GRAPHICS PATHWAY - COLOUR & ILLUSTRATION

The aim of today's task was to gain a greater appreciation of colour, how to make different colours and how to use them. We began the day creating a 12 segmented colour wheel of primary (red, blue, yellow) and secondary (green, orange, purple) colours using mostly acrylic and some poster paints. I have had quite a lot of experience with painting and mixing colours before so this task was quite straight-forward for me. The second stage of the task involved making tertiary colours which was slightly more challenging because it involved more mixing of paints. I made a range of burnt siennas, umber and ochre which were all slightly varying shades and tones of brown. 

The first A1 sheet included the colour wheel of 12 segments and
the 3 rows of tertiary colour experimentation using predominantly
acrylic paints and some poster.

Although it appears a very boring and mundane task, I enjoyed making the colour wheel as
 I have a strong use of colour in most of my work. I enjoyed blending the colours from
one to the other as well as learning from mistakes with the mixing technique

Following the colour wheel we experimented with tertiary colouring and contrasting colours. 

The final task incorporated what we had learned earlier in the previous tasks and the use of text. We had to make some illustrations of a piece of text in some way for instance an poem, a story or a song. However we could only use contrasting secondary colours for example blue and orange or red and green.

This blue and orange illustration was inspired by the poem 'Island Man' by Grace 
Nichols about someone caught between two cultures and longing to go back to 
paradise. I felt the warm orange tones suited this perfectly with the sun and the pale 
bluebackground contrasts it well representing the sea and sky.

This yellow and purple illustration was inspired by the sword in the stone, the purple
silhouette of the sword and the stone stand out well from its background. The dry
brushed yellow I feel is also a sign of positivity almost like a new day or sunrise.
These two colours work well together I find.

The final illustration I did was inspired by a childhood favourite of mine, 'Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory' I chose red and green for this because I felt the overlapping
of colours worked well, I used felt tip pen instead of paint for this illustration to try
something new and different. Nevertheless I feel the colour contrast still has the same
impact.

Images - Author's Own 23/11/12