows, in it’s pollen aroma, and in the realization of its inner life.

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