5 COLOR DESIGN

Color design is based on the laws of the manifestation of color in the form in which they are observed in empirical experiments.

Once Rainer Maria Rilke asked Rodin: “Dear Maitre, how is your creative process going when you are just starting to create a new work?” Rodin replied: “First, I have strong feelings and desires, which are increasingly growing in me and pushing me to plastic embodiment plan Then I begin to plan and design. Finally, when it comes to fulfillment, I again surrender myself to a feeling that can make me change my original plan. ”

Cezanne said about himself: "I am embarking on the logical development of what I see in nature."

Matisse, who seemed to be guided mainly by his own feeling, before starting to paint in oils, made small sketches of the supposed paintings and in ink wrote down the names of the colors, marking their location. In other words, he, like Rodin and many other masters, logically thought out and calculated the color composition, which he either carried out or discarded in the process, depending on his intuitive feeling.

All constructively calculated in advance is not decisive in art. An intuitive feeling is higher than this, for it leads to the realm of the irrational and metaphysical, not subject to any number. Intellectual and constructive thinking of the plan is only that “vehicle” that takes us to the door of a new reality.

Anyone who would like to use this “cart” should carry out all the following exercises proposed by me with a brush in my hand. The drawings in the book introduce only elementary fundamentals of color design, and a beginner colorist must perform a much larger number of exercises if he wants to master something more than theory. As a rule, I give only one example for each color. Tables for other colors each student must make himself.