What is Colour?

What is Colour?

[Kursbeschreibung nur auf Englisch]

‘‘Light and darkness, brightness and obscurity, or if a more general expression is preferred, light and its absence, are necessary to the production of colour…1"

Enlarge your personal palettes, knowledge and fabrication of colour. Let Goethe and former Bauhaus’ enthusiasts guide your contemporary mastering of how to employ and articulate colour. Revitalising your perception and use of hue reliant upon colour’s properties, form and application.

Theoretical bases underpin this two-week, online platform to play with colour. The course travels from hands-on experimentation to intensifying hue understanding; expanding potential applications to practice and actioning colour anew.

Addressing the cannon of colour theory (visiting, first hand Goethe’s archive to reviving Bauhaus’, Itten, Klee, Kandinsky, and successor, Albers implementations) with three main contemporary objectives: discovering ...

  • colours’ properties - hue, tints, transparency, opacity, behaviour, affect;
  • how colour is employed - form’s relevancy, composition and arrangement; 
  • combined with how colour is applied - grounds, layering, stains, dyes, marked, projected, sampled versus projected forms of light.

Online delivery of demos, group discussions and activities will support individual testing and making with tutor- (and student-) led exercises and feed-forward instruction. Inclusive of connecting to Klassik Stiftung Weimar’s digital archive visits. Aimed at a broad interdisciplinary range of practices - the painter, designer, surface/printmaker, textile stylist or stage designer. Methods include: making hues, exercising paint, pigments, dye, staining, projecting tinted light, digital production, compositional play, collage, assembling forms (2D, 3D, scenic), while considering gesture, action, disposition, signals and balance. By the end of this course, students will walk away with a personalised colour swatch book, and have confidently, re-evaluated and re-equipped their colour comprehension and palettes for practice. Technical planning: Daily access to a personal computer. An advised materials list will follow.

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1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours.

 

The course is designed for architects, artists and designers, as well as creative and curious students of all disciplines.

Alex Roberts

https://www.alexroberts.com/
27.12.75 Rickmansworth, Herts, UK

 

Education (edited):

2019 · Professional bodies, Advance HE - Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK.
2019 · Institute for Education, Bath Spa University, UK, Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice for Higher Education and MA Education module, e-learning Pedagogy and Application.
2015 · Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of Arts London, UK, MA Fine Art.

Current employment:

2021 · Lecturer in Drawing, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, Scotland.
2021 · External Examiner for BA Fine Art, University of Northampton, UK.
2020 · Visiting Lecturer, Freies Zeichnen Module (BA Media Design), Mediadesign Hochschule für Design und Informatik, University of Applied Sciences Berlin.
2019 · Lecturer, Bauhaus Summer School, Bauhaus- Universität Weimar. Stretching Klee’s line: mark making for our digital age.
2016 · Visiting Artist/ Lecturer, Drawing Projects UK. drawingprojects.co.uk

Fields of interest and practice: Artist - painter.
Painting, drawing, fine art, installation, collaboration, curating, educator

The course took place in 2022.

Language

The course language is English.