As a young artist I remember loving pencil and line. Even shading, light and dark, and grays were not a problem. I was versatile and observant and knew that drawing was its own language which I was eager to explore. My sister a few years old even gave me a book called "Zen and the Art of Seeing", which challenged me to really "see" and not just draw what I thought I saw.
But color?? Color I was afraid of. I liked it well enough, but it seemed an overwhelming challenge. I did paint in college, but kept it to a minimum and felt no mastery what so ever. As I got a bit older, became a mother and began painting again, I felt an emotional maturity that seemed to allow me access to color.
As an art therapist I now understand the corollary between emotions and color. It is a way that we can work with clients. Drawing, especially with pencil ,is more controlled, cerebral and related to writing and language. Color, painting, and pastels can be messy and hard to manage like our emotions. My clinical supervisor has just introduced me to a wonderful book from an old friend of his called Arthur Stern. It's titled "How To See Color and Paint It." Here is a quote from the introduction: "The mind stands in the way of the eye. That's why most beginning painters don't paint what the eye sees, but what the mind lets the eye see. They paint what they expect to see" (Pg 9).
Stern describes looking at a group of buildings with students and asking what color they were. Answers ranged from red to orange and gray. When he asked to students to look through a small lens that isolated to color the unanimous answer was "blue!" To truly "see" must divorce ourselves from context and really see the shapes and color before us.
Truly color can be subjective like emotions which is part of the beauty. We each have out own interpretation and experience, but to those of us who deal in color it can be everything. As a painter and a reiki practitioner who works with color in a vibrational sense (chakra energy) color is primary to my experience. Stern's book lays out 22 basic painting exercise which get you to "see" in a mor accurate way. I look forward to exploring it.
Arthur Stern was born and educated in New York city where he taught painting at Hunter College, City College and the Hudson River Museum. He created a PBS series called "Drawing from Scratch" which presented his curriculum for fundamentals of drawing. As described by my supervisor , Stern was a wise and visionary teacher who only published this one book, because he was too busy acting as advisor to many famous people from artists to actors, writers and playwrites. The publisher Watson-Guptill actually came to Sterns home, collected his papers, and published the book without him because they knew this genius would never get around to sharing his philosophy of life other than in his daily conversations with others.
I think this is a man whose life is ripe for a biography or documentary film. Hmmmnnn - another project??
But color?? Color I was afraid of. I liked it well enough, but it seemed an overwhelming challenge. I did paint in college, but kept it to a minimum and felt no mastery what so ever. As I got a bit older, became a mother and began painting again, I felt an emotional maturity that seemed to allow me access to color.
As an art therapist I now understand the corollary between emotions and color. It is a way that we can work with clients. Drawing, especially with pencil ,is more controlled, cerebral and related to writing and language. Color, painting, and pastels can be messy and hard to manage like our emotions. My clinical supervisor has just introduced me to a wonderful book from an old friend of his called Arthur Stern. It's titled "How To See Color and Paint It." Here is a quote from the introduction: "The mind stands in the way of the eye. That's why most beginning painters don't paint what the eye sees, but what the mind lets the eye see. They paint what they expect to see" (Pg 9).
Stern describes looking at a group of buildings with students and asking what color they were. Answers ranged from red to orange and gray. When he asked to students to look through a small lens that isolated to color the unanimous answer was "blue!" To truly "see" must divorce ourselves from context and really see the shapes and color before us.
Truly color can be subjective like emotions which is part of the beauty. We each have out own interpretation and experience, but to those of us who deal in color it can be everything. As a painter and a reiki practitioner who works with color in a vibrational sense (chakra energy) color is primary to my experience. Stern's book lays out 22 basic painting exercise which get you to "see" in a mor accurate way. I look forward to exploring it.
Arthur Stern was born and educated in New York city where he taught painting at Hunter College, City College and the Hudson River Museum. He created a PBS series called "Drawing from Scratch" which presented his curriculum for fundamentals of drawing. As described by my supervisor , Stern was a wise and visionary teacher who only published this one book, because he was too busy acting as advisor to many famous people from artists to actors, writers and playwrites. The publisher Watson-Guptill actually came to Sterns home, collected his papers, and published the book without him because they knew this genius would never get around to sharing his philosophy of life other than in his daily conversations with others.
I think this is a man whose life is ripe for a biography or documentary film. Hmmmnnn - another project??
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