"Color can overwhelm.... One must understand that when it comes to color less is often more— a lesson taught us by the masters but ignored by many artists." —Joe Singer Hovi to Paint in Pastels, 1976
In his 1926 work, the color theorist Albert Munsell stressed the concept of balance to create color harmonies and established a numerical code which is still the most widely used system for identifying color. Munsell recommended balancing hues with their complements, values with their opposite values, intensities with opposite intensities, areas of strong color balanced by weak (low-intensity) color, large areas balanced by small, warm colors balanced by cool colors. — Albert Munsell A Color Notation
these limits, you are sure to produce harmonious color. Bear in mind that color most often "goes wrong" when students without knowledge of color use too many hues. They often throw together a variety of hues, chosen at random from the color wheel. Such combinations are difficult—often impossible—to balance and unify, and even beginning students sense that something isn't working. This is the reason for limiting the palette in these first exercises to a few hues and their related lights and darks. And I encourage you to continue to limit your palette until you have wider experience with color. Having said that, I will reverse the thought and suggest that at some point, you may want to go wild with color, throwing everything together to see what happens. Buy a sheet of brightly colored paper and use every color you have on it. Create discordant color. Then try to pull it together, perhaps with dark or dull colors. You may be able to make it work—or you may like it in its discordant state! Much of contemporary art uses discordant color in very inventive ways. Let me emphasize, however, that you should attempt discordant color by design and not by mistake. Your R-mode will always perceive the difference, perhaps not immediately, but over a period of time. Ugly color is not the same as discordant color. Discordant color is not the same as harmonious color. For these first exercises, we shall concentrate on creating harmonious color, because it more readily provides basic knowledge about color. Now, to continue: 4. Notice that Degas gridded his drawing with evenly spaced horizontal and vertical guide lines, just as he gridded his dancer without color on page 157. A grid with squares about 2+1/2" will be about right for the size of your format. Try to follow Degas's thinking in his use of the grid: What points was he looking for? Note the obvious points of crossed grid lines at the elbow and at the dancer's right toe. Start with the grid, using your dark-colored pencil to lightly draw the lines. Call up your new skills of drawing: edges, spaces, relationships of angles and proportions, and
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THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN