James Gurney Creator ofJAMES GURNEY COLOR AND LIGHT A GUIDE FOR THE REALIST PAINTER Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC Kansas City « Sydney» LondonColor and Light copyright © 2010 by James Gurney. All rights reserved. Printed in China, No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC an Andrews McMeel Universal company 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106 wwwandrewsmemeel.com 111213 14 15 SDB 109876543 ISBN: 978-0-7407-971-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010924512 gurneyjourney:blogspot.com ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES Andrews MeMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use, For information, please e-mail the Andrews MeMeel Publishing Special Sales Department: specialsales@amuniversal.comCONTENTS INTRODUCTION Cuapter 1: TRADITION (Oup Mastens' Covor Tue Acabenac TRaDimion Open Passinc 18 BRITAIN Tus Hunson Rwex Scnoot Puetn-Ain MoveMeNtS Syaouist Dazans ‘Magazine ILLusteanion 2 4 16 Is 2% 2 24 Cnapter 2: Sources oF Lint Dinscr SuNuich Overcast Licitt Wixpow Licist (CANDLELIGHT AND FineLignT Innoor Euecrnic Liotrt STREETLIGHTS AND Niaitr Conprrions Lowvescence ippen Licirr Sources Carter 3: LicHt AND Form Tie Form Princirce SEPARATION oF LaGHTT AND Suiapow Cast Siapows Hatr Shapaw cewusiow Sianows ‘Tuoe-Quartee Lioira FeowtaL Loins Epoe Liaitnna Cowrre Jour Lit Frost BeLow Reruecrep Lior Seoruiatixa Lorarions oF rie Fors Priscirur Cuapter 4: ELEMENTS OF COLOR Reniuskivo Tue Covor Wie, CCrmmoxta an Vatu Loca CoLor Grays ano Nevraats ‘Tue Green Prosuem Gaapsrion Tots Cuapter 5: PAINT AND PIGMENTS Tie Seance rox Piowents Chagrin Proments| Licarrasress Wan UNDERPAINTING Sky Paves Trassranency aNp GLAZING PaLerre ARRANGEMENTS Livre Pavertes ‘Tue Mup Densre 2% x» et %6 38 40 2 m 6 78 2 Cuaprer 6: CoLor RELATIONSHIPS ‘Moxocuinowaric ScueNes 10 Waron anp Coot 112 ‘Covonen Licirr boreracrions us “Tuas 16 Coton Accent Tr CiapTEr 7: PREMIXING MixING CouoR STRINGS 12 Gawur Mavens 14 CCheamixe Gaur Masks 126 Suiares oF Covor Scuees 18 MixiNG A Conrrouie GaMur 130 Coton Scrirrisc 132 Cuapter 8: Visuat PERCEPTION A Wor. wrrovr Coton 136 Ts Moonuicnr Bur? 138 pars AND Derrit 140 Cotox Oprostrioss, a2 Coton Coxstaxcy 144 Apavration aN Contrast 46 APPETIZNG AND HEALING COLORS 18 Cuapter 9: SURFACES AND. EFFECTS ‘TeansarteD Licnt 12 SSUESURFACE SeaTTERING 154 Conok Zouts oF Tae Face 156 ‘Thr Ham Stover 158, Causrics 160 SrEcULAR REFLECTIONS 162 Ficucacirs 164 ‘Coton Corona 16 Manos Rive 168 Poros vs. Onservarion 170 Cxapter 10: ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS: Sky BLUE AMosniientc Pensrecrive Reverse ATMOSPHERIC PeRsPECTIVE Goupex Hour Licimsc Sunsets Foo, Mist, Soke, Dust Raisnous: SSRYHOLES AND FOLIAGE SuxweAMs AND SHADOWBEANS Dapruep Licarr Croup Suapows ILiexaNArED FOREGROUND SSwow an Ter WaTER: REFLECTION AND TRANSPARENCY “Mountats STREAMS Coton UNDeRWArEt Cnapter 11: Licut’s CHANGING SHOW SERIAL PAINTING AD The EXD oF THe Day Craprer 12: RESOURCES: Guossaay Prost INeonation RecomMeNpen READING ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Twvex m4 176 178 180 182 184 186 188, 190 192 194 196 198, 200 202 204 208 210 214 218 220 mmPe ee ee ee ee ee een EC Vienna, Osterreshische Galerie Belvedere.INTRODUCTION This book examines the painter's two most fundamental tools: color and light. It is intended for artists of all media interested in a traditional realist approach, as well as for any- one who is curious about the workings of the visual world. When I wasin art school took a color class that consisted of painting a lot of flat swatches, cutting them out with a sharp knife, and pasting them down, into color wheels and gray scales. I spent ‘months learning how to paint perfectly smooth swatches and trying to get the steps between them exactly even. At the end of each day I would leave the classroom and look up at the colors of the sky, the trees, and the water around me. The sky was not composed of adjacent flat colors, but rather of an infinite variety of gradating hues. Why did dark colors turn blue as they went back toward the horizon except in a few instances, such as in the painting opposite, when a setting sun casts the far vista in orange light? Why did the leaves have a sharp yellow-green color when the light shined through them, but a gray- green color on top? In school I was learning how to see and mix color, but I had no idea how to apply this experience to real-world painting problems, Color theory seemed more like a branch of chemistry or ‘mathematics, a separate science that had little to do with making 2 realistic painting. [felt like a piano student who had played a lot of scales, but had never gotten around to the melody. If there