Farrow & Ball paint colours

I was intrigued to read about the British premium house paint company, Farrow & Ball, in the March 18, 2019 issue of the New Yorker. You may be able to access the article here. The author finds amusement in the aspirational nature of the company's fans.

More recently, I was delighted to get my hands on one of their sample booklets of paint colours. While other paint companies offer many hundreds of tints and shades, Farrow & Ball offers a highly-curated 148.

The company claims that the elevated price of their product is due to its very rich pigmentation, and that its depth of colour is incomparable. Should one have difficulty in deciding on just the right colour for one's breakfast room, a consultant is available for $320 an hour.

The names of the various paint colours are often fanciful, and some names imply a certain status. Here are some sample names and their descriptions from a current F & B brochure:

Blazer - a bright red that is named after the colour of the sports blazers worn at St. John's College, Cambridge.

Wevet - a delicate white with a translucent, gossamer feel, this colour is named after the old Dorset term for a spider's web.

Babouche - This cheerful yellow takes its exotic name from the distinctive colour of the leather slippers worn by men in Morocco.

Paean Black - This Georgian inspired red based black is a nod to the colour of old leather hymnals which so often included a song of praise or paean.

Dimpse - This cool grey is named after the quaint West Country dialect for the colour of twilight.

Plummett - A strong grey, named after the lead used by fishermen to weight their lines.

Rectory Red - This sophisticated red is named after the thousands of charming village houses built over the years for the clergy.

If you share my fascination with colour, check out the Farrow & Ball company website for inspiring suggestions of colour pairings, etc.

"Chromaticity", by Ptolemy Mann

If you've ever wondered about the appeal of dyeing yarn and weaving on a loom, here is a wordless two-minute video that celebrates the rhythms and visual pleasures of this ancient craft.

The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair

The basis for The Secret Lives of Colour, an NPR Best Book of 2017, is a collection of columns written by St. Clair for British Elle Decoration. She has created ten broad categories of colour and then profiled six to ten of the most interesting colours in each category.

We learn that some cultures had no words for a particular colour. The ancient Greeks did not recognize blue as a distinct colour, while Koreans have a word that distinguishes yellow-green from standard green. Russians have different words for light and dark blue. Newton's discovery of the colour spectrum eliminated white, black and brown from the discussion. Rembrandt's rich, chocolatey shadows were likely made of all the dregs on his palette. Colour was used to signify social status in many societies, while the Puritans eschewed colour altogether, as did the architect Le Corbusier.

This fascinating book draws upon art history, fashion, chemistry, and the history of commerce and trade to tell 75 most intriguing stories.  One example is "Mummy Brown", a pigment actually made from ground-up mummified bodies. It was sometimes called "Egyptian Brown", and was used in Europe between the 12th and 20th centuries.

"By the beginning of the 20th century demand was so sluggish that a single mummy might provide a paint manufacturer with pigment for a decade or more. C. Roberson, a London art shop that first opened its doors in 1810, finally ran out in the 1960s. 'We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere,' the managing director told Time magazine in October 1964, 'but not enough to make any more paint. We sold our last complete mummy some years ago for, I think, £3. Perhaps we shouldn't have. We certainly can't get any more.'"

Lesson 5, "100 Drawings"

We are now halfway through the ten-week on-line class with Jane Davies, and the topic for the week is "colour".

#1

Our assignment was to produce ten studies in colour. And they were to read as colour studies, not shape or line or pattern studies.

We were to choose 3 or 4 colours for each one, and to use any format we liked: landscape, shapes on a background, interlocking shapes, grid, stripes, etc.  We were to cover our page with paint, then apply a coat of matte medium and go back in to add texture, using paint, watercolour crayons or oil pastels. (I didn't add much texture. I was already getting more texture than the instructions called for as I often smeared the paint on with my fingers, using glazing medium to smooth out the colour transitions.)

Much of the work for the lesson is the commentary required for each piece. Which colours did you use? What was the range of value for each colour? Was there a range of hue? Range of saturation? How did the colours relate to each other? Were they complementary (opposite each other on the colour wheel) or analogous (next to each other on the colour wheel)? Warm or cool? Were they your go-to colours, or did you take the opportunity to try something new?

I will not bore you with all the tedious commentary, but will include a few notes.

My approach to the first three was identical. In #1 above, I chose violet for the top edge and transitioned to yellow near the bottom. Mixing complementary colours like violet and yellow produces rich browns. At the bottom edge I added white to some of the intermediate neutral browns, and finished it off with a few lines of yellow crayon atop the yellow stripe.

