The Art of Seeing and Painting Color

We've just completed our weekend workshop on "The Art of Seeing and Painting Color".  The workshop was sponsored by the Billings Arts Association (BAA) and held here in Billings, MT.  All 10 participants worked hard and hopefully went home with a good feeling of accomplishment.  

We used new tools and old tools in new ways.  Spot screens and value cards, they found to be essential to color discovery.  It's not an easy thing, to change methods and thinking in determining and painting correct color.

Here are just some highlights about the workshop and a few snapshots of the attendees hard at work.

The setups were simple and designed to get the artist to think about how the environment influences the color of the object and how the object influences the color of the environment.  Ten different set ups were positioned around the room. One for each artist. But they couldn't get too comfortable in one spot, as we moved them to new stations to change things up and make them think.

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Based on a book written by Arthur Stern, "How to See Color and Paint It", the setups and lighting were specific for each station to solve a series of color challenges.  

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Stern states that ""The mind stands in the way of the eye".  He means that we proceed to paint on previous assumptions or prejudices and don't trust our eye in assessing color..

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We found out that an orange is not necessarily orange and that the subtle color shift of value and temperature are what defines the shape and an objects position in the environment.

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It looked deceivingly easy, but that wasn't the case.  This way of seeing took careful thought and decision making.

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It wasn't all serious and intense, there was a lot of fun and camaraderie, banana bread, chocolate and pizza. 

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I hope all went home armed with new knowledge,and a deeper understanding of this thing called art.  There is always more to learn.

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"The mind stands in the way of the eye.  That's why most beginning painters don't paint what the eye sees, but what the mind lets the eye see.  They paint what they expect to see."  Arthur Stern