were answers to my questions about how light interacts with color, atmosphere, water, and other materials, | would have to find them in fields like phiysies, optics, physiology, and materials science. [ started digging back into art instruction books from more than seventy-five years ago, when it was taken for granted that artists were trying to create an illusion of reality. Artists as far back as Leonardo da Vinci were struggling to explain the behavior of | the visual world around them, Each old book had its vein of gold, but the information needed to be translated and updated for our times, and the old theories nceded to be tested against recent scientific discoveries. T investigated recent findings in the field of visual perception and found that many of my assumptions were mistaken, even about such basic things as the primary colors. I learned that the eye is not like a camera, but more like an extension of the brain itself. I earned ‘that moonlight is not blue. It only appears blue because of a trick that our eyes are playing on us During the last few years, since the release of Dinotopia: Journey 10 Chandara, Uhave taught workshops at a lot of art schools and movie studios. Thave also kept up a daily blog that explores the methods of the academic painters and the Golden Age illustrators and have adapted some of the blog content into my recent book, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doest't Exist. As Lassembled that volume, I realized that the information on color and light was so extensive—and so popular with blog readers—that I decided it required a second volume, This book begins with a survey of his toric masters who used color and light in interesting ways. Although those paint- ings are a tough act to follow, for the rest of the book T'ILuse my own paintings both observational and imaginative —as examples. Since I painted them, I can tell you what I was thinking when I made them, Chapters 2 and 3 examine the vari- ous sourees of light, and we look at how light creates the illusion of three-dimen- sional form. Chapters 4 and 5 cover the basic properties of color as well as an introduetion to pigments and paints. Chapters 6 and 7 present the method I use called gamut mapping, which helps in choosing colors for a given picture.The last chapters of the book deal with specific challenges that we face when we paint textures like hair and foliage, followed by the infinitely varied phenomena of atmospheric effects. The book ends with a glossary, a pigment index, and a bibliography. This book doesn't contain recipes for mixing colors or step-by-step painting procedures, My goal isto bridge the gap those: Light om the Wate 207. OiLom board, 2 Sia Published in Dmotapa Journey to Chandar between abstract theory and practical knowledge. I would like to cut through the confusing and contradictory dogma about color, to test it in the light of science and observation, and to place it in your hands so that you can use it for ‘your own artistic purposes. Whether you ‘work in paint or pixels, fact or fantasy, I ‘want this book to bring color and light down to earth for you.Harry Anderson, American, 1906-1996. The Widow, 1948. Gouache on board,TRADITIONTRADITION OLD Masters’ COLOR Light and color were precious to the old masters. Artists didn’t have hundreds of available pigments, as we do today. Paint samples scraped from the edges of Vermeer’s artwork show that he used no more than seventeen pigments. Diego Roriguer dogune, Spanish, 1599-1680 he Forge of Vala, 1630. Oo eras, 874% 14. Masco del Prado, Mad Spin, Scala Am Resource, NY. In The Forge of Vulean, Diego Veldzquez surrounds the head of the god Apollo with a supernatural radiance, but uses light angled from the left to sculpt the ‘mortal figures, even boldly casting a shadow of one figure onto another YVermeer's Lacemuaker isa tiny window into an intimate world, made more real by the shallow-focus effects he observed. ina camera obscura. The yellow, red, and blue colors shimmer against the variegated gray color of the backgroundTRADITION THe ACADEMIC TRADITION New ideas in chemistry and visual perception fueled a revolution in the use of light and color in French painting. Nineteenth-century academic masters, such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau (right) and Jean-Léon Gérome (opposite) responded to three major innovations. 1, Science of Perception. Professor of chemistry Michel-Eugine Chevreul studied the pereeption of colors and demonstrated that colors can be understood only in relation to each other and that no color exists in isolation, Another inTuential scientist was Hermann von Helmholtz, who made the case that we don’t perceive objects directly. Instead, our visual experience consists of color sensations on the retina, The result of these ideas was to dissociate color from surfaces and to emphasize the effects of illumination, surrounding color, and atmosphere on any perceived color. 