Color Your World With The Robert Burridge Goof-Proof Color Wheel

I have always enjoyed the process of making art, whether it be acrylic on canvas, pen, colored pencil or marker on illustration board or collage on whatever is handy. I have not always been consistent and often don't take the time to follow through on a really neat idea or train of thought. I am spontaneous and don't like to follow the rules as much as I should. However, I have found that when you follow the rules or use techniques perfected by someone's trial and error, success is more readily achieved. All that to say that when I took home a DVD entitled Abstract Florals From Loose Colorful Splatters by Robert Burridge and watched it, I was immediately energized by his process and procedure in making abstract art. During the course of watching the DVD, Burridge introduces his Goof-Proof Color Wheel and demonstrates how to make abstract art based on his color combinations. His color wheel is based on five colors—red, yellow, green, blue, and purple and five secondary colors. By using his color wheel combinations you find your dominant color which leads you to a focal point color and then a secondary color choice which he calls a spice color. The spice colors do exactly as their name implies— they add spice when placed close to the focal color. In other words, using his color wheel and color combinations, you are able to create interesting abstract pictures without having to figure out all that color theory stuff yourself. After watching his video I did a bunch of paintings that I left out on my art table. One of these was a random abstract that used the Goof-Proof wheel. The next thing I know is that my wife is complimenting me on the painting and telling me how the "colors worked". Not bad for a couple of hours of work. Here's my example.

Recently I have been working on a new book being put together by none other than Joe Miller himself. In the book, he talks about the Goof-Proof color wheel and how easy it is to use. Joe used it to pick the colors for his rural barn painting.

Here we see that the dominant color is Purple. Using the color wheel combination, we use green/yellow as the focal color with our spice colors being red/yellow and blue/green. Not your "normal" landscape by far but an interesting approach to creating something that catches your attention. In closing, I will add a painting by the master himself in order to provide a visual bookmark for this latest post. And in Robert's own words, "If you are not having fun making art then why are you doing it".

Robert will be back at Cheap Joe's teaching August 21-25, 2017.