May 16, 2015

Here's a puzzle for you:

Look at these randomly placed blocks of low intensity color.  Can you rearrange them according to how they appear clockwise on the color wheel below them?




(Sidebar for clarity of nomenclature)
Artists, art instructors and the color industry use the labels intensity, saturation and chroma interchangeably.  I choose to use the term
intensity when I'm referring to the character of a hue and saturation to indicate the amount of hue present in a color.  It's only from preference that I use "intensity" rather than "chroma" when discussing saturation of hue.

Low intensity is the one component of color most difficult to read, yet reading it accurately means everything if we are to keep out paintings in tune.  When we learn to identify a low intensity color by its hue name rather than calling it a layman's term (such as beige, olive green, teal, etc.), we inform ourselves as to colors we need to use to translate it.  

To help you do this, I've developed a little set of wheels I call the Intensity Mate Package™, free for you to download from the eStore.



I show you how to use these in this week's video lesson, Reading & Translating Intensity.  Whether or not you do the video lesson, you might find the little Intensity Mates helpful in identifying the hue of those low intensity colors you see in your plein air painting, your studio work or for just plain fun.

Happy painting,
Dianne

P.S.  Here are the answers to the puzzle:
Red--Green--Violet--Yellow--Blue--Orange--Yellow Green--Red Violet--Blue Green--Red Orange--Blue Violet--Yellow Orange

NEWS & UPDATES

___  Folks are loving our new Series of video lessons, Reading and Mixing Color.  Each lesson takes an individual component of color--value, hue, intensity, temperature--and explores scientifically how to see and mix it in depth.  The Series' Lesson 3,  Reading and Translating Intensity is available now.

___ On May 29, we will introduce the FIFTH FRIDAY FEATURE.  This, too, is in response to your requests.  In these FEATURE video lessons published every fifth Friday, I do a finished painting, beginning to end, featuring the lessons taught in a previous Series.  Because of their length, the FEATURE videos will be priced differently from the regular lessons.

___ Are you following our YouTube Quick Tips?  If you'd like me to do a video Quick Tip on anything related to painting or composing, email your request HERE .

___At our eStore, we keep a collection of free things for you to download. Scroll down to the Video Supplements section and take a look. You will notice that now you can watch the Notan video lesson on the site or on the YouTube channel.  You no longer have to download it.

___ The Facebook forum membership is now over 930. Join us! One word to Forum users--To keep up with what's going on daily, click on the forum title--Composing and Drawing Tips--in your Groups list on the left of your Facebook page.


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