Ink Stained Hands

Beautiful/Decay and Canson/Royal Talens Team Up

2011-08-30T19:03:00.000-04:00

There's a very generous art supply grant that Canson and Royal Talens are doing through Beautiful/Decay Magazine. I’m so psyched to see a company get behind creative people. Especially when money is tight. I already use Arches paper, which is one of their products. They make a ton of different types of paint and other cool stuff too.

Basically they are giving eight artists a large amount of supplies. They've picked the first artist, Wendell Gladstone, and they've got 7 more to go. It would be really great if B/D gets a strong response to the program, because then they could get the program extended.

Please click through to the Beautiful/Decay article - click here. Then do some of these things: 1. click the word Canson and "like" Canson on facebook; 2. click the link for Royal Talens; 3. leave your mark - write a comment, tweet, or post the link to your facebook. Tweeting and posting to facebook are easy if you have accounts, you just have to click the little buttons at the foot of the article.

Updates: Gallery Poulsen, Beautiful/Decay Magazine, New Website

2011-06-09T14:20:00.000-04:00

Summer doesn't officially start for another 2 weeks, but there's a heat wave here in New York. I'm sweating over my keyboard to send this update. I have a couple of fantastic things to share.

If you missed it, I did a studio visit with Melissa Brown for Beautiful/Decay Magazine's website, which was republished on the Huffington Post. Here's the original, and the HP link too. Melissa is one of those amazing people who makes inexplicably good art, she doesn't need my help, but I tried to get her to talk about her inspirations. There's a ton of pictures of the interior of her studio, which was set up partially for collage and drawing, and partially for printmaking. In addition, Melissa just came out a week or two ago with a new silk screen which I like a lot; for a meager $100 you can get a print that could end up holding a place in art history, you can see that here.

It was my good luck to land an interview in the upcoming print Beautiful/Decay, Book 6 "Future Perfect," with Corey Thompson. Out of hundreds of amazing submissions Corey won B/D's contest based around the theme of "Future Perfect." I got to grill him on his inspirations, work habits, utopian/dystopian ideals, and also his REALLY GREAT ART. Great, for me, means something has both extremes of good and bad, and those coalesce to form a bigger meaning: the greater picture. If you want to see what I mean, sorry, you can't see the interview online, because it's in the print mag. You have to get a copy, and B/D sells out fast - so it's better to subscribe. (I have an article/interview in the current Beautiful/Decay, Book 5 Psychonauts, about Saul Chernick and his a m a z i n g ink drawings, but, illustrating my point, it has saddled its horse and rode into the sunset, having already sold out.)

Also, I'm very psyched to announce I'm in a group show: Bitches Brew - New Art from New York Part II, opening June 17th, at Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen. There's some amazing artists in the show, to name a few that I look up too: Tom Sanford, Aaron Johnson, and Michael Anderson. In reality I'm in over my head with this crowd of art-world-giants, but that's the best way to grow. I like situations that make me push myself further, to paint/draw/write more eloquently, and this is one of them. I revamped my website last week, that's here, there's links to my artwork, but also all the studio visits I've done for B/D which I am very proud of.

Here's Gallery Poulsen's press announcement for Bitches Brew:

English Version:

One year ago, Morten Poulsen opened his doors to new premises in the meatpacking district with an explosive temper assholes-gang from Brooklyn, New York.

Morten Poulsen found "The Irascible Assholes", as the seven contemporary artists back then called themselves, in a disused industrial area in New York. Here ghosts of past workers mingled with the kings of creativity in the shadow of blackened chimneys.

From one continent to another - a formerly vibrant industrial area to another - Morten Poulsen took them across the Atlantic and introduced Copenhagen for the young Americans, who currently dictate the art-scene of the world.

It's a year ago. Now they are back and they are over twice as many!

The former assholes have become bitches, and under the name "Bitches Brew" 18 men and women experiments with both pastel, ceramics, video, pipe cleaners, photography, textiles, painting and even a dying plant in order to get the message through.

With their individual works the mission is to paint a comprehensive picture of an America that is uncertain balanced on pillars of grotesque sexuality and natural decay - a breeding place where coincidences and reinventions pair up to become reborn again in an unprecedented form.

With more than 30 works the exhibition becomes a massive installation, where both video-works and installations contribute to a homogeneous experience of the bitches art, that communicates a contemporary picture of a changing world.

