color matching painting assignments

Color Matching- Criteria & Objectives• Students will have a choice between three projects of varying degrees

of difficulty, the projects are as follows: Color grid, Close-Cropped painting, and the Comic book collage Painting. Each assignment’s primary concern is color matching.• Students must match the colors of their subjects with 100% accuracy.• Students must make a representational depiction of their subjects.• Students must follow the criteria and objectives for each respective

assignment.• The objective of this lesson is to match the colors of the student’s

chosen reference.

How to match colors

Color to be matched Artist’s first guess based on previous knowledge

Looks like the color’s a bit too warm

There we go!

Color Grid Close Cropped Comic Collage

Color Grid- Criteria & Objectives

• Students will create a small painting of a photo using only colors and a grid.• Students may find and print a photo of anyone or any animal online.

The photo must be appropriate.• Students will use tempera, watercolor, or any other colored media,

painting supplies, a sheet of 12 x 18 in. sheet of paper, with a 3/4 inch grid. • Students will try to match each color in the photo reference grid with

the color of paint. The grid on their portrait will be a half inch grid.• The objective of this assignment is to match colors using a grid system.

Chuck Close – Kara  – archival watercolor pigment print, 55-1/2″ x 44″ (2012) work & detail

Student Work

Close Crop Paintings- Criteria & Objectives• Students will Take a picture and crop in very closely around an

interesting area to paint.• Students will match the colors of their photographic reference as

close as they can. Students must try to reproduce their source material in a naturalistic/representational manner.• Students will use magazines, scissors, glue, pencil, acrylics, paint

brushes and other supplies on tag board.• The objective of this assignment is to be able to technically match

colors from a photographic reference and create a well balanced and semi abstract macro composition from a larger source.

Georgia O’Keefe

Karen Kitchel

Christian Flynn

Robert Cottingham

Ben Weiner

Water Lillie Study

Comic book collage painting- Criteria & Objectives

• Students will create a small 1 in. x 1.5 in. collage and refer to it for a 12 in. x 18 in. painting.

• Students will stretch and gesso their own canvas.• Students will use acrylics, water, brushes, paper towels, and graphite for an

under-drawing. (optional to use paint markers once the paint is dry to add details)• Students must make the collage using comic books I have provided for them or

they can provide their own imagery via the internet. The collage must be in color and the collage must be abstract, if parts are recognizable they should be school appropriate.

• The painting will reference the collage, part for part, color for color.• If a student so chooses they made do an advanced version of the assignment

where in addition to the collage reference they may collage found works into their painting.

• The objective of this lesson is to create an abstract collage and reproduce it on a larger scale. Students will learn to analyze and replicate the exact color of their reference point, translate between different scales, and comprehend various proportions in an abstract composition.

James Rosenquist, I love you with my Ford, 1961 and Marilyn Monroe, I, 1962

The Stowaway Peers Out at the Speed of Light (2000)

David Salle

Jeff Koons

Aaron Noble

Greg Lamarche

Joram Roukes

Michael Steele

Ai Kijima

Ben Frost

Tim Diet

Nathan James

Juan Travieso

David Bayus