Colour Notes

 

Here is list of some of the main colours I use: ultramarine blue, permanent blue light, cadmium red middle (sparingly, and good for mixing), cadmium yellow middle (sparingly, and good for mixing), naples yellow, titanium buff light, or unbleached titanium, titanium white, prussian blue, chromium oxide green, hookers green, sap green, viridian green, ultramarine violet (great for cutting the saturation of greens, and for achieving more variety with blues), burnt umber, raw umber, I also use a variety of mixed colours,packaged in tubes, often not expensive...like light portrait pink, greyish blue, light blue violet, neutral grey...(they are great for tinting other colours). carbon black (great for mixing greys and allows to you easily achieve both warm and cool greys). The dark blues and greens are great for mixing the equivalents of black when mixed with the umbers.

 

I use the carbon black mostly to mix greys, but for a variety of extreme darks in the painting I use my darkest blues and greens mixed with the relaltive complementary....I love mixing darks! So for dark green masses I might use hookers green + prussian blue + burnt umber.

 

Visit me here:

paintbox.etsy.com

www.harrystooshinoff.com

Kim Frohsin

Lemon Slices: Black Stripe, 9 1/4 " x 14 1/8", acrylic, ink, gouache, paper, by Kim Frohsin

The artists I am constantly drawn to, like Kim Frohsin, are able to do a great deal with what are really ordinary things in the world. If you visit Kim's site you will see a series of wonderful compositions on lemons, paper airplanes, studio models, human heads, horses, dogs, slices of wonder bread, fortune cookies, and other things. She has highly advanced observational drawing skills born of long practice, an ability to balance shapes in an always beautiful way, and deep understanding of colour theory....her colours always sing, creating both surprise and a sense of visual rightness fitting with the observed world. She looks very closely....the light always seems right. Her forms have weight but are not modelled; rather the whole work is built primarily of colour shapes that lock together wonderfully. There is complete ease with materials and again, you can be sure this comes from years of practice. I appreciate the small scale...it seems to let ideas flow even more easily. One sees both the reality of the objects she depicts, and her rich expressiveness of line and colour, welded perfectly together. This is a beautiful simplicityy born of much study.

So what is new, important, or appealing about this? Through this steady encounter with the world right at our fingertips, everything seems continually reborn. Nothing is set in stone....there is still so much to find. I always enjoy seeing what Kim Frohsin produces.