Video: Calligraphy Illumination Tips: Part 1

This Season: Tailgating; New Year, New You; Tax Time

Illumination and color choice are important aspects of calligraphy and the design process. Learn tips on illuminating your designs in this free video clip from a calligraphy expert.

- Calligraphy & The Humanist Hand: Part 1

Comments

Video Transcript

There are entire books written on color. There are lots of books out on color. So I'm just going to make some very brief statements about color. First of all I don't get too much into color theory. I like to mess around with color, the same way some people like to mess around in boats. But you might want to get yourself a thing called a color wheel, which is something that helps you think about colors. Shows you how colors can work. So that it, it's actually kind of like a time saver. And these aren't too hard to find. And up here, just a few terms that you might want to pay attention to you know, if this were our simplified color wheel you'd see that red and green are opposite color. That purple and yellow are opposite. That orange and blue are opposite. And when you start messing around with color you start to realize how this works. You've got different ways to think about them. The hue is the first and most obvious dimension which usually identifies the color by name. You know whether it's red or blue. The intensity is the second dimension of color, relative to the intensity of it's hue. The value locates the color's approximate position in relation to black and white. There is also the idea of thinking in terms of color as being symbolic. Ok. So in western illumination for example the color blue is considered a very spiritual color. Gold of course is considered very spiritual. We think of white as being for purity. But different people have different ideas about what is symbolic to them. And as an artist, as a calligrapher you certainly have your choice about that. So one of the things that I want to say about color, first of all I think I showed you before that I keep my used gouache in these handy little, little containers and the lid pops off. They are really fun and you can get these at restaurant supply store. But you don't want to use them if there's been food inside. So start clean with these.

Follow eHow: Follow @eHow

Calligraphy Illumination Tips: Part 1

Comments

Related Ads

Related Articles & Videos