Good morning, students, and welcome to 2017 art! Today we will begin a color mixing study inspired by the Swiss artist Johannes Itten (1888-1967). Itten was an expressionist painter (typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas--Wikipedia) who was a member of the German Bauhaus school (operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts--Wikipedia).
This excerpt from Wikipedia explains why Johannes Itten is an important artist: Itten's work on color is also said to be an inspiration for seasonal color analysis. Itten had been the first to associate color palettes with four types of people, and had designated those types with the names of seasons. His studies of color palettes and color interaction directly influenced the Op Art movement and other color abstraction base movements. Shortly after his death, his designations gained popularity in the cosmetics industry with the publication of Color Me A Season. Cosmetologists today continue to use seasonal color analysis, a tribute to the early work by Itten.[4]
So, we're going to recreate one of the assignments Itten gave his own art students. First, graph a 12 x 18-inch sheet of tagboard into 1-inch squares. (Tuesday and Wednesday, 1-3/4-17. 100 points.) PLEASE draw lightly throughout, and divide the large sheet into quarters (fourths). Using a limited paint palette provided by your teacher, mix colors representing each season, but remember that you can use each color you make only once. No two color blocks can be the same. Paint each quarter of the page in colors representing each of the seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall. (Thursday, 1-5-17 through Thursday 1-12-17. 400 points.)
 |  |