2. New Pigments. The painters palette expanded with new pigments, such as Prussian blue, cobalt blue, chrome yellows, and cadmiums. Both academic and impressionist painters sought out subjects to show off the new colors to the fall advantage 3. Plein-Air Practice. The collapsible paint tube was patented in 1841. It soon nto common use by artists painting outdoors. Although outdoor painting, ‘was pioneered as early as the 1780s i ‘was a familiar practice by mideentury ‘ean-Léon Gérime recommended to is students: “When you draw, form isthe important thing. But in painting the first thing s to look for the general impression of color... Always paint a direct sketch from nature every day” 4Above: ea Léon Germs, French, 1624-190, L'Enhnce Gri (The Gray Eminence), 1873. Oil on canes, 77% 39% in, Museum of Fe Ars Boston, Opposite: Wii Adop he Bouguers, French, 1925-1906. ewes (Yond, 1893. Oi om amas, 754 x48, Piva clletion.TRADITION OPEN-AIR PAINTING IN BRITAIN © ome serena nan The changeable weather of Britain fostered a long tradition of obser later realists. ant colorists from Turner and Constable to The Blind Ge 156. Oi on cans “The Birmingham Museums and Art G Bek Stanhope Alosander Forbes, RA. Bish, ISS}-1987, 4 lh Sle Corie Beh, 888. Oil on canvas 17% 6 in, Pamouth City Musou fan Art Gallet Photo © Bogeraan Ar Lea Stanhope Forbes helped establish a British art colony in the Cornish fishing village of Newlyn. He painted Fish Sale ‘entirely outdoors. For nearly a year he overcame challenges of rain, wind, fainting models, and rotting fish. He ‘was able to paint only when the tide was ‘out and the sky was gray. Working out of-doors was essential to capture the ‘truthful effects of light and atmosphere and “that quality of freshness, most difficult of attainment by any other ‘means, and which one is apt to lose when the work is brought into the studio for completion.” Sir John Everett Millas, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite move- ment, painted the background of Blind Girl in Sussex in 1854, and then added the figures later. The pitiful condition of the beggar girl shows in her tattered and relatively dull-colored clothing, in contrast with the rich colors of the land scape behind her. She sees neither the double rainbow nor the butterfly on her shavwl, ‘The Pre-Raphaelites experimented with new ways of painting, applying colors in transparent glazes over semidry white ground, and achieved a depth of color that struck some crities as garish but others as faithful to natureTRADITION THE Hupson RIVER SCHOOL The otherworldly paintings of the Hudson River School painters owe a great deal to their use of light, which often seemed to emanate from within the picture itself. Careful studies made out-of-doors were synthesized into spectacular studio compositions, in mid-nineteenth- Landscape painti century America was fueled by both a tradition of close observation of nature and a fascination with nature’s sublime moods, which were captured in epie vistas, Frederic Church organized painting, expeditions to Newfoundland, Jamaica, and Colombia, seeking dramatic natural cffects. Improved pigments found their Way into his images, His sunset epic shove: Fost Edin Church, Ansrica, 1826-1900 Twilight in the Wilderness was partly inspired by a new formulation of rmadder Take. Asher Brown Durand was the chief pe wth Bhs, 155, Ol on cans, isn, Museum of Fine Ars Boson quest of Mary Faller Wik. spokesman of the Hudson River School’s preoccupation with painting outdoors. His famous essays, Letters on Landscape Painiing, were published in 1855, the same year that he painted the study Landscape with BirchTRADITION PLEIN-AIR MOVEMENTS Painters outside of France combined their knowledge of outdoor light with a powerful sense of composition. Many nations, including America, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Sweden, each developed a distinctive approach. 