From the vulgar mundane to the grandiose stupid!!!

2011-05-14T23:47:00.002-04:00

I was so psyched to get to draw with Taylor McKimens and Ted Gahl a couple of months ago. That's sort of the drawing equivalent of getting to shoot free throws with Michael Jordan.

New Art

2011-03-04T00:39:00.001-05:00

Most of this work is completely new, some of it is reworked.

Studio Visit: Bill Donovan (self-portrait)

2010-08-23T10:46:00.001-04:00

This is the garage I work in. Straight Sexy, haha.

What can I say?

I like art a lot. I guess that's obvious. This has high-gloss acrylic on it, so its too shiny to photograph well. If you like my photos, then you like it raw anyways.

I like seeing what other people are up to, but it feels uncomfortable to expose myself. The way I'm going bald looks like a double mohawk, you can't take the punk out of the boy. I did have a mohawk once, as a dare, I gave it myself on the last day of highschool with a pair of scissors.

I've always liked to draw Laur. She's my dream girl. When I was in college I made about 50 paintings of her, and they were how I got into the painting program at the University of Iowa. When I was 21 I won a $600 fellowship from paintings of Laur, that was a lot to me back then.

Ok, so this drawing is a little weird. I made it as a way to explain why I draw old cartoons, to give it a backstory. So I drew (copied) all these old portraits, along with a couple from a J Crew catalog, and was thinking of them as the founders of a cult that worships my strange cartoons. That way my irrational predilection for drawing early Americana cartoons would be explained, but in retrospect I just made it weirder. That's where my natural talent lies anyways.

Born Under a Bad Sign; The Mentalists: Darger, Wolfli and Ramirez

2010-07-27T11:43:00.005-04:00

Three patron saints of sensitivity: Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez and Adolf Wolfli have become hugely influential; and except for Darger, paradoxically unknown. All three were questionably schizophrenic, each psyche crushed under the weight of change as their 19th century childhoods were ground to dust in the cogs of the industrial age. They all escaped a normal life, probably as a result of manipulation as much as mental illness, and spent their days toiling in bizarre expressions of self, what did it amount to? Why are they more popular then ever? Is their alienation and fantasy OUR alienation and fantasy?

We're now making 3rd or 4th generation mental illness art, it's taught in college. Previously I floated the idea that intentionally producing "crazy" art is a way to slip the system, or at least be functionally irrational in a world that increasingly demands more rational productivity. Pretending to be crazy is one of the best strategies to let other people know you wish to continue acting on your impulses, even if you are completely sane.

Rational productivity is no fun, and not really a good reason for a society to exist either; it only makes sense if there is something we all agree on apriori, which we do not. Rational productivity should be the means, not the end, but we're in a bad spot because for us its the ends, and the means is a sort of high pressure grind that feels like a nightmare version of Monopoly. No g'damned wonder we're all feverishly fantasizing about the apocalypse in the form of allegorical xombies, aka an object taking the place of our hyper-alienation and aggression.

Adolf Wolfli

Wolfli and Ramirez spent most of their adult lives in mental asylums. Bartering for colored pencils and scraps of paper, their compositions have a peculiar presence that borders on numinous as though they saw through reality right past the normal world and into some magical other place. After examining their work it's obvious they had more powerful inner lives then outer lives. Al Columbia did a wonderful satire of a guy wanting to live in a mental hospital in his comic books Pogo1 and 2.)

Martin Ramirez

Henry Darger was institutionalized on several occasions in Illinois. As an adult he worked as a janitor and dishwasher in Catholic hospitals in Chicago. Darger matches Wolfli and Ramirez in weirdness, but being on the outside he had much more access to art supplies, and employed sophisticated artistic techniques by using carbon paper to trace newspaper photos, photo enlargements to create scale shifts, and wonderfully sensitive watercolor. He created complicated, fantastical masterpieces that recall the intricacy of a Poussin frieze.

Henry Darger

The contemporary artists picking up on the spaces, formal choices, and themes of the Mentalists aren't the bottom of the barrel either, many are at the top of the heap. Abject perversity is sometimes confused as more relevant than normalcy, real normalcy is intricate and hard to pin down, is it just easier to be stupid and disgusting? What would Abraham Maslow say? Or Fritz Perls? We need a new crop of 60's style psychological leaders to emerge, and the closest thing we've got, Slavoj Zizek, is funny and interesting but he isn't doing any heavy lifting of our collective psyche. However, Slavoj Zizek has written some extremely interesting books, and gives one hell of an interview, talk about showmanship: (if you're reading this in a RSS feed and can't see the video, here's the link)

How aware are we, that by using Darger, Ramirez and Wolfli as models, we're picking up on the most articulate of the people who failed to adapt to a new world? How alienated are we? Without any believable myths what's the point of anything? There's no reason or context, there is only persistence.

