Colour/Systems

Facadé, 2014, mixed media collage, 38 x 25 cm

Open Close, 2014, mixed media collage, 38 x 25 cm

Overlap, 2014, mixed media collage, 29 x 44 cm

 

Signal, 2014, mixed media collage, 38 x 25 cm

Q & A, 2014, mixed media collage, 38 x 25 cm

Mis-Shapes, 2014, mixed media collage, 42 x 28.5 cm

Mellow, 2014, mixed media collage, 36.5 x 32 cm

Confrontation, 2014, mixed media collage, 30 x 42 cm

In our studies, colour paper is preferred to paint for several practical reasons. Paper provides innumerable colours in a large range of shades and tints ready for immediate use. Though a large collection is needed, it is not expensive to assemble when one does not rely on large prepared paper sets representing specific colour systems, such as the Munsell or Ostwald Systems (the least desirable are “tuned” sets, claiming to be failure-proof).

 

Sources easily accessible for many kinds of colour paper are waste strips found at printers and bookbinders; collections of samples of packing papers, of wrapping and bag papers, of wrapping and bag papers, of cover and decoration papers.  Also, instead of full sheets of paper, just cutouts from magazines, from advertisements and illustrations, from posters, wallpapers, paint samples, and from catalogues colour reproductions of various materials will do. Often a collective search for papers and a subsequent exchange of them among class members will provide a rich but inexpensive colour “palette”.

 

Albers, J, (2013) Interaction of Colour (4^th ed.) New Haven and London: Yale University Press