On Colour Part Five

Image: Ken Lewley, Thursday Night paintings no 9, 2002-3, Guache on paper, 8x10in

From an Interview with Ken Kewley on the Painting Perceptions website

Transparent colors may need to be mixed with other darks and even black. These dark colors use as a tint with white creates a color closer to white. Travel between these two extremes. Rinsing the brush can be avoided by transforming whatever is on the brush toward a nameable color by adding that color or the color that when mix becomes that color or away from that color by mixing that color’s opposite.

And at the same time be aware if you are going darker or lighter. To go lighter and keep the color add white, to go lighter while changing colors add whichever color is lighter and takes you closer to the desire color. To make a jump between colors, either go lighter or darker by mixing in a color that goes away from the nameable color if you want a bigger jump. Keeping away from just adding white or black makes for more surprising color.

On Colour Part Four

Image: Ken Kewley, Thursday Night Painting no 4, 2002-3,Guache on paper 8x10in
From an interview with Ken Kewley on Painting Perceptions website

Do not think too much. Better just to enjoy the color. Do whatever you need to do to keep excited. Play, do not work. Play is the most productive work. Opposite colors; yellow and purple, orange and blue, red and green, white and black. Buying any color that excite is not a bad idea. But a pretty color in itself is only a pretty color.

Begin with the artist love of color. This will be in the work if the mind does not get in the way. Be aware of the whole painting. Look at no color without looking at another. Every color needs to relate to every other color. Which one is darker, which lighter. Keep in the mind the colors most nameable. Keep the number of these small; yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green, and white and black. Be aware of going towards or away from these. Think value from white to black. Yellow would be closer to white. A dark green or alizarin crimson would be closer to black. Think in this wide range.

On Colour Part Three

Ken Kewley Certosa Painting 12 x 12 inches Oil on panel 2010
From and interview with Ken Kewley on the Painting Perceptions website continued.

Instinctively adjusting color for your own entertainment. (excitement) -done by adding, taking away or moving to new locations. Making a color stronger by removing a color elsewhere. Making colors do more adds excitement. Remove lazy (less useful) colors.

To go lighter use a color of a lighter value all the way to a little white to go darker use a color of a darker value all the way to black….Think of colors becoming stained. Light colors are easier stained than dark colors. Red wine on a white or any light colored shirt. Yellow with be altered more dramatically than a phtho green or blue.

Look at great paintings. Look for primary colors, colors that can be easily named, i.e. green, orange, etc. Usually they are not found. Most colors are without names. Most colors are adjusted and fine tuned. Colors found by a need to compose the whole. Each color playing a role. Color changes depending on size of the form and its neighbors.

On Colour Part Two

Image: Ken Kewley, Hot Chocolate with Apricot, 2000, Oil on Panel, 8 x 10 inches

Second Instalment from Painting Perceptions from an interview with Ken Kewley

Love colors as writers love words. It is the love that comes through when the mind gets out of the way. Don’t think too much. Trust your instincts.

Each color plays their part. Less is more. Each element is made to do more.

To restart dead paintings reshape whole by large actions. Colors (alternating colors) create steps that move around, into, and back out of, paintings. Paint instinctively with joy.

Values are more important than color. Strong Fauve paintings reproduced in black and white retain much of their force. Force sometimes comes by supplying little choice. Black and white can be use to reshape the painting into larger forms. Black and white can be used as extremes. Be aware of the lightest and dark part of a painting.

Matisse said to start with the most intense color then add another and adjust the first if need be and then add another keeping always in mind the overall effect and what you want to be the subject. This should be what you are most interested in and so this should be natural and easily done. You may sometimes find that your interest lies elsewhere. Then go with that. Relax and the right answer will come to you. Relax and the right color will be found. Relax and any discord will show themselves.

On Paint & Colour

Image: Ken Kewley ,"Olympia" (after Monet)

Thanks to Undercover Painter who alerted me to this fabulous article from Painting Perceptions (title link) - an interview with an artist previously unknown to me, named Ken Kewley (images above). It's his musings on the process of painting and seems to encapsulate all the things I have been telling my students, and his theories are backed up by his wonderful paintings, which makes him worth listening to.

I have reassembled the article into what I feel is a more logical flow (it was a conversation, not an essay, after all) and broken it into bite size pieces for those of you who don't have the inclination or the time to look at the article as posted on Painting Perceptions blog. I think it also helps to digest his words and to think about how this stuff may apply to you.

So...here's the first instalment

On Colour:

Color is used to create steps to direct the eye around the painting parallel to the vision of the artist.

Each color needs to be chosen in consideration of the whole. Color does not become itself until the whole work is completed. A painting that earlier in its making resembled a poem, as it gets filled in, cluttered with too much color that changes or dilutes what was there, loses its poetry. If a painting isn’t working I find it is not because something is missing but that there is something that is not needed and therefore hurtful.

Put down the one color that excites you the most, then the next, relating it to the first. This is the relationship that excites you the most. Then the third color, relating it always to the whole. You are emphasizing what interest you and minimizing other things by putting them in the service of your true passion and leaving out altogether what distracts. Keep it simple.

Each color plays their part. Less is more. Each element is made to do more.

On Colour Part Three

Each color plays their part. Less is more. Each element is made to do more.

When working from life you take a fragment of the world then attempt to make it whole by making sense of the loose ends left when it was torn from the world. If you can not find the right color find an equivalent. Colors that have a similar relationship.

When painting from life before you use any color for a particular object compare it to any similar object. Ask which is more or less intense, lighter or darker, etc. Reserve the most intense or darkest to where it is really needed.

There is sometimes a place for out of the tube colors. At other times they are a bit like a naked person on stage. One sometimes needs to dress properly to fit in. (to the larger picture.) Sometimes the one object or color that attracts is the one thing that distracts from the whole. In this case a support needs to be found to anchor the color to the whole.