2» Russian landseape painter Ivan Shishkin painted Midday in the Outskirts of ‘Moscow after doing countless plein-air studies in the countryside. The painting shows workers coming home from the fields of rye. Inthe distance a country church and a winding river are dwaried by the immensity of the towering clouds above them. The spaciousness and joyfulness of the composition had a sgzalvanizing effect on later generations of Russian landscape painters, who realized the potential for landscape to bbe the vehicle for expressing the deepest stirrings of the human soul ‘Arthur Streeton’s view of the Hawkes- bury River in Australia, opposite, looks across to the Blue Mountains in the dis- tance. The title was drawn from poetry. He sai the painting “was completed with a kind of artistic intoxication with the thoughts of Shelley in my mind.” Indeed, he often brought volumes of Wordsworth or Keats with him on location Since he had no charcoal, Streeton recalled that he designed the composi- tion in red and cobalt blue. The noonday light casts the tree shadows directly downward, avoiding drama and playing down sculptural relief. The square com- position, a novelty in its day, emphasizes the flat, decorative quality. The richest blue is notin the sky of the far moun- tains, but rather in the depths of the forepround river, a color Streeton called “the blue of a black opal”Abn: Arthur Stecton, Australian, 1867-193. "The purple nos ranparen igh," 1896.0 on canvas 48% 4 in ‘National Galery of Victoria, Melboure, purshasod 199. Opposite: Yan Siskin, Russian, 1852-1898. nde ne Oui of Moscow, 169. Oi on cams 4324315 “The Tretkov Gallen; Moseon aTRADITION SYMBOLIST DREAMS The symbolist painters used light and color to create images that stirred the imagination and evoked strange states of mind. They were interested in ideals of beauty often inter- mingled with an obsession with tragedy and despair. The poetic imagery of the Symbolists vas a reaction to mundane realism Their goal was to to evoke feelings of gloom, patriotism, and mystery. They showed that color doesn’t have to be used in a literal or naturalistic way. The painting above is by a Hungarian painter named Adolf Hirémy-Hirsch, who created dramatic scenes from ancient mythology. The bearded man is Abasuerus, the legendary wanderer at the end of the world, He is the last man in the polar wildemess, caught between the angel of hope and the specter of death. Before him lies a fallen female figure, the personification of dead humanity, as rows circle ominously Hirémy-Hirschl restricted his palette of colors to blue, gray black, and white, witha faint hint of warmth in the hhuman flesh, and a few touches of gold The primary light appears to radiate from the distant angel, who hovers before a stormy sky. (Opposite: Agonse Mucha, Czech, 1860-19. “Avoca of the History af the Slr, 1926. emerson amas, 187 15638, Beto Ado Hick: Hiseh, Hungarian, 1860-1933 Abus the End of the Wot, 188 Cit on cas 542» 304m. Private cleo (Christies Images Lite Alphonse Mucha, opposite, drama- tizes the patriotic spirit of the Slavic people. He achieves a dreamy, weightless feeling with carefully controlled tonal ‘organization, framing the glowing center with darker and cooler areas. The color scheme is extremely disciplined. Bands Of swirling hues suggest the movement of a flag. Mucha said, “The expression of beauty is by emotion. The person who can communicate his emotions to the soul of the other is the artistTRADITION MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION In our own color-saturated times, it’s hard for us to realize how much impact color reproductions in books and maga- zines had on readers’ imaginations, The full spectrum of the art museum finally arrived on the coffee table. Color gradually trickled into the pages of popular magazines that had long been available only in black and white, Walter Everett painted the illustration opposite with a full-color palette, even though be knew it would be reproduced in tones of gray, Influenced by impressionism, he used broken color—the placement of adjacent strokes of contrasting hues, which mix vibrantly in the eye. As the twentieth century progressed, many magazines added a single extra color to the black-ink run, Norman. Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers ‘were in tones of gray plus red for ten years. Other magazines printed story illustrations in black and green or black and orange. Staying within the constraints of these limited palettes made those artists into resourceful colorists. Tom Lovell, who painted the magazine cover, left, started in the pulp magazines, where color was a luxury. With the full palette available here, he sets up a color scheme that contrasts greens with reds, while down- playing yellows, violets, and blues, The reds appear in their full intensity in the sift bow, and muted in the pinks of the sin’ dress, The mother wears different ‘ereens in her shoes, skirt, and blouse. Lovell’ friend Harry Anderson takes a red-green palette through 2 similar set of paces on pages 10-11jon of Ameri Il magazine, December 1951 OiLon pane,Ree ee eee eee)SOURCES OF LIGHTSources oF Ligut DirEcT SUNLIGHT ‘A clear, sunny day has three different systems of illumina- tion: the sun itself, the blue sky, and the reflected light from illuminated objects. The