An introduction to colour (Part four)

Day four

Local colour

Looking at local colour allowed students to test out their new mixing skills. In order to make sure there was a direct link between the sessions undertaken in the studio and what they would do outside, a particular set of colour relationships were to be explored. After all this was Leeds in Autumn; cold, dark and overcast. It was unlikely there would be fantastic saturated colour experiences on offer, so students were directed to those ubiquitous patches of drab that at that time seemed to swathe the city. The 70s were it seems to me much greyer. There had been power-cuts and gloom seemed to penetrate everywhere. As you entered the college in those days a single light bulb would be used to cast a yellow glow over the Vernon Street hallway, a space now suffused with cool designer lighting.

The students are told to take their paints, palettes, drawing boards and paper out into the streets of Leeds and to find situations where small amounts of highly saturated colour could be found surrounded by large amounts of different neutrals.  Sometimes we would ask them to use paper frames to help with selection and to ‘abstract’ the colour from the busy world of happening life. This meant that we could get them to look at abstract strips of colour. A strip might start with the greyed out orange of a brick-wall, continue over a yellow grey Yorkshire stone pavement, move over the sharp yellow of a painted no parking line into the cool black-blue of a newly tarmacked road. We were also asking students to look at shadows, so there might be the violet shadow of a road sign breaking into the grey orange of the wall, or edging into the yellow grey pavement.

After a morning of attempting to paint these moments of urban beauty, the afternoon was often spent adjusting these to give more control and depth of application. A glaze might be used to deal with a shadow and compared to a straight mix. These images were never very large. Probably on average A4 or smaller, each A1 sheet would have a few selected images. Perhaps two strips of neutral colours and a square patch of grey with a red hot spot.

Looking back now its interesting think that we never thought twice about sending students out with great cumbersome drawing boards. When I went back to work on foundation this year to do some drawing, all the students were working directly in notebooks or on A4 sheets. In the 70s and 80s this would be seen as an avoidance of the problem and unprofessional. Because it was difficult, we would at other times get students to develop painting and drawing kits for outside work. 

(At some point I will look at the importance of trips and going out to work at places such as Meanwood Valley, Buckden, Otley Chevin or Newly Quarry)

It was about this time of course that imperial sizes were being replaced by metric. I can’t remember exactly which year but it seemed that one year all the student lockers were fine and the next they were too small and portfolios wouldn’t fit. Imperial portfolios would fit under an average sized student’s arm, but the new metric A1 size was too big for that and students really struggled with them, the idea of having a handle set just below the top not coming into fashion for a few years. As always with change it takes a few years for people to work out how to adapt to it. For several years when these new sizes came in we had to adapt. We developed a welded handle that could be fitted under the base of these new large portfolios, a single length that would go under one side and fold over to make a handle on the other side. The square section was then wrapped in cloth to make a handle. The welding shed was in the yard between the Vernon Street and Rossington Street buildings and seemed to be Patrick’s own private space. There was probably more brazing done though than welding, (always oxyacetylene gas welding, never electric arc) brazing was much more aesthetic. The warm colours of the brass rods were perfect for what we wanted, Patrick inducted me into the welding shed by if I remember teaching me to braze together some small measuring devices I was then making. I digress yet again I’m afraid.

Sometimes of course it would rain and if so we were restricted to the studios. We would set a similar problem, but this time perhaps we would look at tints. The studios had white walls, there was white paper everywhere and each type of paper was a different white, the neon lighting systems were slightly warm toned and with the large windows letting in daylight you could easily spend an afternoon watching two different types of pale tints moving across a curve of white cartridge paper.

In order to facilitate this we would get students to quickly create white paper forms over the walls and floors before they began the task of colour selection. Mixing tints would get us involved with discussing the uses of different types of white. Lead white was still used then and we preferred it for this session, zinc white was translucent and better for glazing. Flake white becomes transparent with age and is stiffer in the mix. If a student had to choose an alternative to lead we would suggest titanium white, it had less of a yellow tendency. Zinc white had traditionally been used for highlights because it dried very slowly and so worked well in the top layers of a painting, but because of its transparent nature you would often mix in lead white or similar to give it body. These arcane conversations would soon disappear with the introduction of standardised colours. I’m very aware that when I walk into the present day Fine Art studios it’s obvious that the student painters have never had this type of exposure to mixing and thinking about paint. It’s often handled with a crude sensibility as if applying emulsion for the house wall. Getting control of an exact tint and mixing colours for colour theory related reasons is a rarity, it is more likely that the reasons for colour choice will be conceptually driven. I sometimes feel like a dinosaur talking to young painters about how their colours can be made to move and shift by adjusting various contrasts.

We didn’t always use paint to mix colour with and oil pastels provided us with a cleaner and easier way in. We used them to have a go at all of the above mixing and then in one specific session based on colour/light observation, which was always done outside on sunny days, they would come into their own.

Turner was still very influential and in particular the way that when he used paint he dissolved the world into light. It felt at that time as if he was far more important than the Impressionists and that they had simply followed in his footsteps.

After looking at Turner and Monet in particular, students would be asked to develop a scan type gaze across any given area. They were not to focus on edges, they had to practice ‘seeing’ the whole light/colour mix. Then using the oil pastels, and lots of extra white ones, they would recreate the experience as if a shaft of light was moving diagonally down through the image. All the marks would take the same direction, the colour drawing knitting itself into the surface, white flecks binding these images together as the blurred shapes of whatever was out there came slowly into being. Staff would repeat constantly, “Remember it’s not what it is, it’s where it is and how does one patch of colour change as it meets another”.  This was a really hard thing to do. You had to be a very good draftsman that knew how to locate things quickly, so that as you developed the colour surface actual underlying proportions and relationships were maintained. If not all you managed to get were sloping distorted shapes of messy colour with lines running through that made it look as if it was raining. When these coloured drawings did work they could be stunning, but this was a rarity and in my mind often achieved by students destined to become illustrators and not painters. Oil pastels were another medium that seemed to go out of fashion, I don’t see them around much anymore; perhaps they were replaced by oil sticks.

There was once an attempt to use pointalist techniques and students were sent out to build up surfaces of coloured dots in response to selected views of the city, From what I remember it was a disaster, the scale was all wrong, the control not there, students were trying to copy an image in their heads of all those Seurat paintings they had seen in reproductions, so nothing fresh or discovered anew was done, just cheap Montmartre copies.