A Sketching Resolution

(Early) Tuesday Tips & Tricks

The holidays are famous for taking up new hobbies, learning a new skill or proclaiming that the next year will be (somehow for the better) different. Perhaps you have some time off from your work, picked up a new device (as a gift or otherwise), or the New Year presents an opportunity to "start something new." With the looming prospect of a failed diet plan or an underused gym membership, allow me to present another resolution for the New Year that will not cost anything and could last longer than six months. All you need is your favorite sketching pencil, pen, marker, paint brushes or anything you like and something to draw on (such as a notepad, sketchpad, whiteboard, or even a digital tablet device).

It's called Urban Sketchers (USK) and we are a local community of artists who come together with a common interest of sketching in urban settings, socializing with like-minded artists and learning some new tips along the way. We practice sketching various scenes that often include interesting architecture, landscaping, people, animals and sketching anything else in cities, towns and villages in which they live, work or have traveled. We are a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to raising the awareness of artistic storytelling and educational value of drawing on location, promoting its practice and connecting people from around the globe.

Our local chapter, USk Chicago, meets at a different location in and around Chicagoland (so you see, we already have a support group!) which we call "Let's Sketch Chicago" and it is a great way to meet other like-minded sketchers and learn new tips and shortcuts. If this sounds like fun and you would like to check out the Urban Sketchers' scene, simply go to the following pages and look at some of the examples. And come to one of our next "Let's Sketch" outings and see what fun it is to meet real strangers from a Facebook group. We're really not that strange :)

We have this weekly series of posts called "Tuesday Tips & Tricks" where one new tip, trick or shortcut is shared with visual details at this link:

Urban Sketchers Chicago Blog: http://urbansketchers-chicago.blogspot.com

Here is where the bulk of our postings, shared sketches and discussions happen:

Urban Sketchers Chicago Facebook: Urban Sketchers Chicago
This is also where you can join our group if you are so inclined.

And the following links are more places where you can see our sketches:

Urban Sketchers Chicago Instagram: #uskchicago

Urban Sketchers Chicago Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/USkChicago

Follow up in Twitter: @USk_Chicago 

Color - Part 1

Tuesday Tips & Tricks

Let me give you the good news first: color can be learned! Great colorists of the past – Turner, Delacruix, van Gogh – used the science of color. Their color is no accident or chance.

There are numerous theories and approaches to color out there. Many are helpful and can be used for practical purposes with great success. We will discuss one of them - Color Theory by Johannes Itten. Itten is regarded as a father of modern color theory. Some agree and some argue, but the bottom line is that Itten came up with a system to make using color manageable.

In this TTT post we will look at preliminaries, color equations and a color wheel.

Going back to centuries past we want to mention Isaac Newton who discovered that visible light can be split in color bands using a prism and Count Rumford who discovered that those bands can be combined again to make something close to white light. (More on visible spectrum in Wikipedia here.)

Then it was then discovered that an object appears a certain color when white light strikes it because the color of the object is reflected and the remaining light rays are absorbed.

These are fundamentals. More interesting discoveries were made, but what is important for us here is the discovery of subtractive primary colors: red, yellow and blue. This is big! Everything else flows from here. In ideal world adding any two of these primary colors produces a secondary color:

Red + Yellow = Orange

Yellow + Blue = Green

Red + Blue = Purple

Basic Theory – Color Equations and Triads

In basic color theory the primary color cannot be mixed or made from other colors. All the other colors can be created from the primaries. Our color equations look like this:

Note 3 primaries, 3 secondaries, and 6 tertiary colors. They are organized into 3 basic types of triads (primary triad, secondary triad and 2 tetriary triads). These triads make a complete color wheel of 12 colors. If we take these colors and position them in a circle, we will get a rudimental color wheel!

Now this begins to look like something we have seen before. How many of us have an object like this among our art supplies, probably stuffed in the back somewhere because it made irritatingly little sense?

Perhaps now it will make a little more sense! Dig it out and look at it, there is some really neat information on it!

We will stop now, but with return with next TTT chapters on color and discuss color schemes.