second two sources of light derive entirely from the first, and should be subordinated to it. ‘Ona clear day, the luminous blue dome of the sky surrounds the sun. Compared to sunlight, skylight is a diffuse, soft light coming from many directions at once. At high altitudes, or ifthe air is especially clear, the sky is even more blue-violet than usual, and the shadows are darker and bluer relative to the sun. AS more clouds appear in the sky, shadows become grayer. With more haze or smog, shadows appear relatively closer to the tonal value of the sunlight, ‘As welll explore in more detail on page 66, the color of the ground and nearby ‘objects reflects up into the shadow areas, In the painting at left, the warm light bounces into the sculpted ornament over the shadowy doorway, wile the blue skylight is most noticeable in the shadow cast by the triangular pediment ‘on the area above the doorway that says “KINGSTON LIBRARY.” In the figure at right, the blue sky color ives the top of the shoulder a greenish «quality in the shadow. Where the sleeve drops from the shoulder, the yellow shirt picks up warm colors from the ground, and appears more orange, Abe: Kingston Library, 20, ion pal 10» Sin nmi: Aranete Sketching, 203, Oion pane, 10 BinSources oF Lieut OVERCAST LIGHT Most people like sunny, cloudless days, but artists and photographers often prefer the soft illumination of a cloud- covered sky, The layer of clouds diffuses the sunlight, elimi- nating the extreme contrasts of light and shadow. lokbaster 2000, Oi on boar, 10* 18, Mae Carch, 1995 Oilon board, 10 Sin(Overcast light is ideal for complicated outdoor scenes. One of its virtues is that it allows you to paint forms in their true colors without dramatic contrasts of light and shade. Without sharp shadows complicating the scene, a picture is simpler and the shapes are bigger. Surprisingly, colors appear brighter and purer than they do in direct sunlight. It’s easier to show the patterns of cos- tumes or signs, The sky in the painting above appears light aray or white, often the lightest note in the composition, The sketeh in Maine, opposite, was painted on a rainy day. The white church steeple was a little darker than the sky. Overcast fight doesn't change much throughout the day. Its stability allows a plein-air painter to work for four or five hours without the light changing too much, Inart school you don't often get a chance fo paint overcast light conditions because there's no way to simulate it perfectly indoors. A very large north- facing window comes close, but studio north light is still directional compared to overcast light. Even a bank of fluorescent fixtures across the ceiling doesn't match it exactly because the light needs to be coming equally and evenly from above. Photographers like to use overcast light because it’s easier to expose a scene evenly. In 3-D computer-generated images, overcast light is one of the hardest light conditions to simulate because an accurate rendering involves such a vast number of mathematical calculations. uSources or Licut WInbow LIGHT Interior scenes in daylight are often lit by the soft light that enters the room through windows or open doors. This light has traditionally been popular with artists because of its constancy and its simplifying effect. Assuming the sun is not shining directly through the window, the daylight that enters a room from outside is usually bluish. The cool color contrasts with the relatively orange color of artificial lights shining inthe room. ‘On a sunny day there’ often a second source caused by light that shines on the ground outside and bounces upward into the window. This light is best seen om a white ceiling. 13 often comparatively azeen or orange in color, depending on the color of the ground surface. If you look closely ata room lit by a north- {acing window, you'll notice the floor of ‘the room typically has a bluish cast from skylight and the ceiling has a green or ‘orange cast from light reflected from the sgrass or the dirt outside. Tn the Dinotopian workshop scene above, the large window provides a source of cool light coming from the left, while a warm lamp offscreen to the right provides a contrasting color of light. The observational oil study of an Irish hearth, opposite, shows cool light from an open doorway and an adjacent win- dow. You can tell the light comes from ‘wo side-by-side sources because of the twin vertical highlights on the teakettle, water pot, and stovepipe. The light was brightest on the left of the scene, atthe place where the owner once replaced a broken black tile with a white tle. ‘The light casts soft warm shadows to the right of the black stovepipe, the china dogs, and the plastic bucket of turf. Above: