Barcelona's Art Déco Palette 1

La Colorista

With this one, I begin a sequence of posts on the colours from Barcelona.At the same time that  I try to capture hues, I will explain a few things, in few words, on the chosen places. 

Today I'm leading you to the Modernist or Art-Decó colour palette shown in one of the Houses that were constructed in Parc Güell. Built from 1900 to 1914, the "Parc Güell" was the main work, and the most complete, from Antoni Gaudí, who was comissioned to construct a Park-City according to the model of the ones raised in England in the second half of the XIX th. century. Gaudí, who conceived his work as a closed and fenced residential area provided with all the necessary services, was helped by the also catalan architects Josep Mª Jujol and Joan Rubió i Bellver.

In this photo, correspondig to the so called "Rose House" where Gaudí lived for 20 years, you can observe one of the decorating techniques practiced in this period, called sgraffitto, -in the window borders and also in the façade. It was made scratching through a surface to reveal a lower layer of a contrasted colour. Here we have rich muted tones of rose and red together with sandy beige, which contrast with black in the forged-iron fence and a dark shade of green in the window's wooden blinds. If the day had been a sunny one, this bunch of colours would be enhanced by the bright blue of our Mediterranean sky. I'm sure you would love to visit this wonderful place.

More to come...

P.D. - In catalan we call "Modernisme" the period you know as Art-Déco and Art Noveau in English (I have come to observe that you call Modernism to what we know as Rationalism... Just to avoid misinterpreting!)

Mural project for a School's Yard

Busy as I was with my Colour for Your Home Consultant Certification at Sensationalcolor, I had given up writing in my blogs for an essential lack of time. Now that I have finished my Winter Class, here I am with a very special project I did in 2010-11. This is  a Mural Project to decorate a concret wall in a yard at the school  where I work, in Moià (Barcelona, SPAIN). I began it in summertime and delivered my work in January. I tried to capture the colours that we can find in nature in different yearly Seasons. Then I translated them into an imagined landscape that shows the Seasons in the same order in which we enjoy them at School, from September to June. From the left of the image to its right we go from Autumn to Summer. And from the bottom to the top of the wall are represented the colours from earth to sky, also according to the Seasons. Here is the final sketch:

 La Colorista

This is the wall to be painted:

La Colorista

I picked colours from photos that I had shot in all the annual Seasons and I produced this first messy colour palette ( I have a bit more of phtoshop knowledge right now, but this is a little bit naïve and I love it, between us...) :

La Colorista

After that I translated colours to printable ones  in Pantone Solid Coated, and I arranged seasonal groups and a colour palette for every Season. I have used many colours -not all of them- in the final project. Here you are my Seasonal Colour Palettes:

Winter colour palette, La Colorista

Spring colour palette, La Colorista .

Summer colour palette, La Colorista

Autumn colour palette, La Colorista

As unluckily we are suffering a tough economical recession, our annual  School's budget has currently been reduced about a twenty per cent and we don't know when the mural will be painted. But pupils, parents and my peer teachers seem to love the project and want it done as it is. So I'm feeling happy!!! What else could I ask for?

My next goal is specialising in colour for Architectural Exteriors. Will it be possible for me to fly to USA in 2012? I'd love to!