Maybe we identify with Darger, Wolfli and Ramirez because they had the integrity to achieve a literally alienated life.

Where's the silver lining in this? More artists are making more work, and more interesting work then ever before in the history of humanity. More people are dealing with self-actualization, the highest set of values on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. As the information age dawns maybe we just have to be ready to change rapidly. I hope Nietzsche was wrong about the abyss staring back, that is sort of a glass is half-empty sort of thing to say, he was probably a dick.

Dan Attoe, Accretion 40

2010-06-14T15:41:00.001-04:00

Dan Attoe's newest painting will knock your brain around. He's a genius and a good friend. View Accretion 40 is in it's entirety with twenty-three photos of key details below (click on the photos to enlarge them).

Dan Attoe on Beautiful/Decay.

You can buy his new print from Iconoclast for $300.

Adders

2010-06-09T13:27:00.004-04:00

It's the practice of artists to share loosely logical, primarily intuitive ideas in private. Often these associations are the most productive, and hold the morsel of power that fuels hours of lonely work. Here are some artists I associate, because their images are built up with similar, small elements until they become biggish and masterful. One step at a time, so to draw.

Public service announcement: don't get bit by poisonous snakes, it sucks.

The Grandaddy, Archimbolo

Placers Vs. Spacers

2010-06-07T20:35:00.002-04:00

Jamie Boling holding up one of David Dunlap's catalogs, with David looking on.

David Dunlap once told me that we were both placers. Which could mean a few things, but he was talking about drawing. Placers are people who arrange pictures, sort of like a collagist. In David's and my case, we both draw a lot.

David makes a calendar by hand every month. He's been doing it for over twenty years.

About a year ago I went over to Jamie Boling's and Cece Cole's apt in Bklyn for a drawing party. Towards the end of it I chopped apart a drawing that had the illusion of deep space, and then collaged it back together so it looked convoluted and flat, and seeing it made me really happy. However, it wasn't too sophisticated, and at the time I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Placers think of the working surface of a drw/painting as something flat. And that flat thing has other things on it. The main motivation of this kind of art is too make a picture using associative logic. Like if you put a beaver and Pamela Anderson, people are going to think about dirty jokes. If you put a President/Prime Minister and screaming mothers covered in blood holding dead babies, explosions and corpses in uniforms, people will think about war. If you put both of those groups together, people will think about American culture.

You could have Count Chocula and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Suddenly Count Chocula becomes a racially charged cartoon. You could have Count Chocula and Frakenberry, and then people will reminisce about cereal from the 1980's. You could have two totally invented characters, and then it's harder to understand what the artist is saying (that's my problem right now.).

These are pretty simple examples, it can get complicated, and the meaning of an image shifts. Time changes the way an image is perceived, sometimes changing meaning completely. Having the meaning change doesn't mean the the emotional punch goes away. For instance, Sarah Palin is a totally loaded image right now. Depending on what she does in the future, people may have forgotten about her, feel horrible about her (i.e. she starts a nuclear holocaust), or great (i.e. she turns the country into a capitalist paradise where obese people ride around in levitating chairs like the people in Wall-e).

Some placers:

Spacers are a totally different breed of cat. They are aiming at a complete picture. Where the surface disappears in the illusion of one type or another of space. The motivation for these artists is so broad it's hard for me to put a finger on. Most of the time, it has something to do with recreating reality through the filter of the artist's vision. Which means that they are asserting their metaphysical value judgments through visual language.

I don't really know why I picked the examples below, except that they follow one logic of space, and I perceive this intuitively.

Some spacers

Tom Sanford

Aaron Johnson

Al Columbia

Rachel Niffenegger

David Jien

2010-04-22T18:00:00.001-04:00

This guy can f'in draw son. (His blog.)