Dens Std, 1993 ion Board, 11% 20, Published a Dinotopia: The Work! Beat Opposite: rch Steve, 2002. O00 pao, 10% 8Sources of Ligut & CANDLELIGHT AND FIRELIGHT Sy > Candlelight, lantern light, and firelight are alll yellow-orange . in color. The light is fairly weak, dropping off rapidly as ‘. objects recede from the flame. After the sun sets and twilight ‘, deepens, the effects of flame-based light become more a noticeable, ce In the days before electricity, lamps and Janterns were lit at dusk when there was still enough light to find the matches. In the painting Garden of Hope, opposite, the lantern shines in a garden just as the last sunlight fades on the far mountains. The lamp is surrounded by a halo of warm orange color that makes it impossible to see details of the far forest canopy. Light streams down on the white dresses, the lilacs and roses, and the wall behind the figures, In the cabin scene at left, painted from observation during an evening rainstorm, a kerosene lamp provides the light for a board game on the por In such firelit environments, smnoke often scatters the light, Ieaving no deep darks in the vicinity of the light sources Photographs of night scenes often miss these qualities, making the darks appear profoundly black. To the eye they often have a glowing appearance, with plenty of soft edges. FALL-OrF The brightness of any point-source illumination diminishes rapidly with distance. This weakening of light is called fall-off. It diminishes according to the inverse square law, which states that the effect of a light shining on a surface weakens at a rate comparzble to the square of the distance beoween source and surface. As the diagram above demonstrates, at twice the distance, the light is only one fourth as bright because the same rays must cover four times the area, At three times the distance, it drops to one ninth as bright. Manmothin Snowy Vlas, 1991-Oi on boar, 7 16,Sources oF Licur Inpoor ELeEctTric LIGHT The most common indoor lights are incandescent and fluorescent. To paint their effects, you have to keep in mind three qualities: relative brightness, hardness or softness, and color cast. BRIGHTNESS The brightness of bulbs is measured in lumens, but what matters to artists is relative brightness within a scene, especially when you have more than one source. The relative brighiness depends on such things as the wattage, the type of lamp, how close the subject is to the light, and how bright the other lights are. HARDNESS OR SOFTNESS Hardness or softness refers to how large the patch of light seems to be from the point of view of the subject. A hard light comes from a sharp, small point ‘The sun—or a spotlight—is a relatively Fire L. Spectal pverdribton for insandeson ght hard source of light. Hard light is more directional and more dramatic. It casts crisper shadows and it bri surface texture and highlights, A soft light emanates fiom a wider area, such as the large panel of fluorescent like tubes over the workbench in the scene at right. In general, softer light is ‘more flattering and reassuring. 1's bet- ter for task lighting because it reduces fhe confusion of cast shadows. Tonal transitions from light to shade are more gradual in soft light compared to hard light. Lighting designers routinely turn hard source into a soft source using large translucent “silks” or diffuser panels, Its also the reason people put lampshades over incandescent bulbs Coror Cast The color cast is the dominant wave- length of a light source, often measured in degrees Kelvin, a standard measure based on the main color of light that an object emits when itis heated to extreme temperatures. The color cast is some- times hard to judge by just looking at a light. The graphs of spectral power distri- ution (left) show which wavelengths of the visible spectrum have the strongest output Regular incandescent lights are stron- gest in the orange and red wavelengths, and they tend to be weak in blue. That's why red colors in a picture look so good and blue colors look so dead under normal incandescent light. Standard warm white and cool white fuorescents emphasize yellow-green, They're made to give the most light in the range of wavelengths to which the human eye is most sensitive, In the painting above, the light has a yellow- green cast. The outdoor light looks violet by contrastSources or Ligut STREETLIGHTS AND NIGHT CONDITIONS Before outdoor electric light was developed in the late nineteenth century, there were two colors of light at night: moonlight, which appears blue or gray, and orange flame- based light. As electric lighting developed, new colors entered the nightscape.