Color is a power which directly influences the soul.
—Wassily Kandinsky
Color touches the emotions. More than rigid rules and theories govern its use. But beautiful color is no happy accident —– in order to use color effectively, you must understand how it works.
—Nita Leland
I agree with Kandinsky and Leland. Color touches my emotions. As I’ve said, I’ve been playing with different materials and shapes and colors. For the most part I’m not saving anything. I have no desire to be an “artist.” I just want to explore, experiment, and experience. Wow! That’s more than enough.
Do you feel that way about anything?
April 9, 2014
Books.
Does cooking do that too? Are there any books in particular that resonate, light a fire in you?
Oh yes, sometimes I just sit down with my pastels and oil pastels and crayons and make sweeping circling curling waving patterns. But I wish I more often got to that something inside me that’s directing me. At least that’s how it feels. I know it’s there, but I can’t draw it, capture it. I keep trying, off and on.
I make simple expressive faces. They seem to resonate with my simple little mind. 🙂
The Klutz books say keep playing around and notice what comes closer. What kind of art done by others resonates with you? Do you know why?
I thought about this a bit more. For me trying to express something isn’t nearly as powerful as playing around until something grabs me. In Slipping Into Sacred Space I talk about being grabbed by trying to take a picture of my teddy bear.
You might like Expressive Drawing: A Practical Guide to Freeing the Artist Within. I bought it last year and am just now getting around to reading it in bits and pieces.
I feel the same way about color, and it comes out in my photography. I love deep rich colors that make me feel warm and happy.
Yes, you do that so well! And on a regular basis. Those pictures of R, especially, in yesterday’s post blew me away. He looks so serious and dignified now, in addition to being beautiful. The first picture of the duo is so well posed — clearly taken by a professional.
No. Cooking does not do that except when under challenging circumstances when one has to cook with whatever is available and not ask for ingredients.
Books on philosophy, particularly by J Krishnamurthy and Ramesh Balsekar; and observation of humans by writers like Malcolm Gladwell do that. Nassim Taleb also comes to mind for the latter.
I just bought a couple packets of coloured pens…which I’m hoping to play with sometime soon!
I also paint with wool and silk dyes and I have a whole lot of silk threads that need new colours…again “real soon”
And I love splashing art paints around…glueing coloured things together and so on…