Color Theory - Optical Mixing

In my color theory class last quarter, one of the assignments was an optical mixing project. This means putting very small dots or hatches of different colors very close together so that the eye blends them and you see a completely different color.

Because the focus of this project was on optical mixing, I didn't have to create my own image. Instead, we were allowed to use an existing image that had interesting colors. I chose to recreate a postcard for one of my favorite graphic novels, reMind. It's a fantastic story written and illustrated by Jason Brubaker. You can read the entire story online here: www.remindblog.com and you can buy both volumes of reMind on Amazon.

So here's is the finished product! I have to say that optical mixing looks pretty awesome, but I really don't like the process. It's much too tedious and scientific for me to enjoy.

Here are some process pictures to show how I built up the colors:

Sketchbook Drawings 5

For this set of sketchbook drawings, the requirement was to incorporate an overlay. These two were definitely my favorites out of the whole sketchbook. 

In the first image, I drew line drawings of different leaves on a piece of vellum (similar to tracing paper) and I glued different colored rectangles on the page beneath the vellum. These color swatches are actually leftover pieces from color mixing assignments from my color theory class. I tried to line up the green and yellow rectangles with the position of the leaves as an abstract suggestion of their actual color.

In this drawing, I used a similar approach by putting the line drawing on top but this time I used Prismacolor markers to put color underneath. I felt like an animator while doing this drawing because I had to keep flipping the vellum up and down to make sure I was lining the colors up correctly. I also tried to keep the coloring of this piece very loose.

Tightly Rendered Graphite Botanical Drawing

Since drawing class last quarter was all about trying out different techniques and materials, one of the assignments was to do a very tightly rendered graphite drawing of some sort of plant. It took a long time to build up the value in this drawing, because it had to be so tightly rendered that there wouldn't be any visible pencil strokes. The process is a little too slow and tedious for me, but I had never tried it before so I still learned a lot from it.

The first image is the structural line drawing and the second is the finished product.

Sketchbook Drawings 4

Here's some more drawings from my sketchbook for last quarter! That week we had to do analytical drawings. I decided to experiment a little bit by layering different colors for the different stages of developing a structural drawing. Then I drew with black for the final lines. I kind of count this as a turning point in my sketchbook as well. With the first six drawings, I tried to do one drawing of a man-made object and one drawing of a natural object to show the contrast in mechanical forms vs. organic forms. Here, I started to look for organic forms in man-made objects as well. I still tried to focus on the difference between organic and non-organic forms, but I didn't limit myself to one man-made thing and one natural thing.

First Pastel Still Life!

The last project for my drawing class last quarter was this color still life. I have to say, it was quite a challenge. I had only used pastel once before, but not in the way that I used it in this piece. One of the restrictions was that we had to stick to the primary colors and mix the rest. We could only use other colors at the very end if we couldn't manage to mix a certain color with the primaries. If you've used paint before, you may think no problem! However, mixing pastels is nothing like mixing paint. Rather than pre-mixing colors on palette and then applying them, with pastels, you are mixing the colors right on the paper. You also have to pay attention to the order that you layer the colors. If you don't get it right and add too many layers, then the colors get all muddy. I feel like I managed to pull it off pretty well, but it took a lot of work to figure out what I was doing. The only thing I am not as happy with in this piece is the cloth. I definitely didn't capture the folds quite right, and in my opinion it looks a bit flat. Something to improve on for next time :)

Sketchbook Drawings 3

So here's the next set of sketches from last quarter. The requirement for this week was to use pen and ink, and I don't think I did such a good job with it. It was one of the first times I used pen and ink to create a full value drawing, and I still haven't quite got the hang of it. However, I'm going to upload everything whether I like it or not because its all part of the process, good drawings, and bad.

Sketchbook Drawings 2

These are a couple more of the drawings I had to do for my sketchbook last quarter. This time the requirement was to use repetition.

Oh, I suppose I should tell you the theme of this sketchbook before I get too far into it. At the beginning of the quarter, I had to choose a certain topic to explore in my drawings. I chose to show the differences between the forms of man-made objects and natural objects. Every week I tried to pick two subjects that showed that.