‘The painting opposite sets up the blue green moonlight in contrast to the warm light of the shops and streetlights. The ‘goal is to show what the eye would see, rather than the camera's view, which would include a lot of black shadows. Light from both the moon and the gaslight shimmers off the wet cobblestone streets. The gaslight is a relatively weak light, much weaker than ‘modern electric sources ‘The modern nightseape includes incandescent, fluorescent, neon, mercury vapor, sodium, are, metal halide, and LED lights. Bach has a distinetive spectral power distribution. The variety of outdoor lighting colors is best seen when flying over a city at night. The littl oil sketch, right, painted from observation from a hote! balcor records some parking lots in Anaheim, California, during the predawn hours. ‘The orange sodium vapor light of the foreground makes a striking contrast to the blue-green mercury vapor lights in the farther parking lot Sodium vapor is rapidly replacing mercury vapor. A sodium lamp gives off 1 very narrow set of wavelengths, which gives it a sickly look. Mercury vapor has a wider spectral output, but the cool color drains the warmth out of flesh tones. Here are some tips if you want to learn more about night illumination: 1, Take photos with a digital camera set on its night setting. New cameras are excellent at capturing low-level lighting effects, 2. Disable the white balance setting and photograph a color whosl under different streetlights Then compare the digital photos side by side to see how the colors are skewed 3. Try some urban night painting, using 1 portable LED light to illuminate your palette, 4, Start.a serap file of photos showing ‘modern cityscapes at night Anan Glow, 2008 Ol on pave, 10 Sn. igre 1. Spel per dbo for sua apor sieht ctl pver stati for mean porSouRCcES OF LIGHT LUMINESCENCE When hot or flaming objects give off light it’s called incandescence. But some things give off a glow at cool temperatures through a process called huninescence. This light can come from both living and nonliving things. In the science fiction universe of Dinotopia: The World Beneath, 1995 (ight and opposite), large caverns beneath the island are lt by glowing algae, crystals, and ferns Although higher plants in the real world aren't known to give off their own light, many things ate huminescent. BIoLUMINESCENCE ‘Organisms that can produce light live mostly in the ocean. They include fish, squid, jellyfish, bacteria, and algae. In the deep sea beyond the reach of light, the light patches function to lure prey, confuse predators, of locate a mate, Some light-producers are activated by ‘mechanical agitation, creating the milky light in the ocean alongside ships" wakes ‘Land animals that emit ight include fireflies, millipedes, and centipedes. Some kinds of mushrooms that grow on rot- ting wood emit a dim light called foxfire, FLUORESCENCE Fluorescence is light that is produced by an object that converts invisible clectromagnetic eneray, such as ultraviolet radiation, into a visible wavelength. Some ‘minerals, such as amber and calcite, will aive off colorful visible light when they're it by ultraviolet ight ‘Tis AND TECHNIQUES 1. Luminescent colors often gradate from one hue to another 2. Blue-green colors are most common in the ocean because those wavelengths travel the farthest through water, 3. Paint the scene first in darker tones ‘without the luminescence, then add the lowing effects last. ”Sources or Liont HIDDEN LiGuT SOURCES There are at least three ways to light a scene: from a source shining from outside the picture, from a light inside the picture that you can easily see, or from a light inside the scene that’s concealed from view. ‘This last arrangement lends mystery, because the viewer is intrigued to explore further to find out where the light is ‘coming from, The painting opposite shows a large interior space where long-necked dino- saurs sleep beside parked carriages It is lit by two sources. A pale blue moonlight shines in the doorway from the right, flooding the area near the doorway with light, and sending a shaft through the dust on the far side of the room. “The other source is much warmer in hue. It shines outward and upward from 1 source hidden below the balcony on the left. The contrast of a cool down- ward light and a warm upward light makes the scene more interesting than it ‘would have been if lit by a single source. ‘The painting above has at least four different sources of colored light: blue in the right foreground, red-orange across the canal, blue-green through the arch, and a warm light touching the stern of the boat. The red-orange light is hidden behind the prow of the boat. This light helps dramatize the silhouette shape and intrigues the viewer about the festive ‘eroup on the far bank, which is rendered