#2

#2 was made the same way, beginning with cyan (blue) at the top edge, transitioning to orange near the bottom. A few random lines of orange crayon reinforce the orange band of colour.

#3

Likewise #3, beginning with green at the top and gradating to the very saturated red below, followed by a few tints of red lightened by white. The takeaway for these first three explorations is that brilliant colours look even more brilliant when surrounded by less saturated colours.

#4

Still in landscape mode, #4 used four cool, analogous colours. The "sky" had a gradation from violet to cyan, both tinted with white. The "hill" transitioned from turquoise-blue to chrome green. Little value contrast (dark/light) in the piece as a whole.

#5

Much more value contrast for landscape #5. The "sky" gradated from cyan to yellow, and the "hill" gradated from yellow to chrome green. The middle left offers the area of highest value contrast (dark-light), with the blue against the yellow.

#6

I couldn't resist the temptation any longer and chose blue and green to make a landscape in #6. The sky begins with blue at the top and is mixed with increasing amounts of white (range of value). There is an abrupt break at the skyline, where the green hill transitions in hue to the blue sea.

#7

Enough with the landscape format. On to shapes on a background. #7 features a turquoise-blue sphere, most saturated on its outside edge and least saturated in its centre. The background is a gradation from tints of violet to tints of blue. All cool, analogous colours.

#8

In #8, the background is tints of grey, and the right-hand sphere is red on its outer edge, mixed with increasing amounts of white towards its centre. The sphere on the left has a turquoise-blue outer edge, transitioning to a blue centre. The red is a warm colour, and the turquoise is cool, though they are not true complements.

#9

The last two feature only one main hue, celadon*, which is made by adding black to yellow. Varying amounts of white and black create variations in the value. I think of celadon as straddling the border between warm and cool colours, depending on the amount of yellow in the mix, and on what colour  is beside it. #9 has an accent of warm red, and #10 an accent of blue. These tiny accents provide contrast of hue, value and saturation.

* I understand that there are differing opinions about what the colour "celadon" looks like. For some, the word "celadon" means a greyed-down blue-green. For others, (Martha Stewart for one!) it can include a greyed-down yellow-green.

#10

I quite like the sophisticated, edgy combinations of colour in these last two.  May just use them in a future piece. Sometimes hours of hard slogging on an assignment actually uncovers real "gold".

Abstract painting workshop, Part 2

Another major assignment for the recent Jane Davies Abstract Painting workshop was to work with neutral and muted colours.

We learned how to make neutral colours by mixing complementary colours (yellow and violet; red and green; blue and orange) and then altering the mixes by adding black and/or white. We produced lots of swatches of neutral colours to use as collage papers, looking for darks, lights and mediums, warm and cool.

As well as neutrals, we included "muted" colours. It might still read as green (or blue, or violet, or rose) but very greyed down. The results could be seen as "having low saturation" or "minimal hue".

We made neutral and muted backgrounds on 6" x 6" paper, adding collaged shapes, lines and texture. Then we added a small touch of bright red for contrast. Additionally, we made interesting backgrounds in orange and red, and added enough neutral and muted elements to almost cover the paper.

Again, we used the opportunity to try out different approaches to applying paint, achieving various effects. The objective was to create areas of interest, while leaving other areas in the composition more quiet, as a counterpoint. The compositions shown above and below were created in part with the use of "masks" to create distinct shapes.

Finally, we chose one of these 6" x 6" compositions to reproduce in a much larger size, say 20" x 20", or 24" x 24". We were asked to consider what was demanded of a large work that was not required in a smaller one. More interest? More detail? More depth? (Though I attempted this, my results still need some work so I'm not including their images here.)

Once again, a really interesting assignment, and something I might well repeat at home, on my own.

I'm looking forward to taking an on-line class with Jane Davies, beginning later this month. The class is titled "100 Drawings" and participants are expected to produce 6 - 10 small drawings (or paintings) every week, for 10 weeks. They don't have to be finished. The idea is that producing in volume will be liberating, that the results will not be "precious", and that we can be more experimental. The other aspect of the class is to learn to really "see" the composition, to present it and to describe it in a forum. I plan to share some of my results in these posts.

Abstract Painting workshop, Part 1

Recently I attended a wonderful workshop in abstract painting and collage, taught by Jane Davies.

One of the first things we did was to paint collage papers, choosing two complementary colours. These were not meant to be patterned. Rather, they were meant to show a wide variety of hue and value.

