Exploring Color talk

Last night I had a good time speaking at the Fairborn Art Association. This is one of the friendliest groups I know. I've been a member for many years--maybe twenty or longer. I don't get to the meetings often. When I first joined I was on the board of a local group that met on the same night. Nevertheless, they always greet me as a friend and neighbor and I love that.

I knew the crowd would be small,just by looking at the weather map. There were storm warnings, tornado watches, and big black clouds in my rear-view mirror as I drove to Fairborn; and as I drove toward town, a humongous horizontal flash of lighting raced from one end of the sky to the other just in front of me. By the time I got there, the wind had kicked up and it was raining hard. My umbrella turned inside out as I walked from my car to the gallery.

About thirty people braved the storm. They were very responsive. I talked about the three color systems in my book, Exploring Color. First I showed them the split-primary color-mixing method. Then I moved to using compatible colors and finally, to the subject of color schemes, which is covered in my book but not yet on my website. This was a lot of material to work into a little over an hour, but in talks like this my objective is to give an overview of the options artists have when they tap into a system instead of using random selection or frustrating trial-and-error over a period of years. You can find a system that works best for you or even move from one to another as the mood strikes you. In either case you'll get consistently better results with your color. And, needless to say, once you understand how these color systems work, you can break the rules to please yourself and still have beautiful color.