Color Study

For this piece I chose an image of Barack Obama's face and used color averaging (by mixing different colors) within square centimeters to recreate it, with oil pastels as the media. The only restriction was that the centimeter-squares couldn't be divided into anything smaller than halves.

To do this I first found the image online, printed it out, and drew a grid over it using one centimeter squares. I then drew the same grid on my blank paper. Then I began averaging color within each individual square and recreating that color by mixing different oil pastels. In some places I split squares in halve—either diagonally or horizontally—to incorporate up to two different colors within a square.

I chose this image because it incorporates a wide range of different skin tones because of Obama's dark skin and the intense light coming from the right side. The purpose of this project was to indroduce and practice color mixing with oil pastels because it is similar to color mixing in paining.