Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Color Tryout Sketch #2 for Bela Bacalhau


This is a very rough sketch done with fine-line marker on a small piece of paper. I made this sketch a few days ago to help me make a color choice for the wooden codfish cutout that I am decorating for the Marblehead Arts Festival. For this project, I created a pattern inspired by Portuguese blue and white tiles (azulejos) and gave my fish a Portuguese name, Bela Bacalhau (beautiful codfish). By Friday, I had drawn in the whole design onto the wooden fish with fine-line marker. (See post for May 6, 2016). But I was still trying to decide about the color for the little "wave" patterns inside each square. Should I leave them as is color them in with dark blue, or color them in with a lighter blue? I decided to do a little rough sketch so I could ask innocent bystanders what they thought. (See post for May 9.) I asked family members and friends which square they preferred. What I heard: the two-tone idea is good, but do I want people to perceive the outline or the pattern? That was an interesting question, which led me to a better solution. I wanted a blue that was close to the outline color, but perceptibly different. That way, I would create a two-tone effect, the pattern would pop out, and the outline would still show. So I grabbed another Sharpie and filled in the waves in the white square with a bright blue. (See upper right square.) That color seemed right, but I wasn't ready to actually change the pattern on the wooden fish until I did tried one more thing. To be continued. . . .

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