after klee, for "red"

So this is my first piece of work for "red". It's an attempted almost copy of Paul Klee's oil painting entitled New Harmony. To see the original, click here. Klee said to his students at the Bauhaus that painting well was simply a matter of putting the right colour in the right place. This lesson however, is something most painters could spend a lifetime learning.

The reason I chose this to try to recreate is because I love Klee's work, he's an absolute master with colour, and also, even though there is very little red in it, it is the red that stands out. I really love this painting and I wanted to try to learn a little about how Klee put it together. I couldn't get the colour hues and tones quite right, and although the red here looks more like orange, it is poppy red that I used. I decided to recreate this using pastel rather than paint for now. My ability with paint and colour mixing is nowhere near good enough to attempt painting this. But I'm sure that will be a challenge for another day.

I did change two squares, deliberately making them blue instead of the pinkish colour that he used originally. I wanted to see how using blue would change the balance of the overall picture. It does make a difference, the red is less pronounced, there is less of a "harmony" so to speak. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed doing this! But I think my next piece ought to be in paint.