I had a hard time with this because I found a little bit of black goes a long way when you are mixing with a color to make it darker. I spend a lot of time trying to get good looking dark colors it was frustrating at times. I also realized after the fact that I need to use the same color all the way across when doing the symbols inside of the solid colors. I would go back and do that right the next time and work more on creating a good blended color strip for each used color.  

This exercise got me a lot more comfortable with mixing paints. Both for finding a color, as well as for recreating a color that I had made in the past. I’m still trying to work on my consistency, and I’m not very happy with my shape exercises.  Acrylic is feeling more and more manageable as I use it though, so that’s helpful.

I  was not able to get a ruler for this assignment because my sister is visiting and had my car all day, which had my supplies in it.  I ended up just cropping out and resizing the squares so they look more uniform.  I am still having issues getting a nice shade of purple but I think it worked out a bit better in the top photo.  It was nice seeing how all the colors interacted with one another but it was a bit tedious doing all the mixing.

Color Effects

Black/White Value Scale Value Scale Color (below)

Lower Intensity

The first problem I had was that I had to make black with a mix of colors. After googling online, I chose the Pthalo Blue and the Burnt Sienna to make a cobalt black. The only problem was it had that tinge of blue so my black and white scales have a blue grey appearance. The same goes for the rest of the exercises, as I had to add that same cobalt black to make the different colors and mixed I needed. I do like the way the color effects came out, I like how the cobalt black made the red and blue shapes stand out. Though black isn’t on the paint supply list we had, I might go out and buy some so I have something to work with that wont have a blue or a brown look to it.

In some occasion mixing of colors that I have at home turned out differently from the template shown us in the class materials. It was fascinating to watch how colors change when combined. I’ve learned a lot about the colors and how they behave.

The black to white scale was not very successful. As I was going from black to white and approaching white block, my second to last block was too dark and when I attempted to add white, it created a messy block. It was easier to make this scale with a pencil in my drawing class. I don’t have any experience with painting with acrylics so I had to go online and watch some videos about how to do this. Maybe it might be useful to insert the information about the process of mixing acrylic paints into classroom materials.

I found the first painting the easiest because I’ve done the same thing in other classes more than I can count. The second I found the most fun. But the color I captured on camera are different than in person. I waited too long to photograph them so I didn’t get to use natural lighting like I prefer. In the third, the complementary colors are to the left and right while the neutral is in between them.

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1-2)

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1-4)

It was fun experimenting with how adding colors (whether black, white or others) changes the color you start with.   It is obvious how black and white will, but I found it a good reminder how even just a little bit of black can change a color so much, while it took more white to produce the same change.   The most interesting and frustrating to me was mixing the complementary colors.   I didn’t find myself getting the same nice neutrals that were shown on the lesson.   My colors looked pretty gross.   I put some white in the cooler tones and the colors started to look a little better.   Maybe if I added white to all of the colors to start with, I would have liked the end results better.