For example, I chose blue and orange, and my task was to paint swatches about 4" x 6" that read as blue or as orange. But the blues were to extend from blue-violet to blue-green in their hues, though still "reading" as blue. They were also to include light and dark, and greyed-down tones too. Similarly, I  created collage papers in a wide range of oranges, from yellow-orange to red-orange, dull and bright, light and dark.

a blue background with wide range of dark and light,
from blue-violet to blue-green

The next step in the exercise was to paint papers measuring 6" x 6" as backgrounds. Once again, they were to be painted either in blue or in orange, using a wide variety of light and dark, and a wide range of hue.

Next, we were to cut out shapes from the collage paper to add interest to the backgrounds. We could also add line. (See the photo above.)

Our final objective was to create little compositions that combined both the complementary colours in different ratios. Using orange backgrounds, I added blue shapes and blue paint in these proportions: 90:10, 75:25, and 50:50. And then using blue backgrounds, I made compositions by adding orange shapes and orange paint to achieve the same proportions.

Would you say the visual impact of this composition is about
balanced, 50% blue and 50% orange? 40:60?

This one qualifies as 25% blue, 75% orange, I'd say.

Likewise this one?

And this one?

This one might be 10% orange, 90% blue.
It would be improved with some more dark blue,
don't you think?

The proportions were to be assessed by their "visual impact" rather than strictly by the square inch.

Here's an example that might technically be only 10% orange,
but it reads more like 25% orange.

It was generally agreed by the class that compositions were more exciting with a preponderance of one colour over the other, eg. the 90:10 ratio or even 95:5. It was more difficult to make an interesting composition when the colours were evenly balanced.

It also became clear that the compositions were more energized with a range of hue and value.

And the activity served as a great warm-up for the work to follow. We had lots of opportunity to look for variety in all aspects, which makes compositions more interesting. Some of the contrasts were:

bright vs. dull
dark vs. light
transparent vs. opaque
round vs. rectilinear
soft edges vs. hard edges vs. torn edges
pattern vs. solid
using a wide range of scale: tiny, small, medium, large, extra-large
creating texture with a roller, a sponge, dry-brush, lifting paint, dripping paint, flicking paint, spritzing paint with alcohol or water, softening with a fingertip, smudging, sgraffito, and impasto

A really useful exercise, and something one could try at home, solo or with a small group. Of course there's no substitute for getting feedback from a larger group, and having the guidance of an excellent teacher like Jane Davies. If you visit her website, you'll find lots of short instructional videos, lists of recommended materials, as well as links to downloaded, on-line and real-time workshops, and of course work for sale.

Methods & Materials class, Part 2

In November, I reported about my experience with the first session of Methods & Materials in Acrylic, a class taught by Melanie Matthews at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Melanie is a "Golden Certified Working Artist", so she has lots of expertise with acrylic paints and knows how to make them behave.

Hilda af Klint, Svanen (The Swan) No. 17 , 1914-15

Melanie structured the second session so that each of the six three-hour classes was inspired by the work of a particular artist. By learning about Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862 - 1944), we were introduced to the colour wheel, variations of which featured prominently in her work. We began with three primaries and mixed multiple secondary colours. It's remarkable to see how this little-known artist grappled with a hard-edge, "target" style of abstraction more than 100 years ago.

Pat Steir, Waterfall, 1988

The second class was devoted to Pat Steir (American, born 1940), whose use of dripped paint suggests falling water. We used this opportunity to prepare our canvases with three different tinted substrates (light molding paste, coarse molding paste, and acrylic ground for pastel or AGP). Each went on a little differently and produced slightly different effects as a base for the dripping. We tilted the prepared canvas on a supporting board, dribbled on high flow acrylic, and encouraged the paint to flow downwards with a spritz of water.

Viktor Vasarely, Hexa 5, 1988

Stencils were provided for the third class, which allowed us to produce a Victor Vasarely (Hungarian, French, 1906-1997) type of geometric design. We played with the concept of colours advancing and receding, and with the suggestion of form using dark, medium and light values.  We made transparent paints more opaque with the addition of Titanium White. Vasarely is known for his hard-edge paintings, but our time was limited and so we didn't have a chance to use painter's tape and gel medium to create a true hard edge.

Georgio Morandi, Still Life, 1951

Georgio Morandi (Italian, 1890-1964) is known for his still lifes, which use a very limited neutral palette. In the fourth class we learned how to mix complementary colours (for example, Prussian Blue and Burnt Sienna) and tint with lots of white to create a range of interesting neutrals.

