Latest News from Steve Quiller

Story of the New Color DVDs

December 19, 2012

When I teach a workshop somewhere in the U.S., a few weeks ahead I am in touch with the class co-ordinator and will send some of my books, videos and painting supplies. It was during this process in the spring of 2010 that there was a problem. It was evident that my book “Painter’s Guide to Color”, a very important book dealing with my approach to color theory and painting was OUT OF PRINT!
 
I was stunned! I had two books written in the 1980s that were taken off the shelves but it was partially because of the way books were now being printed. “Painter’s Guide to Color” however needed to be in print: the information was timeless.
 
When the dust cleared I realized I needed to do something about this. I found that I had the rights to the book and could possibly print it myself. However the film- large cumbersome sheets- were in Singapore and the printing and distribution would be costly. I had another publisher interested but they already had two fairly recent books on color and needed to give them selling time before engaging my books.
 
Finally I decided to do an extensive video set on the “Complete Color Foundation for the Painter”. This would be a comprehensive guide that would get to the heart of my theory from start to finish. I had done many previous videos for art related companies and had just finished two for F & W Media in February of 2012. So I took notes during the video process and picked their brain with the idea of producing my own videos out of my studio.
 
By producing my own DVDs, I would never need to worry about another company taking my work out of print. Of course I would need to figure out how to set up my studio for filming, who to help in doing the project, and then how to manufacture and distribute the product.
 
The good news was that my daughter Allison had just a year earlier finished screen-play writing and film study at the Vancouver Film School in Canada. She came back to work on this project and she recommended D’Arcy Hamilton, a cinematographer from Vancouver to film the sessions. We used my studio space and rented three cameras, audio and lighting equipment, and arranged the studio for the sessions.
 
I had of course outlined and planned the event in much detail ahead of time but what a gift and pleasure it was to see my daughter and her friend work in such a professional  capacity. We filmed for six straight days, from 8:30 A.M. to 9:00 PM. With the final editing there are about eight hours of film broken into thirteen chapters, each approximately 35 minutes each. It is a two DVD set. The first one is titled “Structured Color” while the second is “Going Beyond Structured Color”. The process has been amazing and the resulting work will make permanent forty years of development of my approach to color theory. And will help many, many artists to grow in their own work and style.
 
I hope to launch the videos by early February, 2013. Look for the notice on the home page of my website.