Cue Foundation - PAINTALLICA SPEAKS

2010-04-21T16:02:00.001-04:00

V. Utilizing Unity for Success: The Artist Collective
Tuesday, April 27^th, 2010, 6:30-8:00pm
Speakers: SKYDIVE, Dos Pestaneos, and Paintallica
Moderated by: Jennifer Dudley of Ad Hoc Vox
The essence of why collectives are formed dates back as far as the Ancient Greeks, but in fact many of their benefits in a contemporary context are often understated. As we are certainly in an era where collaboration is tantamount to one’s potential success, both creatively and professionally, CUE will host a candid discussion on the the artist collective. Topics will include being the potential benefits and challenges that being part of a collective can bring. Aside examining other collectives as a guide, there will be an in-depth look at how to find, join or form your own collective, and the different avenues they can take. In general, the discussion will aim to have artists realize the benefits of leaving the ~~solidarity~~ solitude of the studio and participating in a working society of fellow artists with a common drive.
Cost: $5.00 for non-members, FREE for CUE members.

Moderator: Jennifer Dudley
www.adhocvox.org

Bill Donovan and (maybe) Dan Attoe, Paintallica
http://www.paintallica.com/

Sasha Dela, SKYDIVE
http://www.theskydive.org/

Hope Hilton & Scotty Lawrence, Dos Pestaneos
http://www.dospestaneos.com/main.html

David Dunlap, Paintallica member, outside his leviathan of a show at the CUE in 2009.

Mustang Saaaaallllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

2010-03-25T10:37:00.000-04:00

You can see pics of the TCB show Kate Smith and I curated, "Mustang Sally," at TCB in Melbourne Australia if you go to Kate's blog.

Misaki Kawai is a Pretty Cool Artist

2010-03-02T11:17:00.001-05:00

Misaki Kawai's website Such great colors, and everything is a lot of fun!

A R T T H E O R Y, Eddie Martinez

2010-02-21T10:06:00.002-05:00

Is the obsession with new technique, or to put it in other words - doing something "your own way that only you can do" (there are other problems with this now that I think of it), the dying gasp of modernism's focus on formalism? The good side of this is, being who you are - working towards your strength...

Does either the literal object or the psychological/mythical/narrative object have to win? Can they both be strong?

If the ideas are there, can't people just work in ways that are tried and true? I mean that's what Eddie Martinez does, and everyone seems to like him.

Short Interview Eddie Martinez did with Interview Magazine.

Donald Baechler

2010-02-20T16:51:00.001-05:00

Donald Baechler in his studio in New York from Lars Bohman Gallery on Vimeo.

Donald Baechler seems to be one of the major catalysts behind a lot of artists. Four I can think of off the top of my head are Taylor McKimens, Brian Belott, Brendan Cass, and Wes Lang. Mr. Baechler seems to have some sort of genius for spawning talented protege.

Taylor McKimens Studio Visit
Brian Belott Studio Visit

They all seem to work in a similar way when you get past the surface. I mean all their work looks completely different - and they are all incredibly talented and interesting artists with mature visions. But the way they build the work seems to be similar. These guys build a background that is varied, has interesting color and texture, then they lay protagonist type "characters" on top. What that character is varies considerably too, but it's there.

If you didn't know to look for it, you would never see it. Donald Baechler also seems to inspire a lot of love from everyone I talk too, they all like him a lot. I think these guys have figured how to make paintings that are paintings, and all of them avoid the theoretical and the egocentric. Pretty amazing crew.

Donald Baechler's Website
Taylor McKimens's Website
Brian Belott's Website

Brendan Cass in his studio in New York from Lars Bohman Gallery on Vimeo.

Nice Blog Post about my 3-person show in LA - thanks Treiops

2010-02-09T09:17:00.000-05:00

Bill's show at Artillery and Ammo with Maureen Shields and Patrick Haemmerlein.

Tiny Tim

2009-12-26T00:39:00.032-05:00

I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single. - Tiny Tim

Tiny Tim was born in Manhattan on April 12, 1932 as Herbert Khaury, and raised in the Washington Heights section of that burrough by his Lebanese Father and Jewish Mother, who both worked in garment factories. His bedroom was filled with fan magazines and records. He was an unhappy, withdrawn kid, who lived in a fantasy world of glamour. As an adult he attempted to have a childrens' television show, but distrusted children and claimed they reminded him of his youth.

Tiny Tim's career peaked in 1968 when he had a huge hit album called "God Bless Tiny Tim." Tiny Tim's second big album was dryly called "Tiny Tim's Second Album."

