SPRING Term week 9
Date: 11th & 12th March REMINDER, NO CLASS NEXT WEEK (18th March)
Tutor: Rob
Harbour House : Art Studio
Free Painting
what to bring
Your usual painting materials and your current project.
THIS Week:
Working on your current project.
colour of the Week
A selection of ‘white’ watercolour papers,
WHITE
An interesting one!
In light it is all the colours of the rainbow. In watercolour it is the colour of the paper!
In watercolour white certainly is not achieved by mixing all your colours together; the colour achieved by trying that hardly bears thinking about. Does this make ‘Watercolour White’ a covert primary? White paint cannot be mixed and does require a pigment!
There are white paints available:
Lead white. Toxic, doesn’t work in watercolour anyway.
Chinese white (aka zinc white). Not toxic, but doesn’t work in watercolour due to lack of opacity.
Titanium white. Best of the bunch, but still pretty ineffectual.
The best way to achieve a clear white in watercolour is to carefully select the paper, and reserve it as the colour ‘white’!
‘homework’ challenge
Review what you have learned about your own paint colours that you have. If you haven’t done it yet, make colour charts and notes about the qualities ( granulating etc) of any paints you own that you are not familiar with.
Are there any you have that you never use/ have no intention of ever using? We are thinking that in the next class we could (March 25th) we could have a Paint Swap/Sale. A colour you do not like might be someone else’s favourite!
Bring any tubes you no longer want along to class. Before bringing them
Mark the tubes with your name. You could stick a piece of masking fluid on the tube with your name on
Mark the tube with either an amount you would like. Don’t be too British, it might be nice to get a contribution to the paint you will buy instead; you could check typical prices on eBay.
Mark as ‘Free’ if you are happy that someone else will use it rather that it sit drying up in your box.
We could take the collected tubes to the other classes and return the unclaimed tubes in the last class of term.
Quote of the week
“Because of its link with light, white has laid deep roots in th human psyche and, like anything divine can simultaneaously inspire awe or instil terror in the human heart.”
Kassia St Clair ‘The Secret Lives of Colour’ p39
ArTIST of the week
‘White Painting (Three panel)’ Rauschenberg Latex paint on canvas.
Rauschenburg
Rauschenburg produced 5 works in 1951, each consisting of number of panels, each of which was painted entirely in white paint.
When they were first exhibited they were considered shocking, and, unsurprisingly, a cheap swindle. More shocking is that they were also considered remarkable!
To be fair Rauschenberg himself saw them primarily as a concept; so unconcerned was he about the actual paintings that he allowed them to be repainted by other people to preserve their purity. ( Did he not think to do them in ‘watercolour’ and just leave the paper white?)
We do love that he is said to have once referred to the works as clocks, saying that if one were sensitive enough to the subtle changes on their surfaces one could tell what time it was and what the weather was like outside.
CLASS NOTICEBOARD : Any new items to be added? please email details and they will be added by the following class.