An introduction to colour (Part one)

Each year on the foundation course we would rethink how colour could be introduced. Therefore there is a somewhat blurred image in my head as to how we did this. However I’ve tried to pick out what I can remember as a typical series of sessions. They might be in the wrong order, or we may well have done these things in different orders at different times.

Preparing for the first week.

Students would be asked to start collecting colour. They were to collect paper, cloth etc. that could be stuck down and to collect large and small areas of it. They were also asked to categorise their collections into the three paint primaries and their secondary mixes. These six collections had to be brought into college on the first day of colour week one. We would also ask students to choose clothing based on these same divisions. So they had to decide if they were red, orange, yellow etc. and dress accordingly. (Nb. Sometimes students would be given an individual colour to collect, tutorial group one would get red etc.)  

Day one:

Usually this would start by getting the students to move around in colour groups. Initially collecting them together by colour, we could point out how fashion was dictating preference. At that time lots of students seemed to wear blue denim, jeans were always blue then and denim shirts were common. It seems an age ago and colour selection now would of course be totally different, but this was the point we were making. I’m not sure if this ever really got through to the students though, because clothes selection is perhaps too emotionally close to home when you are that age and you don’t really want to think about the fact that all your choices are being shaped and determined by factors outside your control. 

The next stage would be to start trying to identify certain colours, students would be asked, “is that really a dark blue, should it really be classified as a violet?” Blacks and neutrals in particular were interrogated, “is that coat a green-black or a blue-black?”, “what type of grey is that?” If certain decisions were changed then students might have to join other groups, the idea being that as you start looking more carefully you start changing opinions and forming new ideas as to what things might be.

We might ask them to start looking for one particular colour, red for instance. To tune their eyes to that alone and scan the room. This was an attempt to heighten an awareness of how attention to something changes our perception, the introduction of the observer into the situation we would point out changes everything. In particular as we are going to deal with issues about light, the fact that light could be seen to behave sometimes as a particle, and at other times as a wave, was a favourite paradox and this would be an excuse to start talking about duality and the nature of attention. By looking for things, it was pointed out, we also create things.

After several different games we would reconvene and start doing things with the collected colour. Usually the students would be asked to use an A1 cartridge sheet as a background to an initial investigation of their colour resources. The first task might be to find a mid red; a red that was not moving towards either orange or violet; then to do the same with the other two primaries and finally to compare their results with a neighbour. This would take some time. Lots of questioning and debate as to where that middle was and finally of course this mid set of primaries, would never be the same as your neighbours. Nothing was stuck down at this point, students were moving around approximately one inch square bits of coloured paper.

The next step would be to get the students to stare at these selected mid primaries one at a time. First the blue. Staring with unfocused eyes for approximately two minutes at the square would induce a halo effect consisting of its optical opposite, a glowing orange. Once students could make that happen, (for some it took a bit of practice) they had to work out how to control this optical opposite by slowly directing it across and around the large sheet of white paper and then out into the room. They would be asked to consider this optical glow and ask if it was really a yellow orange and if so, was the blue they were looking at really a blue/violet?

(Some sessions would then go on to look at mixing a paint equivalent to the optical glow, but not this one)

The next part of the session, which by now might be the afternoon, dependent on how much talking the staff were doing, was a stick and paste session. Students would be asked to consider their collections. Did they think they had enough green or red etc to cover a full page? Hopefully there were enough collections to go round and bolster people dealing with let’s say violet which was always a tricky colour to collect. Before doing anything with these colours there would often be conversations as to where they were coming from. For instance lots of violets seemed to come from chocolate bars, food packaging was rarely blue but cleaning products could be.  It was a first introduction to the cultural and emotional significance of colour, but we were at this stage wanting a focus on the control and awareness of colour. The first bit of fixing would be to choose a mid primary or secondary and put it down as an indicator. The sheet would now be for instance a green or red sheet and students would now start sticking greens or reds or whatever colour they had chosen onto the sheet. However they were not to transgress boundaries. When did  red become an orange and when did a violet become a blue? When did a cool yellow become a green or a warm violet (purple) a red.? Again lots of looking and questioning as the sheets evolved. Of course what would happen was that what might initially read as a warm violet, might cool or warm even further by contrast with other types of violet colours. Colour was to be seen as something only to be found in context with its surroundings, a fact that we would look at on the next day.

At the end of the day as always there would be a crit. Each of the colour objects would go up and they would now be treated as images in their own right. Consideration as to energy pulse and rhythm would come from how light passages moved into dark. Clustering of certain types of colour could lead to certain eye movements or overall tonal value might give one image an emotional charge or drama. The colour feeling tone would be sounded of a mustard dominated yellow and compared with a baby blue pastel toned indigo shifting towards violet. The drama of one image, contrasted to the calm, soft floating quality of another. We could point out how by simply restricting themselves to one colour each, they had still been able to create a wide range of visual meanings and that colour was also dependent on compositional dynamics, quality, quantity and context.  Some students would have started with a large torn out colour from a poster perhaps and all the other pieces might be much smaller and clustered around the edges of this first selection, some students were methodical and organised their colours into similar sizes, some had moved through tonal sequences other created dramatic tonal contrast, some forms were organically grown others much more geometric. Torn edges would be compared to cut ones, subtle changes to abrupt ones. These various possibilities were picked out and then other issues such as surface would come in. A preponderance of dots perhaps (large screen printed posters etc) or a shininess or matt quality, all would be part of the visual read. The import thing was that these were being taken seriously as images and not just seen as colour exercises.

At the end of the day we would remind students they would also need their paints and a palette for the following morning.

Even choice of palette could be cause for argument. Should it be white or glass? Should it be linked to the underpainting? The answer was to of course use glass, you could slip a bit of colour underneath if you needed to mix in relation to the context the colour would eventually find itself within.