Complementary Colour Mixing

When learning to mix colours, an understanding of the colour wheel is essential. Primary colours - red, blue and yellow when mixed together make the secondary colours - purple, green and orange. When these are mixed they make tertiary colours.

Those colours opposite each other on the colour wheel are known as complementary colours. These are incredibly useful when creating tones and shadows.

This avoids the use of black to mix a tone, which can make a muddy version of your desired colour. Complementary mixing can be used in a whole range of media.

Artists who particularly explored colour at a time when it's properties where beginning to be better understood, such as Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Matisse, will give you an insight into this technique.

Look at Monet's 'series' paintings such as the 'Haystacks' and 'Rouen Cathedral' below, and notice how he uses complementary colours to convey shade and shadow.

Similarly Van Gogh uses patches of complementary colour to add a three dimensional quality to his still life paintings of sunflowers.

Cezanne creates the shadows in this still life below, by using contrasting reds and greens with yellows and purples.

Notice how Matisse uses purple tinted shadows behind this domestic study.

Wednesday 29th January

 Reduction cut lino prints....

Artists Who Use Print

Many artists use lino cuts as a way to explore different media. The sharp lines can be very expressive. Book illustrators use the technique to create simple single or two colour images particularly for children's books.

Edward Bawden (1903-1989)

Edward was a graphic artist and printmaker, known for his book illustrations and scenes of London.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

This prolific artist relentlessly experimented with different media and produced many lino cuts, which suited the Cubist approach.

Sybil Andrews (1898-1992) 

Sybil worked as a welder during both world wars and learned her printmaking techniques via a correspondents course. Her dynamic lino prints often showed people at work and were influenced by Futurism, an art movement concerned with the movement and energy of life.

Wednesday 15th January

Artists Who Use Textured Surfaces and Collage

 Painting or drawing onto a textured surface is as old as painting itself. Ancient people used the natural contours of cave walls to help them recreate the animals that were so vital to their survival.

The decoration of tombs, temples and churches required artists to paint onto plaster and wood.

Contemporary artists continue to use the texture of a surface to help them convey added depth to their work.

Valery Koshlyakov

Valery depicts grand formal architecture on a monumental scale. But his use of roughly torn cardboard boxes, dripping paint and fast vigorous mark making plants these structures firmly into the modern frenetic through-away world.

Anselm Kiefer

Born just after the Second World War, Anselm's work addresses the issues faced by the post-war generation of Germans . The highly textured mixed media surfaces of his paintings shows an emotional but uncompromising and brave response to a dark legacy.

John Piper used found papers and prepared textured surfaces in his seascapes of the 1930's.

Illustrators also use prepared surfaces and collage. Two notable examples are Mark Hearld and Eric Carle.

Wednesday 8th January

Experiments with mark making ....