An Art Project

As mentioned, I've been taking a course that I've quite enjoyed.

The course was supposedly Colour Theory, but since it was taught by the Head of Painting at ACAD, there was a little bit of painting theory, art commentary, and art history thrown it for good measure. 

Our final assignment was a fun and unusual self-portrait, which was really more about painting theory than colour theory, although paint mixing (colour duplication) was the crux of the assignment:

The painting was done by trying to duplicate colours from a gridded self-portrait onto a gridded canvas.  To keep the project simple (so it didn't take weeks), we were meant to do it in a quick impressionistic style, mixing "approximate" colours.  

Each triangle on the painting could only have ONE colour, which had to be either the "sum" (blend) of the other colours in the corresponding triangle on the photo, or simply the main colour from that triangle:

Of course, it's way harder and slower than it sounds.  But it's amazing how many colours one can mix from a small palette of paints!

  

It also amazed me that when you look very close, skin tones vary enormously.  In the photo, the light was falling on the left side so the skin tones are yellowish, while in the middle they are pinker and on the right side of the photo grayer with the shade. 

It was quite a fun challenge.

I am pretty good at mixing colours now.  And I also learned the number one lesson of painting - it's just a bunch of shapes of different colours.  I guess that should make it easier to paint my masterpiece now...

Happy Weekend!