Exploring Color in the Potomac House-Shells

         Shells are always a good place to find examples of colors that are well-paired and also varied.  Shells are a good place to find some interesting play of the light, too, as shells contain smooth and rough textured that catch the light differently and thus effect the colors of the shell, too.   The house I have access to is on the Potomac, and it is filled with shells and pictures of shells-everything I need.
         Above is a picture I took myself of a conch shell stored in a glass-front cabinet.  The shell had all of the colors shown in the picture, but on a less vibrant scale. When I put pictures from my camera onto the computer I doctored the color a bit with Adobe photoshop (no new ones added, just the brightness and contrast pumped up).  The increased drama between the colors is nothing compared to the illustration of the two different types of shells on the right (fictional shells,  I couldn't find the artist's name,)  but it still highlights the colors beautifully.
         The shells on the side place a lot of emphasis on line work, (which I appreciate, as a line enthusiast) but the color combinations are still notable, especially the brown on the bottom paired with the hints of salmon and the blue with the hints of orange.

I've found these great examples of color,  but what I'm really interested in is creating value and realistic drawings using colors-how do I do this?  My techniques are still simplistic.  I don't want to be handicapped by my lack of color knowledge-more on this later.

http://www.jenmann.com

"Inspired by the circus, illusions, dreams and the innocence and playfulness of childhood, these strange beauties are saturated, eye candy explorations in the odd and the beautiful."

This is the description  of artist Jen Mann's "Strange Beauties" series of paintings, taken from Jen Mann's website. 

The reason that Jen Mann's art interests me is that I am very much a line artist, at the moment.  Line and work with lines come easily for me, and color is a natural achilles heel for me.  With this in mind, I am constantly looking for examples of good color usage to improve my own technique.  Jen Mann uses color very subtly and very well in this series.  Though I'm sure a painter with her experience uses the entire wheel of color in her paintings, she appears to only use a small number of these colors.  Despite this handicap, Jen Mann manages to depict clear value and shadow and even echoes of movement in all of these pieces ("Blue Beard" on top left, "Bubblegum"on top right, "Movement" in middle of arrangement, "Shadow" on bottom). She does not rely on line- this characteristic of her art I notice most of all. She uses color exclusively.  She is definitely an artist to learn from.   

Hi, Everybody!

     I say "Hi, Everybody," but really I have to admit that I am starting this blog mostly to conserve paper. I write far too fast and do too much artist/random subject research to claim to care about trees.  In effort to save more of them, I am turning to technology.  This is new for me.  What I mean to say is this: "The Rampant Artist Journal" is my own exploration really, but I'm happy you've found it and have stayed here long enough to get to this sentence.  Hi! Nice to see you and for you to see me, in a metaphorical sense.  It's a literal honor.  I ought to warn you that technology and I have a relationship resembling that of a swarm of killer bees to an intruding, rabid raccoon.  I apologize in advance-your patience is appreciated.  

Anyways, nice to meet you!

Elly Call