A semester of color.
Every Thursday evening, ten high school students meet at the Riverdale Art Project, a New York City-based art program that I cofounded ten years ago. Students are participating in a semester-long color workshop where they learn about color theory in a structured and engaging way. Most comprehensive color courses are reserved for college students. I found, however, that with careful planning and simple projects, color courses can work for students from elementary school to high school.Student art, Divided Face
The Principles of Johannes Itten
The workshop is an adventure. Step-by-step we give the seemingly random world of color a context. What was once a matter of personal preference--"Blue is my favorite color," or "I look awful in yellow!"--is now a subject worthy of serious attention. The classes are based on a ground-breaking course developed by artist and teacher Johannes Itten, who was affiliated with the Bauhaus of pre-World War II Germany. My program takes Itten's principles and fits them to the interests and skill level of high school students.
Five Characteristics of Color
Because color theory can be complicated, I concentrate on five essential characteristics:
* temperature (warm/cool);
* intensity (saturation);
* value (light/dark);
* the primary and secondary relationships; and
* complementary colors
Students work on three or four technically simple projects for each characteristic. This repetition ensures that they will be thoroughly familiar with each characteristic. Classes are one and a half hours long, and students complete a new project each class. By the end of the course, students are able to describe bright red as a primary color, warm in temperature, high in intensity, of medium value, and the complement of green. We analyze fine-art paintings, toys, advertisements, cars, and apparel for their color characteristics. We bring color theory into the realm of real life.
Color Temperature
One of the most complicated color characteristics is the contrast between warm and cool. I start with a simple definition. Warm colors are associated with sun, fire, and autumn leaves: red, orange, yellow, brown, and tan. Cool colors are associated with the sky: blue and the colors derived from it (green and purple). Later I work at fine-tuning these definitions.
Four Short Warm/Cool Projects
1. Rubbings
Students rub a variety of surfaces, from floor tiling to circuit boards, using either artist-grade colored pencils for a subtle rendering, or crayons for a more tactile effect. We rub the entire surface of an object with one color and then add different colored layers on top. I ask students to do one rubbing with warm colors, the other with cool. Both are completed in the same session.
2. Collage
Students create a warm and cool collage from magazine cuttings, photographs, and torn drawings. We do one collage per class.
With this lesson, we broaden our understanding of warm and cool. For example, we observe that in one collage, pink (a combination of red and white) appears to be cooler than red. Students learn that adding white to any warm color cools it down. A lime-green appears to be warmer than a turquoise. Why? Because lime contains a warm color, yellow, while turquoise contains only blue and green, both cool.
3. Divided Face
Students create quick portraits of each other, in which they draw a vertical line down the center of the portrait, and fill in one side with cool colors, the other with warm. We work in artist-grade colored pencils. I encourage students to press lightly on the pencils at first, and then to achieve a rich surface by overlapping one color on another.
In this exercise, I discuss warm and cool as they are related to skin color. Flesh tones, from pale to ruddy to dark brown, are all warm. It's not surprising; the temperature of a healthy human body is 98.6 degrees--just like a hot summer day! I explain that people speak approvingly of warm skin tones: peaches and cream, mocha, and ebony. In a light-skinned person, beet red blushes and rosy red cheeks indicate warmth and liveliness.
Except for eye color, coolness has negative connotations. You are green if you are is sick or envious, blue if you are freezing, and purple if you've been punched in the eye. With these associations in mind, students come to see why the warm side of the face is not only more realistic, but also more inviting.
4. Warm/Cool Grid
Students examine the effect that warm and cool colors have on each other. To introduce this lesson, I place two identically colored red squares on two backgrounds, one orange and one blue. Students are surprised at how the red is so much bolder against a cool blue background. Indeed, the contrast of cool against warm and warm against cool is striking.
To illustrate, students draw a simple animal silhouette using images from books as reference. Students superimpose a simple square grid on top of the silhouette, then color in each box of the grid. The animal is done in all cool or all warm colors, the background the opposite. A square can be composed of no more than two colors. We use artist-grade colored pencils because they are generally more precise than paint. When the project is finished, it is easy to see the contrast between warm and cool colors.
Summary
Using these four lessons, students become sensitive to the differences between warm and cool colors. Combined with the four other characteristics I teach, they gain a solid understanding of basic contemporary color theory. Is this program overly structured? No, and here's why. By the time students reach ninth grade, they already know who in the class can draw well. Many know they are not a natural draftsperson. Structured color projects do two things: They give every student an opportunity to learn about color without feeling threatened by their own artistic limitations; and they let students appreciate the joy of color--whether they are painting a picture, choosing an article of clothing, or buying a car. As Duke Ellington said, "You've got to know the rules to break them."
Resources
Itten, Johannes, The Color Star, NY: Wiley, 1986.
Itten, Johannes, The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color, NY: Wiley, 1997.
NATIONAL STANDARDS
Students create multiple solutions to specific visual arts problems that demonstrate competence in producing effective relationships between structural choices and artistic functions.
WEB LINKS
Color Matters, www.colormatters.com
Color Wheel Pro, www.color-wheelpro.com/color-theory-basics.html
Andrea Rabinovitch is co-founder of the Riverdale Art Project in Riverdale (Bronx), New York. abrabinovitch@aol.com
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| Title Annotation: | High School Studio Lesson |
|---|---|
| Author: | Rabinovitch, Andrea |
| Publication: | School Arts |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Aug 1, 2006 |
| Words: | 1090 |
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