Wednesday, August 14, 2013

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.


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