"The Color Red"

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"The color red is reserved for those who love drama." Just think back on any environment.  If the color red is visible, that is exactly where your eye goes. Test it out and look for the color red.  You'll see.

If you have been seduced by pouring medium and wonder if there is any part of your larger sheet that holds out a good possibly for a smaller "cropped" section, let me share my criteria of judging when a "good pour" has taken place.

Strong shapes with a slight bit of marbling is my personal preference. In this piece, I was thrilled that both the black and red color blocks touched three sides of the design space. It might have been slightly better if one of those colors had taken up less space than the other, but because of the marbling which broke up the surface tension in those areas, it proved to be very effective. I also check to make sure my corners are all different with interesting color variations in each one. Also, the light turquoise color has graduated sizes of shapes which I found extremely interesting. There were also small hints of white around the edges which gave me the opportunity to echo that color in the lettering and break up the large color blocks of the black and red.

You will also notice that there was enough space in the blue to add the decorated cap and have an echo of black repeated in a different style and texture creating a wonderful focal point.

What will not make a good pour is one with ill defined shapes and the colors taking up equal amounts of space. Echoes are simply "repeats" of a design element such as color, line, shapes, values, texture, size, and direction. If the "repeats" are not exactly the same, the design will be more sophisticated and create a better "echo". And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.