"Fearless Color"

Rayna Gillman's second class at VCQ Celebration which both Sue and Elizabeth took was called “Fearless Color”. Elizabeth posted this picture of the class on Facebook with the class title, but no one commented on the black & white photo!

We began with a package of six 5 inch squares and were told to pick 2 which were our least favorite colors and then one which we liked.  Elizabeth chose a brown and a green as her least favorites and a pale yellow as one she liked.  After cutting them into different shapes and gluing together a collage we were allowed to add an accent color. Elizabeth picked red.  Our choices were very limited in the packet to get us to stretch ourselves out of any normal comfort zones.

Rayna demonstrated how she uses her iPhone to look at the values of a composition by turning the phone to a black and white camera option.  This is a handy tool to use and could replace all those old color filters we have around our studios that block out reds and greens and helped with seeing value. Our phones are usually close by and not buried under piles of other supplies.  This was one of the take-aways from this class.  Another is that "there is no such thing as doesn't go" - as long as a fabric is repeated in the piece.

In the afternoon we all were given a square of multi-colored fabric with stars and asked to create something that was a pleasing composition to us even if we didn’t like the base fabric.  Here is what each person made both in color and black and white.