lizard

[delph_ambi]

[SharonBell]

VERY KEWL!

[Ed]

Nicely done, Delph

Is that in oils? I've always fancied having a go at painting, but being as colourblind as I am, I would end up with landscapes with purple skies and orange grass. I once got detention in RE class waaaay back when I was at school, for colouring- in a map of the holy land with purple seas. Teacher must have thought I was taking the mick, or something

[delph_ambi]

Thanks Sharon and Ed.

This one's done in gouache, not oils, though I usually work in oils. Ed, you could do great psychedelic paintings in completely random colours. I think your RE teacher was just being mean. You should have claimed it was an ecstatic vision, or something.

[Ed]

Yes, I think any future I might be able to cultivate as a painter lies in abstractionist art

I suppose we all have a cross to bear, and mine isn't particularly heavy, but being colourblind is really quite annoying sometimes, especially when you run into people who think because you can't see certain colours, you're somehow stupid It happens with astonishing frequency, believe it or not.

[delph_ambi]

People think I'm stupid because I can't tell the time, or tell left from right (due to dyslexia). I'm not colour blind, but I do sometimes confuse red and green, even though I can see they're completely different. I think that's probably also a dyslexia thing, but it does mean I have to be very careful at traffic lights. It's a stupid condition to have, just as colour blindness is a stupid condition to have, but having either of them doesn't make you stupid. Well, not very. Not being able to tell the time even strikes me as a bit stupid...

The top artist at the French court sometime in, I think, the seventeenth century, was colour blind, but he was such a good artist that nobody particularly minded. Wish I could remember his name. I've seen some of his landscapes - he just used one tint of green for absolutely everything, making it either lighter or darker with just the addition of white or black. When he wanted people in his landscape, I suspect he got his students to paint them, as they're usually very small and crudely done.

I'm not colour blind so thought I was okay on colour until I had an art teacher who taught me how to see colour 'properly' - she set up a still life of a few white objects, and got us all to stare at them for about half an hour. By the end of that time, most of us had managed to override that part of the brain that made the assumption that the objects were basically white with a few coloured reflections. We were starting to see amazing colours in them. Couldn't imagine how they could have got there. With practice, I got quite good at doing this. Trouble is, it doesn't half complicate matters, when you see so many colours in everything. My solution? I have a few 'favourite' colours (burnt umber, Prussian blue, etc) that I use in everything regardless of what colour anything is supposed to be. Every few years I come across a new colour, and then all my art work shifts slightly. I've stopped worrying about colour. 

[Ed]

Hmm. Interesting. Thing is, with my artwork one day looking passable, and the next looking like a 5yr old did it, I don't think I've got that much leeway with the colours being wrong, too

Mind you, art is a state of mind as much as anything else, isn't it? Maybe I should just go for it. At least with oils they've got the name of the colour on the tube, so as long as you don't mix them too much it should be fairly easy to keep track of what colour you've got.

Talking of odd things colourblind people do. I once met a guy who was as colourblind as me, but had a job with Boots film processing thingy. His job was to spot if the photos looked alright or whether there were hues that needed correcting. I suppose all you need to know is what's right and compare everything else with it. Funny, I used to process my own colour prints, and I could tell if a pic had a blue or a yellow hue better than my wife, who has perfect colour vision.

Sorry - getting way off topic here

[QBall]

I am cornsiddered a very good painter, but I get tired sanding, smoothing and applying the undercoat!
Fell of the ladder, too!
 

[marc_chagall]

Sounds like me, Les. I'm useless at that kind of painting. 

[Grillmeat]

That's a really neat picture.

[marc_chagall]

Thank you!

[ozmosis7]

Very cool. It almost looks like a print.

[marc_chagall]

Thank you! I have this picture more or less over my computer desk, and the lizard looks like he could jump right out of the picture frame from where I'm sitting.