colour – Wilf Thust

Studio Workshop ON COLOUR

Monday 17th Feb 2025

1 Showing,Telling,Mixing

2 Choices, Comparisons, Layers

3 “Story”, Top ups, Inclusions

4 Montage, Craft work, work in a group

We met at 10 am. The underfloor heating had broken down. It was freezing cold, but nobody wanted to change the date as it was already difficult enough to get even four people to meet at the same time.

I set up radiators from our house and provided extra pullovers, socks and slippers, then offered unused shirts as protection, leftovers from a party years back.

This photo is a witness of the fun we had, even when we had to find suitable chairs of different heights for each of us to sit along both sides of one long table.

We finally started at around 11 am and had tea and coffee that made us feel comfortable and ready!

1 INTRODUCTION

to paint one colour each onto a large paper

I provided plates, brushes, water and tubes of very different acrylic paints that I had used before. Then I rolled out Tyvek Paper marking a field of about 30 by 40 cm for everybody with a Byro.

I showed examples and variations of ONE colour,

of greens, reds, oranges, greys, pinks, light greens and blues. There were 7 colours to choose from for only four people.

One after the other people had time to talk about their colour experiences and listen to the others, whilst busy mixing and filling the shape in front of them.

2 CHOOSING AND PAINTING STRIPS OF COLOURS AS “NEIGHBOURS”

and test their effects on the original colour field

I laid out guiding pictures as inspiration from my own work and studies: montages, photos, water colours and the hangings of pixelated squares arranged as a landscape in order to separate colours out, setting them in
the way my eye and brain intended to. That was my game here.

3 Use the painted field you created to tell a “story.”

I mean that in the widest sense. Whatever you put next or on top changes the meaning.

I am thinking of layers and montages, an elementary process in any painting, even in the use of watercolours.

To demonstrate this I showed a screen print of Claude Monet’s Poppy Field and one of my photos of a colour workshop with teenagers in Austria, also holiday photos, one with sea waves in Portugal and the other from a Barn visit in the Lake District.

Claude Monet’s woman in a poppy field and a photo of my Youth colour Workshop 2016.

Facing sea waves in Portugal and a barn holiday in the Lake District.

Here are some of our results revealed after our midday break and a walk to the nearby hillside with a view to Chirk Castle.

4 GROUP WORK

and joined products

At the end of our work we were left with some unfinished products. The feeling was that more time at home was needed.

I felt that on the whole we really had finished this course because I felt fully understood and also amazed by the very astonishing results. I think everybody felt the same.

But to round this off I used the time to suggest projects as group work that might lead to more workshops.

I like the idea of collages put together for a particular celebration or agitation or a kind of joint visual diary effort.

Later on a holiday with grandchildren, my daughter and I gave watercolour paper and big brushes to paint in front of sand, rocks and waves. Ella, seven, and Freya, five, were encouraged to think about the waves and rocks and the effect of that in their water colour paintings.

I cut out pieces of their results, those I liked best and sewed them onto another watercolor they had made. I had never tried that before and was well left alone with this struggle.

The framed result was a Christmas present to the family

This inspirational display I found in Shrewsbury Warehouse

Every bit of cardboard inspired me architecturally over many years. It is another invitation for a joint effort in a workshop for all ages…

and certainly concertina books are also Inviting …

and so I carry on …