Exploring Value and the Subtractive Color Theory

This is my Value scale.  The picture might not be so great sorry.  I have done a value scale before and I find doing it quite tedious if you do it the right way.  Starting with the darkest end I made it as dark as possible by cross hatching and working my way up to pretty much black.  Then you work your way down from black.  In the next box you start kind of light and work your way up to what you think is one step down from black.  You do this all the way down the scale. I found you have to go back and tweak some of the boxes to make sure they are not the same or really similar. 

Color wheel.  I like painting more then drawing with pencil, and I like mixing colors more then shading boxes.  some of the color mixing was tough trying to make a blue with magenta and cyan you kind of have to mix it a few times and get the ratio just right.

I like working with paint better because of the way you manipulate paint. The lines that you smoother for me.  I love drawing and painting both and some days I might say I love drawing more, but most days it's painting.  I really like mixing colors and finding the right one that goes with the composition.

The most important discovery was the truth about primary colors.  That is that cyan, magenta and yellow are the true primary colors because they make black, while red, yellow, and blue, make a dark brown.  If cyan magenta and yellow are primary colors then red, blue and green are secondary colors.

Elements and Principles

I decided to take pictures of my everyday life, which included, walking down Elmwood, eating dinner with my boyfriend and  playing with my friend's hamster.  Starting with the picture labeled "Unity", I felt the vines of the plant and the leaves all really went together.  Nothing really stuck out as disjointed or confusing about this photo it all felt very unified.

 The next photo, labeled "Balance", is of me and my boyfriend our two very light toned faces take up most of the photo mine on one side his on the other balancing out the picture. 

The next photo, "Proportion", is of me with Oreck the hamster showing an obvious size difference. 

In the photo of value, when I saw the glass I remembered how black and white pictures look with glasses and how you can get really good highlights from the light in the room when you take a picture of them. There was a spectrum of light to dark in the room that could be displayed very nicely in a gray scale. 

In the next photo, "Harmony", there is a definite repetition of color and other elements such as texture throughout the photo. 

The photo of the repeating square tiles was really interesting, I could have labeled it a few different elements or principles but it definitely stuck out as an example of the element shape.

  At first when I took the photo of the twin towers on the Psych Center I thought of balance but then I remembered the element, space, which refers to the distance or area around or within things. 

In the "Rhythm" photo, the number of windows on that building stuck out while i was on my walk, and I knew that I could use this photo as Rhythm for how the windows repeat from one side of the photo to the other.      

The photo of the red door says nothing else but emphasis.  When we walked by that house my eyes were automatically drawn to that red door.

When you look at the white rocks in the photo labeled "Texture", you think about how bumpy and jagged those rocks are you wouldn't associate those rocks with being smooth they look like they have a very distinct texture. 

I love fall and how the leaves change color.  What better thing to resemble color then this leaf.  

When looking for an object to be my example for form, I was sitting waiting for my food to come at Pano's when I looked down into my tea and saw my lemons mixed in with my ice and thought it would be an interesting picture.  

I liked the crosswalk picture and was debating whether not to use it as movement or line, because crosswalks imply movement especially since I made someone cross in it when I took the picture.  but I liked the use of line.

A top my desk sits a variety of knick-knacks, what a better example of variety.  So many colors and textures, yours eyes do not know where to look first.  

In my movement photo I was going for one of those night time, high speed, car light, kind of picture where the light moves across the picture where the car has been.  It kind of did that and should the motion of the cars and I like how the highway winds around.  

Aesthetics, Philosophers, and Science

The video, “Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts,” touches on a variety of philosophers and their theories on aesthetics. All philosophers have their own views on art and aesthetics but somehow all have the same main ideas about art as a way to express emotions and show creativity. Aesthetics is defined as the nature of beauty another universal thought. The video took us through the history of art showing us the differences both in opinion and the differences in styles of art from romantic, to Greek, to contemporary a van garde art.


I feel that Aristotle’s (4th Century B.C.) theory on aesthetics is most important. He said, “There is beauty by which all things are beautiful”, and I feel that this is a very important because beauty is truly “in the eye of the beholder”. What is the real definition of beautiful? Some feel beauty is perfection and some think things are beautiful that others do not. This concept is true in art. Artists “reason through the senses”.

The video, “CARTA: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics,” discusses how art is genetically built into a person and done by the brain. Many people say that the two worlds can never intertwine, science and art, because science discovers universal principles and art emphasizes individuality, but there is a science to art, universal principles across all cultural boundaries.

I felt that both Changeux and Ramachandran were great speakers and I can relate to their interest in the sciences and in art, as a Biology Major. It was fascinating to hear, when Ramachandran talked about how the mind distorts the picture to please the human brain and that is why things come out looking all contorted like Pablo Picasso’s paintings. I also thought it was very interesting when Changeux discussed how artistic interpretation is up to the individual. You would think of course, everyone has their own opinion, but he went more in depth, talking about how you brain controls the number of possible representations the an artist can have. By doing this, the brain is therefore controlling and creating the artists unique style.

The videos help me to see what I have read in the textbook in a new light. For example, In the textbook we read about context and how the context of an art piece is what ties the creator of the piece to the art itself. It is the background from where it came from, why it was made and now how it connects to its audience. In the film we learned how culture effects art work and how over time art and aesthetics of art have changed.  I felt that the films really went well with the readings and they both were very fascinating, I learned a lot from both. It was comforting for me to see my two worlds tied in together in the one film that gave a scientific view on art.

First Post: The set up

Setting up the Gmail account and the Blog was very similar to setting up all my other online accounts, except I kept clicking back to my other window to make sure I was doing everything the right way because this is for a course and not leisure, so it made me a little nervous. 
I expect that this course is going to be really interesting and I am going to get a lot out of it. Being able to reflect on art pieces is a part of art that I never got to really do and I never really found someone or a friend who really enjoys discussing pieces with me.  I have always just done the painting or done the drawing never really discussed the details of what I was actually doing.  In the past my  high school art teacher would make us do a few critiques where we would discuss the compositions of our own pieces and our fellow classmates. I feel that in this class I expect to learn more about the principles of  composition that make up the historical and contemporary art pieces that we will look at.
I feel that taking an online course will be good for me.  I like doing research online, whenever I see new things or am curious about something I look to the Internet to answer my questions.  I feel at home here on my computer and though I can't communicate face to face, it's a new challenge and I am excited.