2 July 2009. Local colour.


Well OK then, following Alan's comment on yesterday's blog, this is what I do when not painting pictures.
First thing is open emails and answer anything that has come in overnight.
Second thing is write the blog about previous day.
So yesterday I went to the local tip to get rid of stuff. Went shopping for food. Varnished some canvas prints. Packed parcel for shipment to Australia. Ordered tape and stuff online from Lion framing supplies. Chased payment for overdue invoice from online gallery that sold prints in April. Went to local surgery for blood test. Few more phone calls. Painted inside of studio door. Watched ladies semi-final tennis match on TV. Researched online for chicken coops. Went to pub for evening meal with friends and talked about holidays.
So where is the interesting thing there?
Ah-ha! 'Painted inside of studio door'. The issue here is 'local colour'.
The outside of the door is painted bright red. The studio is black timber outside and white inside. Red door outside looks good next to our bright blue Johnny Woodford bench. This morning it looked even more striking with the yellow weed bucket. [see illustration] But in the hot summer the studio door is often hooked open, and the inside [white] colour looks wrong in the garden.
So yesterday I painted the inside of the door with base red coat.
But the inside should be white so that when painting inside there is neutrality in the colour space.
Now we will have to see if the introduction of a splosh of red colour into the neutral studio space will have a detrimental effect.

Artists have to be aware of this 'local colour' effect. It is even dangerous to wear bright or strong coloured clothing when painting a picture because it bounces coloured light onto the painting surface and pallette. Then when the painting is shown in a different display space the colour is wrong.
I will report on the effect of the new red interior later.

3 comments:

  1. Your paintings will all be green. Be warned......

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  2. Em! That was slightly boring .Maybe I was wrong. The bit about chasing up money was interesting. Shows your human like the rest of us. And the varnishing of a print.But the rest......As an Artist I want to see you wrestling with new ideas or even old ones and I want to see paintings .I am missing them and am having to go through withdrawals because there not there.

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  3. Ouch! Boring? Oh OK, maybe to an artists like yourself it is rather basic. However I recall that during our open houses events last May I had conversations with loads of interesting and interested people who were not artists, and we asked about and discussed lots of the basic stuff, which they wanted to know.
    'a' said that the paintings will all be green... perhaps so. Which brings up the 'basic' colour circle as a potential topic.
    I can move onto biological determinism after that.

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