Colour Design

Artist Statement

My inspiration for S-pride-rman came from the Marvel series, which I've been watching recently. I chose Spiderman because his mask is the most geometric and fits best with the idea of the piece. The prompt for this artwork was to create a painting using 84 shades- twelve colours, with three tints, three shades, and the pure colour for each. I decided early on that a geometric image would work best for this, as I wanted to keep track of all the colours in a neat and organized way. It would also be easier to fill in the colours if I did not have to blend them and instead could have solid blocks of colour to fill in.

This artwork was made on canvas, entirely with acrylic paints. I began by finding a few reference photos to use, and referring to those as I sketched a shape on my canvas. I knew that I needed twelve sections, so I split the mask into twelve sectors with seven smaller sections. I first included the eyes in this, but later found that I could fit all the colours in the mask and could leave the eyes closer to the original. I started with red at the middle of the mask, thinking that it was the most recognizable colour for Spiderman.

I created my palettes before painting, adding the right amounts of black and white to get the values I wanted before picking up a brush. I started with a red palette and a green palette, and worked counterclockwise. Each colour required many layers, which was why I worked with two palettes at once. While I was adding a layer to blue-green, red-orange was drying. Then I would switch. When I was finished with both, I would rinse my palettes and create new ones before beginning the process again. Lastly, I added the black outline of the eyes and the white filler. Those took very little layers to create flat, stroke-less colour. I chose the name because of the rainbow of colours and the play on Spiderman with the rainbow representing LGBTQ+ pride. Although it was very time-consuming, I'm very happy with how the final result looks.