Pathologically honest, Tim lacked the filters that stop "normal" people from embarrassing themselves, and as Tim's career diminished in the 1980s and 90s he provided a lot of great interviews, many of which are on youtube. In the 90's he was performing in community centers, mall parking lots, and high schools. Yet Tiny maintained a odd variety of dignity and was eminently entertaining, a true troubadour, a walking, crooning, weird looking antithesis of a Pop Star. He was at once repelling and compelling, and this effect was amplified by his otherworldly openness.

He professed truth and love, wrote poems about putting down arms, but was pro-war in Vietnam. He had a keen sense of himself, and was willing to put on elaborate, hysterical jokes like his cover of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" While also displaying a level of naivete that is confounding in interviews, especially this one with Howard Stern. He was one of the most effeminate male pop stars in the 60's and 70's, but he staged a record breaking television audience for his wedding to his first wife, Miss Vicky, on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1969. After the wedding Tiny purchased two adjacent houses, and the bride and groom would visit each other when he wasn't on tour. There is the quality of a freak show about Tiny Tim, but you get the sense that he is (was) aware of his affect and somehow using it to his benefit - in fact in the 1980's he toured with a circus.

When Howard Stern interviewed him, Tiny claimed to eat mostly by drinking spaghetti sauce directly from the jar, and occasionally munching on sunflower and pumpkin seeds covered in BBQ sauce. He wore adult diapers because he liked the soft feel of the diaper against his skin, and also because he didn't like washing his underwear. He is rumored to have taken eight baths a day when at home, and to have bought cosmetics and lotions by the case.

But there was another side, beside the dysfunctional, underdeveloped adult ego, and that side must have been very cunning. There is evidence that he was capable of very shrewd manipulations when it came to his own interests. (I have heard that same thing said about Daniel Johnston with his combo of mental illness and fame.) As an example of his cleverness: Tiny Tim became popular in the sixties when everyone was trying to be laid back and cool, but Tiny Tim struck a strange pose by using the manners of someone born in the 1800s. This politeness made the laid back coolness of the other people on tv and in music that much more dramatic, and IMDB.com said it "elucidated the zeitgeist of the era."

Tiny Tim knew his stuff when it came to music, and had a complete command of popular American music back to the age of sheet music and vaudeville. He often prefaced his performances like a musicologist, with a little lecture on the history of the song he was about to sing. I find myself doing the same little introduction with my drawings, and empathize with the autistic professorial vibe of Tiny Tim.

At 19 Tiny was brought to a church and was a devout Christian for the rest of his life. One source said he started praying at Midnight everyday - the reason being that Midnight is the official start of the day and he wanted to put God first. Many of his notebooks are annotated with little exclamations about his faith in Jesus Christ. This is the type of sincere, private gesture that gives the rest of his antics such gravitas, it's hard to doubt him, there is some inner consistency to his life despite the thick veneer of weirdness.

(If you are looking at this blog post in the email feed, and can't see the video below - click this link)

Tiny Tim died in 1996 backstage after singing Tiptoe through the Tulips in Minneapolis, and is buried in that town. You can read the text from the liturgy booklet at his funeral. You get the feeling that Tiny Tim left a trail of good vibes in his wake.

and Something Funny

and PAINTALLICA

Click here to see the PAINTALLICA slideshow at Country Club Projects. I loved LA!! (Deryke look at pic 38 - you make a cameo)

Three Female Painters, Katy Schneider, Amy Bennett, and Sara Fletcher

2009-12-17T12:06:00.006-05:00

Katy Schneider

Katy Schneider, Profile, Oil on Panel, 12 x 12", 1995

Katy Schneider, Bea, Oil on Panel, 6 x 4", 1999

Katy Schneider, Basement, Oil on Panel, 10 x 12", 1997

Katy Schneider was a big influence on me in college, because I worked at a gallery in Northampton Massachusetts called Wm Baczek Fine Arts where Katy was in a lot of group shows. Her paintings have an internal logic that is very convincing and pleasing to look at. Her color choices are so mundane, but somehow they are both sophisticated and almost dirty, I have always admired her ability to use color like that. I remember Katy talking about her paintings, and the one surprising thing she said that stuck with me through the last 10 years is that one of her favorite painters was Vuillard.
Katy Schneider's website

