This summer I had two art goals - painting outside and studying Josef Albers' approach to color. So far, I've not painted outside. I'm waiting for it to cool down a bit. Acryclic paint dries really fast! In the meantime, I've started to experiment and explore as a "student" of Josef Albers. Interaction of Color is a good starting point, providing both theory and a lesson plan.

In his workshops, Albers had students collect bits and scraps of colored paper from different sources (homework!) There are some practical reasons for doing this: a range of colors are available without "fussing" around with paints, it's inexpensive, and even fun to collect colored scraps from magazines, posters, paint samples, etc. And it really does train your eyes to recognize color(s).

Last night I sat in a comfortable chair, gently shooing away one of our two cats, and cut up some old gardening magazines and year-old New Yorkers and NYRBs. I put all the scraps in a large flat white box. I already had some construction paper in various hues, but noticed that teal, cyan and other greenish-blues were missing so I looked for these colors in the magazines. This morning I sorted all the magazine scraps into a rectangular "color wheel." Results were satisfying! I think I will look for some of the larger paint chips next time I'm at a big-box store, as well.

On to the next chapter in the Albers book. If you want to follow along, I'm just finished pages 6 - 7, "Why color paper -- instead of pigment and paint."