18 Artists Magazine May 2019
Build TUTORIAL
COLOR
Nature’s palette has much to
off er, as demonstrated in
HELEN OH’s seashell paintings.“The mollusk’s motto would be: One
must live to build one’s house, and not
build one’s house to live in,” wrote
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard
(1884–1962). As I caress nautilus and
abalone shells, part of a collection I’ve
acquired for painting and pleasure,
I often muse about these sea dwellers’
unexpected ability to color the interior
portions of their shells with iridescent
rainbow hues. I find painting these
colors diverting and challenging as
I attempt to match the ability these
mollusks have for creating vivid color
inside their modest homes.Shells on Artist Palette
oil on board, 18x22IN VIVID,
LIVING
COLOR
The Society of Motion Picture
and Television Engineers
(SMPTE) color bars are a
test-pattern signal used to
achieve consistent color on
electronic devices. In my
SMPTE series, I used one of
the artifi cial SMPTE colors
as the backdrop for the
naturally colored elements in
each of my still life setups.Seashell and Sand Dollars
SMPTE series; oil on board, 12x9“Merely think,
‘Here is a little
square of blue,
here an oblong of
pink, here a streak
of yellow,’ and
paint it just as it
looks to you.”
— claude monet