Color Week 46 welcomes Thanksgiving. This past week I started an online class with Shari Blaukopf – Sketching Markets. As I have mentioned previously Shari has a way with color, making this class assigment a perfect homage to the colors on the Thanksgiving table. Enjoy the colors of your Thanksgiving celebration.
Hansa Yellow. Sap Green. Pyrrol Red. Transparent Orange. Naples Yellow. Permanent Alizarin Crimson. ++
Color Week 45 is about a ‘Genuine’ color. After much research I have discovered that a color has the designation genuine when the ‘original’ recipe is used in production. That is the case with Rose Madder Genuine discussed in this post. Permanent is the designation when the recipe is reworked as in Rose Madder Permanent. An excellent 2 minute clip from Winsor & Newton (WN) ‘masterclass’ is provided here as an overview of the rose madder genuine color. Only WN makes this original recipe color.
Madder has been cultivated as a dyestuff since antiquity in Central Asia and Egypt where it was grown as early as 1500 BC. Madder traces have been found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, in ancient Greece and in the ruins of Pompeii.
Natural rose madder supplied half the world with red until 1868 when madder was replaced by alizarin because it could be manufactured at a fraction of the cost.
Winsor & Newton Rose Madder Genuine is extracted from the roots of the common plant Rubia tinctorum using the original recipe, including the addition of Bergamot oil because rose madder ‘stinks’.
Winsor & Newton
Here are some examples of watercolor WN Rose Madder Genuine … and yes it does have a lovely light fragrance of bergamot!
Blush pink. Fugitive pigment. Shown here compared to other reds on my palette.
Fun Note: Winsor & Newton also makes brushes, the most notable ‘Series 7’. WN started to make the brushes at the request of Queen Victoria. The naming Series 7 was homage to Queen Victoria as her favorite number was 7.
To explore color in a different way I joined a mixed media class by Lucie Duclos. Lucie teaches virtual classes thru Winslow Art Center. She is an artist with a strong sense of design and she reuses or finds a use for every item you have collected or placed in your craft room ‘to use someday’. My class was 28 Days of Postcards: A Mixed Media Adventure. We made 28 postcards using prompts from Lucie, she also demonstrated the techniques each week. Class wrapped up this week with envelope making tutelage. Lucie has an ongoing monthly subscription class Paper Pals for those who need a monthly paper collage fix and the forum provides a world wide community for sharing paper craft. Lucie is a pro, a fun instructor and I learned something from her each session. I tried to keep my palette of mixed media to gray, black, white & gold tones just so I would have a ‘color’ perspective for this posting – Color Week 44.
Tearing. Stitching. Weaving. Rolling. Stamping. Drawing. Sewing. Layering
Lucie Duclos
Curious note: Mixed media is a term used to describe artworks composed from a combination of different media or materials. The use of mixed media began around 1912 with the cubist collages and constructions by artists such as Picasso and Braque. Mixed media became widespread as artists developed increasingly open attitudes to the media of art. Essentially art can be made of anything or any combination of things.
In January 2021 I started ‘Color Week’, a personal goal to weekly explore a color history or curiosity.
Color charts are so relaxing to create. They are typically in the colors you choose as the artist, they are used to plan a painting, or simply as gradation practice.
Own Your Encore 