Morris Louis, Para I, 1959

For the fifth class, the focus was on Morris Louis (American, 1912 - 1962), who celebrated transparent colours by painting broad swaths of them on raw canvas. We diluted our paints with Acrylic Flow Release OR clear Palmolive dish soap solution OR diluted alcohol, and observed how each affected the dispersal of the paint. The idea here is to reduce the surface tension of the High Flow acrylic paint so that it penetrates the raw canvas, staining it rather than simply lying on the surface.

David Salle, Mr. Lucky, 1998

For the sixth and final class (which I was unable to attend), we looked at how the artist David Salle (American, born 1952) chops up seemingly disparate images from a variety of sources and assembles them in a new way. It was suggested that students select parts of their various assignments and juxtapose them with each other. Stretching canvas on stretcher bars and mounting on panels was also demonstrated.

Though I wasn't particularly satisfied with the canvases I produced, I saw the classes as opportunities to explore the nature of the materials. I've included my exercises below. Melanie is a knowledgeable and energetic teacher with a good strategy for presenting the techniques.

transparent and opaque paints, primary and secondary colours

dripping dilute paint onto three different tinted surfaces

tints and shades to create a shifting sense of volume

mixing subtle neutrals from complementary colours

staining the canvas by adding dispersing agents to paint

And with Golden supplying all the paints, pastes, gels and mediums, we felt free to explore all the possibilities presented.

Colour at the FoQ

Of course there were many art quilts at Birmingham's Festival of Quilts that showed a stunning use of colour, but I was intrigued by these two in particular. Both employed a wide range of hand-dyed cottons.

Inge Hueber, Seascape
hand-dyed cotton, Seminole technique (variation)

Inge Hueber, Seascape (detail)
hand-dyed cotton, Seminole technique (variation)

Hueber, a German, explained to viewers that Seascape is a "quilt that depicts sun and sea, water and light." Somehow she created the kind of flickering sparkle made by the surf as it laps on the shore.  I believe she has taken what is a classic Seminole pattern of piecing, and exposed the reverse side, leaving loose threads and frayed edges to add interest, and to capitalize on the unique qualities of cloth.

Similarly...

Beatrice Lanter, The Back from the Front,
cotton, patchwork Log Cabin, machine-sewn, machine-quilted

Beatrice Lanter, The Back from the Front, (detail)
cotton, patchwork Log Cabin, machine-sewn, machine-quilted

... the Swiss artist Beatrice Lanter references the classic Log Cabin form of patchwork and uses the unfinished back of the quilt to celebrate a wide spectrum of luscious colour, and the nature of fibre itself.

No-Colour at the FoQ

I took many photos of pieces exhibited at the recent Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, and I will try to share some of them here.

Sometimes, what won me over was work with little or no colour. I loved the juxtaposition of organic and geometric in the piece below. Heymann used both precise machine quilting and hand stitching in a gorgeous range of grays. Simplicity itself.

Susann Heymann, Germany, Transversal Potato
cotton, acrylic paint, clay paint;
coloured, stenciled, machine sewn, hand- and machine-quilted

Susann Heymann, Transversal Potato (detail)

Even greater simplicity is evident in the work by Niki Chandler below. Her statement said "the wall quilt is informed by the zen-inducing grid paintings of Agnes Martin (1912-2004), an artist whose own inner peace was periodically fractured by schizophrenic episodes." Chandler used no pigment at all in her work, relying on cast shadows from stitched triangular flaps to create interest. The fine cotton she employed is starkly white. Again, precision is critical to the success of this work.

Niki Chandler, Nothing in this Life is Perfect

Niki Chandler, Nothing in this Life is Perfect (detail)

The SAQA exhibit, "Celebrating Silver", was a rich source of achromatic work. This collection was put together on the occasion of SAQA's 25th anniversary. Cynthia St. Charles wrote that she "wanted to express the experience of mining for silver in Montana by printing the quilt surface with writings from early miners and vigilantes."

Cynthia St. Charles, Silver Hills
fused collage of hand-painted cotton broadcloth, acrylic paint

Cynthia St. Charles, Silver Hills (detail)
fused collage of hand-painted cotton broadcloth, acrylic paint

Maria Shell revelled in the opportunity to forego her usual bright colours and rely strictly on value contrast.

Maria Shell, Two-Five
vintage and contemporary commercial cotton textiles,
hand-dyed fabrics

Finally, Mary Pal's work received much attention from the visitors. She skilfully manipulated cheesecloth on a black background to achieve a haunting portrait of two silver miners, based on a 1907 photo.

Mary B. Pal, Precious Time,
cheesecloth, canvas, acrylic paint