Pixies & Paintings: Red, Orange, Tan, and Purple

Red, Orange, Tan, and Purple

Blue Line

Red, Orange, Tan, and Purple
by Mark Rothko
Red
Mystery Painting
recreated by Derek, Clare, and Guy
Red

Mystery Painting Description
by Jing-Jing and Hyein
The painting we chose has three sections. First you should mix red and orange and a little dip of brown together. Put more orange than red so it looks like a peel of an orange and paint the whole paper that color. Wait for the paint to dry. The paper should be vertical.
After the paint dries, paint a royal purple rectangle that takes more than half of the paper but less than two thirds of the paper. To make the royal purple, add white and purple together. The longer part of the rectangle should be horizontal. The rectangle's lines shouldn't be straight; they should be squiggly. Also, when you paint the royal purple rectangle, leave a skinny strip of red-orange background so three of the red orange strips are the same amount of thickness. The two strips that go vertically on the side should be the same length.
The first part of the last section is to mix tan and white and yellow together so its color is like a lemon peel. Paint a rectangle on top of the red orange background close to the other rectangle but barely touching it. Paint the tan and white mixed rectangle below the royal purple rectangle. Leave a thin strip of the red orange background around the rectangle that is the same thickness as the strip in between the two rectangles. Also, 1 1/2 of the tan and white rectangle is the same size as the other rectangle. Now the painting should be complete.
Analysis
by Jing-Jing and Hyein
The title of our painting is "Red, Orange, Tan and Purple." The artist is Mark Rothko. The size is 68 inches by 84 inches. The artist painted this painting with oil on canvas in 1954. His daughter and son, Kate and Christopher, own the painting.
What went well was the shape of the tan rectangle and the color was pretty good. The size of the two rectangles was really good. The background is almost perfect, except it should have been poster paint.
What could have gone better was that our partners could have made the bigger rectangle purple instead of blue and it could have been a bit straighter than squiggly. We told you to leave a skinny piece of background not a medium one. Even though Derek, Clare, and Guy made some mistakes, they did a great job.

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Page completed June 14, 1999.
Maintained by Lucinda Surber.