Here is Week 3 of the Documented Life Project – Journal.
See more details about this week at Art to the 5th.
The Challenge: Colour Wheel
Prompt: “I found I could say things with colour and shape that I couldn’t say any other way…” -Georgie O’Keeffe
I wasn’t intimidated by the challenge this week. I like colour. I am pretty sure I learned the colour wheel in high school art class, it may have been earlier though. I used all the colours in my spread this week, but didn’t include an actual colour wheel. Many people did colour wheel mandala designs, someone did an umbrella that looked like a colour wheel. I thought that was great. Anyway, I went with a ribbon of colours that stood out on a black gesso background. The ribbon reminded me of a race in Nintendo 64’s Mario Kart that I played as a teenager. Normally, I’d be Yoshi, not Toad as seen below, and I wouldn’t be in first place because I would have gotten eaten by the big dog head at least a few times.
The prompt this week went well with the challenge. I had no idea who Georgia O’Keeffe was though. Having regrettably dropped art after the tenth grade, I know very little about North American artists…other than the Group of Seven of course. I’m pretty sure every Canadian curriculum covers the Group of Seven. Anyway, Georgia O’Keeffe was famous for her use of colour and close-ups of blossoms. Most of her work was with oil paints, which I’m not going near! Her early painting was done in watercolour which is much easier for me to handle, so that’s what I went with for the ribbon. I was also interested to learn O’Keefe suffered from Macular Degeneration (AMD) later in life. AMD is the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation. It’s basically the loss of central vision that occurs in many older adults. I would like to think O’Keeffe had a good attitude and truly loved her work because despite the AMD which is basically a requirement for drawing, she continued to draw with her blurry peripheral vision. Good for her!
The background is black gesso, with a white gesso ribbon. The colour was added to the ribbon with water colour pencils. It got really streaky which was frustrating. I’m thinking maybe gesso isn’t needed for watercolour? There’s too much texture or something. I went over that in Neocolour II crayons hoping the waxiness would fill in the textured areas and look less streaky. It helped, but you can still see the streaks. I bled the crayons onto the black gesso for the misty effect.
The quote is written in white Sakura Gelly roll, except for the word “colour” which is unactivated Neocolours. I filled the empty black space with butterflies…for I don’t know what reason. Now that I think about it, I should have done flowers. *Hello?! Georgia O’Keeffe week here!* The brighter butterflies are Sakura Moonlight Gelly roll pens. The faded butterflies are my first attempt at using metallic watercolour pencils from Derwent. They didn’t show up on the black as well as I had hoped, even when activated.
This page was frustrating and not one of my best, but I tried some new things (black gesso, metallic watercolour pencils) and I learned a lot.
Somber Scribbler 