The Ruskin Foundation - How to See

Focusing tool - (Young Seer)

Look through the small hole in the end of the tube. By looking through the tube it helps you focus on things. Use it to focus on something really close. Put an object in front of the tube for instance a leaf. Really look at that leaf.
Have you noticed things about it that you haven’t really seen before?
Can you think of 10 words to describe that object?
Can you see at least 3 different colours in the object?
Has the Looking Tube helped you look at the object more carefully?

Windows on Scale - (Young Seer)

For this exercise you will need a piece of paper and a pencil. Turn the tube and this time look through the 2 little windows on the side of the tube. Look at something quite small, for example a paperclip. On your piece of paper draw big grid 2 squares by 2 squares. Now look at the paperclip through the windows. They will divide the object into 4 squares. Now copy what you see in each square onto your drawn grid. You have created a drawing larger in scale to the actual object. Turn your paper and draw another grid again 2 by 2 squares. This time look at something really big – a tree, or a car. Do the same exercise as before. This time you have created a smaller drawing than the object and scaled it down.

The World of Colour

When looking at an object have you ever thought about where one colour ends and another begins, and how you would describe the colour in between? Artists do this all the time: they find colours hiding in things that we don’t think of as colours at all.

Identify that Colour - (Young Seer)

Have a look at a shiny object like a car, or a piece of metal jewellery – you may think you know its colour – red, silver, gold. What about the reflections in it? What colour are they? In some cases they may be the colour of the object reflected – the sky, your face etc. – but if you look closely there will be other colours – mixtures of colours that it is hard to describe. Try thinking about the way shadows alter the colours of things. Do they actually darken the true colour? Do they contain new colours – like blue or purple? Are they an illusion created by the contrast of two different states of the same colour – say, a dark orange and a bright orange? Some artists think of these states as different colours, some as different tones or strengths of the same colour.

Name that Colour - (Young Seer)

Try using the colour charts on the Looking Tube to identify unexpected colours in unexpected places. Go outside and see if you can identify every colour on the tube somewhere in the landscape. Artists have developed wonderful matches to these colours over the years from natural earths found in the ground, from plants, and more recently from chemicals. There are some pretty exotic names for artist’s colours .

The Artist's Palette - (Adult Seer)

Artists select the range of colours that suit the type of subject that they are painting – and this is known as their ‘palette’. It refers to both the selection of colours that they have made and the usually wooden or plastic surface on which they arrange their paints. Artists mix paints both on their palette and on the surface of their painting in very subtle ways to make new colours and they like to vary the process as they go along. They even let the eye of the viewer do some of the mixing by putting their colours so close together that the eye treats two colours as if they were one new one. There was a whole school of art which did this, known as pointillism .

The Printer's Palette - (Adult Seer)

By contrast, when making a book or a poster, printers need to be able to replicate the same colour exactly many thousands of times over. They also need to be able to let a machine do all the work, so they need to fix all the colours in advance. Printers have devised various systems of colours which are mathematically accurate mixes of the basic colours from which all other colours can be derived. They are numbered, and the systems allow printers and designers all over the world to talk to one another and know that they are talking about exactly the same colour. One such system in widespread use is known as the Pantone system .

Enjoying colour

Whether you are a printer or an artist, or just simply want to appreciate the wonderful colours in the world around you, you have to use your eyes. You may think you know what colour you are looking at because you tell yourself an orange is orange, but if you really look you will almost certainly find that it is more colourful than you thought!

Finally, there’s another side to colour which we all enjoy – it affects how we feel. You know how everyone associates a grey sky with gloominess and we all feel more lively when the sky is blue. Which colours make you happiest? Are there combinations of colour that you really like – green with red spots or blue with pink spots? There are some combinations that ‘feel’ right, and others that don’t. Some artists have studied these combinations and produced special palettes where the colours seem to belong together. These are a branchy of art known as colour theory .

When we decorate our homes or decide what to wear when going out we make decisions about colour that reflect our moods and our taste. We use colour to express ourselves – the more we appreciate colour in the world around us, the more fun we can have with our own personal ‘palette’.

Links from text above:

Artist's Colours...

The names artists give to some of their colours (and what we call them):

Aureolin		(yellow)
Gamboge		(yellow)
Vermillion		(red)
Alizarin		(red)
Madder		(purple)
Ultramarine		(blue)
Viridian		(green)
Ochre		(brown)
Sienna		(brown)
Umber		(brown)
Sepia		(brown)
Indigo		(Indigo)

Pantones...

 Pantone colours are precise, numbered sequences. Look up Pantone 7447 C on the website below, and then use the search again function to compare it with higher and lower numbers either side.

http://www.pantone.co.uk/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx

Colour Theory...

It can get pretty complicated out there in the world of colours, but there are some useful charts here to lead the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory

Pointillism…

The story of a painting with 3,456,000 dots!
http://www.geocities.com/bvijay/paints/Seurat.html

Mood...

Here are some famous mood/colour associations. Try putting a colour to your mood:

FEELING BLUE
GREEN WITH ENVY
MEN IN GREY SUITS
YELLOW BELLY
BROWNED OFF
SEEING RED
MOOD INDIGO
WHITE WITH FRIGHT

In General...

Just about anything and everything for the colour mad!
http://www.colormatters.com/entercolormatters.html