The eye-catchy colours and lines of Paul Klee (2)

As promised here is another piece inspired by that clever colourist whose Tate Modern, London, retrospective ‘Making Visible’ I visited last year (it runs till 9th March 2014).

I love Paul Klee’s explorative understanding of colour and on seeing Greeting and Separation in the Evening (above) I just thought “wouldn’t these translate into a lovely chest of drawers?” 

Greetings from Berlin

These quite tiny watercolour studies (both done in 1922 and for his students) explore how complementary colours work together (Klee was a great teacher at the Bauhaus).

I was really struck by Greeting (above) in which Klee paints shutter-like bands of gradated colour across a page while differently coloured arrows flow up and down to meet (and greet?). As an exercise in using complementary colours, what I found interesting was the way in which he starts with orange at the bottom and ends with gluey-grey at the top. In between there is no colour, just white. 

I tried the same approach in my studio using Barcelona Orange and Greek Blue from the Chalk Paint® range. I mixed the two complementary colours together, creating a similar effect to Klee's painting but with a dark greyish colour in the centre drawer. I was fortunate to find a chest which has no gaps in the drawers, which really helped create the effect of stripes of colour.

Get it on your Chest

1. I started on the bottom drawer with Chalk Paint® in Greek Blue, and then I mixed some Barcelona Orange until I thought “that’s a nice colour” and painted it on.

2. On the next shelf up I added a little bit more Barcelona Orange, mixed it in again until I thought “yes, that’s another nice colour’.

3. I continued upwards, drawer by drawer, each time adding a bit more Barcelona Orange to make quite gradual colour gradations (on drawers 1-4).

4. I then made a big jump to drawers 5 and 6 as I wanted to end up with pure Barcelona Orange.

I really like the overall effect, even if the gradations are a bit “jumpy” at the top. Actually that might be its charm because it is not so studied or predictably “colour coded”. (Otherwise, I would have needed a massively tall piece of furniture!). And all I needed was just two pots of paint!

The modernist furniture piece was a great canvas to work on too: I painted a graphite line around it and the little brass handles are a lovely touch – a bit like a 1950’s military coat (think Sgt. Pepper's). The overall effect is very pleasing and you see the magic of complementary colours at work!

Hope you think so too.

Yours, Annie