This week we focused on colours. The first task we were given was to make a colour wheel in RGB colours. I was given a blob of red, yellow and blue paint and I had to mix them together to get the colours in between. I found the process of mixing the colours quite fun and interesting as I have never made a colour wheel before. It was interesting to see how the colours mixed together and to learn about the ratios of what is needed in each colour. Creating this colour wheel has given me a deeper knowledge of colours and how they mix together.
The six swatches next the the colour scheme is my personal colour scheme- the colours I am drawn to the most. I have always been connected to the colours blue and orange, however I have never mixed colours before to make these colours. I am happy with the colours I have produced.
After mixing these colours I was sent out to observe colour in the building and create the colour with the paint.
These are the 4 images I took:
I focused on the blues, yellows and reds in these images. I found it quite hard to get the precise colour of each of these spaces as mixing colour is something I have never practiced before. This is what I produced:
These images are very abstract as I wasn't focused on the details, only on the colours. For a first try I think these are okay, the blue in the bottom right image is too dark and the yellow needs to be a bit darker but it was a good attempt.
I think, in my own time, I am going to keep practicing mixing colour as I think it would be beneficial for me to fully understand colour and how it is made and where it comes from- especially if I work with colour in my photography in the future.
These are the colour palettes I was able to create online on a website called Adobe Colour. I used all of the different tools to create these palettes based on my favourite colours to work with. I used the monochromatic, analogous, triad, complementary, split complementary, double split complementary, square, compound and shades.
I found this process really therapeutic as I find working with colours like this very relaxing. I am happy with the colour schemes I have created online as they are all aesthetically pleasing to me and my has helped me explore my personal colour palettes further.
Adobe Color also allows you to extract colour palettes from images. I did this for four images and then I chose two of my favourite colour palettes from the selection I was given:
This image is one I took in the National Gallery in London. I thought this would be an interesting first experiment with the extract tool as it is a colourful image with blues, reds, creams and golds. After finding the colour palettes for this image you notice more colours and more shades which you generally wouldn't have noticed at first glance like the orange in the second colour palette and the pale blue in the first colour palette.
Again, this is an image I have taken. This time it is the view from the top of Rhaglan Castle in Wales. I really like the composition of this image and the line between the blue of the sky and the green of the fields. Those blues and greens stand out the most in this image which is why it is interesting to see the that the colour palettes include the browns and the greys in the image too. It makes me want to look into all my previous work and make colour palettes for all of them because it does make me look deeper into the image, more than i usually would. I normally look for textures in images but after this I think I might focus both on colours and textures (but mostly colours now because this is fun!).
This image was taken by one of my favourite photographers, Alessio Albi. I was drawn to this image because of the colour scheme- I find it very appealing. I choose to extract the colours from this image as I want to understand what colours and shade of those colours are used as I want to be able to use them in my work in the future. Also add the pale shades of orange to my personal colour palette.
The last image I have decided to extract colours from I was another image from Alessio Albi- my favourite image of his! When I first look at this image I didn't really take into consideration the different shades of greys and blues but now that the colour palettes has shown me that there are multiple shades of each colours it makes the image more interesting and gives it more depth.
Lastly, the final tool I experimented with on Adobe Color was the gradient tool:
I find these gradients very satisfying to look at, as I love the way that the colours just fade into one another. I also like that for each spot of colour Adobe Color gives the exact details of the colours so you can make the colour yourself or find it online or on Photoshop etc.
The blended gradients reminds me of the blended colour wheel I created with paint. The difference between the two is that online it was so much quicker and hardly no work at all to create it however, painting it yourself and mixing your own colours takes more time and concentration and accuracy.
There are positives to both online and in the studio (and negatives too!). I feel like it's better to mix colours yourself in the studio as you learn and understand what colours are needed to make other colours and what colours match more- contrast and complementary.
I found mixing the paints myself more fun than online but the online version was more relaxing. Also it was much easier to use the online colour palette as extracting colour that way is more accurate than mixing it myself.
I'm going to continue to use both of these techniques a mix of online and offline as my work can be both online and offline. I think that in the future I am going to be using colour more and focusing on the effect of colour in images in my depth.
I might even put up a colour wheel on my studio wall!
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