Amy Bennett

Amy Bennett, Cabin Fever, 18 x 48", 2009

Amy Bennett, Shootout, 14 x 22", 2009

Amy Bennett, Evening News, Oil on Panel, 8 x 10", 2009

I just found this painter via the Internet today, but was struck by the solidity of the forms in her paintings. I read her about page, and she makes models, and then paints from the model, so that sort of explains the helicopter viewpoint, and the ability to simultaneously simplify and solidify the forms in the paintings. Some of the paintings looks a little formulaic, but there are several amazing paintings that start to touch on narrative and have a real sense of experience and warmth. Some of the paintings remind me of one of the great Northampton realists, Scott Prior.
Amy Bennett's Website

Sara Fletcher

Sara Fletcher, Rest, Oil Paint, 2004

Sara Fletcher, Self-Portrait with Kitchen and Plant, Oil Paint, 2008

Sara Fletcher, Journey, Oil Paint, 2006

Sara Fletcher went to school at the University of Iowa at the same time I did, and she was always making strong work. What I think is special about these paintings is the almost imperceptible luminescence that sort of leaks out of everything. They feel very light and airy, but at the same time use several interesting conventions to indicate solid form - like facets which are the indicators of light.
Waiting to hear back from Sara to see if she has a website.

Collaborations with Jamie Boling, Cece Cole, and Bill Donovan

2009-12-09T13:27:00.004-05:00

We drew these in a church.

In Williamsburg Brooklyn.

One night, after walking a lot, and eating at a place called Bill's Burgers, and seeing if a show was open at Renwick Gallery - we missed it.

Then we went to the church in Brooklyn and drew these.

Jamie, Cece, and I are going to be in a show together in Richmond VA at Transmission. It opens next week. Click here.

Logs

2009-12-03T23:43:00.002-05:00

I am drawing logs in preperation to starting some landscape paintings.

Installing David Dunlap's Show at CUE

2009-11-11T01:51:00.002-05:00

Opening is Thursday evening around 6pm, at the CUE foundation, on 25th St., between 10th and 11th Avenues.

This is going to be one helluva show!

Backwards

2009-10-17T22:07:00.006-04:00

I got clued into some spiritual stuff that helped me straighten out my head when I read Eckhart Tolle's book the Power of Now.

Then I read Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections; and that really helped me a lot, because stuff I thought I was alone on - or confused about, he was pretty clear about.

Then I read Fritz Perls, who offered Gestalt Therapy, which was a neat way for me to conceptualize the relationship between Jung and Tolle.

Now I am reading about Kierkegaard, and he clarifies some of Jung's positions on religion.

I guess I have to read Hegel.

Those guys did Dialectics, not Dianetics.

Then Plato, writing about his teacher Socrates. Whom Kierkegaard says lived an ironic life... Sounds tricky ;)

Then cave paintings, just kidding about the cave paintings.

A couple of new ones - Bill Donovan

2009-10-02T20:16:00.004-04:00

I love this anonymous painting from the National Gallery of Art, the National Gallery calls it "The Letter," and it's dated around 1825. Some parts of it are sophisticated and some parts are absolutely terrible. This image is a composite I made from both the normal image, and the negative.
I made a study of the painting, it's pencil on paper - 8 x 10 inches. I think I am going to make a painting as well. I really like this image.
Here is another pancake ghost person. This is pencil on paper, 8 x 10 inches. This one isn't as good as the last one, but I am trying to just keep working non-stop so I can build a body of work that looks good for a show + gives me somewhere to go and mature with another body of work.

Color Wheels

2009-09-24T02:29:00.005-04:00

Tonight in watercolor we did an introduction to color lesson. I painted these two color wheels before class to help illustrate two types of color mixes.

This one is pre-industrial, and the colors are old colors. Cobalt blue, Vermillion, and a deep yellow. Color wheels are mixed from three primaries a red, blue, and yellow.

This color wheel is made from laboratory, or modern, colors. Cyan, Magenta, and Lemon Yellow. These colors mix into really nice secondary colors, and you have a bigger range in what they can do, but if you want your paintings to look like art-history you better stand clear of these. Also refered to by printers and computer people as CMYK, for C = Cyan, M = Magenta, Y = Yellow, and K = Black, with white coming from the transparent application of the colors on white paper.

Both wheels have a ring around the outside of the main color in each section mixed with white, and the inner section is the main color mixed with its complementary color to desaturate it.

Bill's Year in Review 2008 - 09

2009-09-14T03:06:00.004-04:00