Bruce MacEvoy's site: color, journal
This week I've gotten absorbed again in the study of color. Whenever I go through a phase of intense color study, I find it so delicious. It's as if I've been starving myself of color. So I devour it.
I've selected colors for various palettes to use with my bowls: a transparent palette to use most, a palette with mostly transparent colors and a few opaques for contrast, and an opaque palette (which I think I'll need when I paint on black.) Today I filled in my excel paint chart with more information on transparency, hue, value, and chroma. I used the Golden Virtual Painting Guide site as well as the Liquitex book, How to Mix & Use Color.
This work raised a few more questions, in the way any research usually does. So I did some google searches on specific pigments. Somehow I found my way to a spectacular website by Bruce MacEvoy. My ideas about color selection and use were quickly turned upside down.
I'd been reviewing my little stack of books on painting and color. Of course each book contradicted the others to some extent, but from the books and my experiments I was drawing some conclusions. I was pleased to think that soon my work would come to a satisfying end.
Bruce MacEvoy's writings about color perception, color mixing, and painting palettes took all these careful conclusions and emptied them out onto the floor in a messy scatter. No matter. I was excited and quickly started to print out pages faster than I could skim them.
The main conclusion, of course, is that the huge pile of pages I printed from his site is no substitute for going down to my studio and playing with my paints.
But I have a whole new set of clues. And my painting mind feels fresh and blown clean. I love this website. I'm awed by the work Bruce MacEvoy has done. And I'm grateful for his generosity in posting it on the internet.
His site also includes an artist's journal that I found moving and helpful. There are specific clues to how to avoid plateaus. Basically, it's about how to keep moving and developing as an artist. This is something I often think I already know all about. Yet I keep reading everything I can find about it. And I certainly didn't know some of the things he discovered. His site is both humbling and exciting - a great combination for growth.
2:40:56 PM 
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