in largely reddish and orange tones,LIGHT AND ForRMLigut anpD ForM THE ForM PRINCIPLE Light striking a geometric solid such as a sphere or a cube creates an orderly and predictable series of tones. Learning to identify these tones and to place them in their proper rela- tionship is one of the keys to achieving a look of solidity. ston ‘Shad Sunlight The form principle is the analysis of nature in terms of geometrical solids, which can be rendered according to laws, of tonal contrast Monetina Factors ‘The two photographs of the sphere above show two classic lighting condi- tions: direct sunlight and overcast light Each has a different set of tonal steps from light to shadow, known as modeling factors. In the direct sunlight, there's a strong division of light and shade, The light side includes the light and dark balt= tones, the center light, and the highlight, ‘Tue TERMINATOR The terminator, or “bedbusg line,” is the ‘area where the form transitions from light into shadow. It occurs where the Tight rays from the source are tangent to the edge of the form. If its a soft, indirect light, the transition from light to shadow at the terminator will be more gradual, The form shadow begins just beyond the terminator. You can cast a shadow with a pencil fon the object to test which areas are in light and which are in shadow. The cast 46 Shale ‘Overcast Light shadow will show up only on the lighted side and not on the shadow side. Within the shadow is not darkness but the effect of other, weaker sources, ‘Outdoors, the blue light from the sky usually modifies the shadow planes, depending on how much they face upward, Refiected light often raises the tone of the shadow. It comes from light bouncing up off the ground surface or from other surfaces. The darkest parts of the shadow are usually at the points of contact, called the occlusion shadow. Core OF THE SHADOW ‘Another dark part of the shadow is the area just beyond the terminator. This area is called the core or the hump of the shadow. ‘The core of the shadow only forms if the secondary source of light (edge light, reflected light, or fill ight) doesa't overlap too much with the main light. Keeping the core intact—or painting it in even if you can't see itcan give the form more impact. If you're setting up ‘a model or maquette, you ean place the primary and secondary lights just far enough apart so that you can see the core beginning to appear. Groupina PLANES To simplify something as complex as the rocks along the coast of Maine, opposite, it helps if you organize groups of planes that are roughly parallel. The rock seemed to break along four definite fracture planes: Top planes Side planes in lighter halftone 3, Front planes in darker halftone 4, Side planes in shadow “The actual scene had a lot more complexity, detail, and randomness of tones. Grouping the planes makes it easier to sort things out, Regardless of the nuances and subtleties, always try to state the form in terms of the simplest truth: light and shadow. This makes, the details read instantly, and it saves painting time, ‘TEXTURE AT THE TERMINATOR A common mistake in painting a textural form in sunlight, such as a dinosaur, is to make the skin texture equally prominent throughout the form. In digital images, the appearance of ‘overall equal texture can result from‘mapping a bumpy two-dimensional pattern equally over a form. The texture in the shadow should not just be a darker version of the texture in the light because that's not how the eye sees it. In fact, the texture is very difficult to see at all in the shadow region. I's much more visible in the fully lit areas, especially in the darker halftone, just before the line of the terminator divides light from shadow: This region is called the half- light, an area of raking light where an uneven surface stands out dramativally Dirruse Licht In soft or diffuse light, such as overcast light, there is no distinct light side, shadow side, terminator, or core. All of the upward-facing planes tend to be lighter, since they receive more of the diffused light from the cloudy ceiling. That was the quality of light falling on the satyr, below right. The planes of his head and horns become cooler on the forehead, the nose, and the cheekbones, Where they face more toward the light sky: ‘The drapery study shows the eflect of «a primary light source coming from the left, and diffuse secondary sources filling the shadows from the right. The white Fabric goes all the way to black in the deepest folds. Abo: Maine Coa, 995, ion pal, 8% 10, Abon righ: Drapery Stay, 1980, ‘Graphite on brit! bout, 29 = 1 in Right Pon he Sey, 2008. Com Board, 8 10Licht AND ForM SEPARATION OF LIGHT AND SHADOW In sunlight the light side and the dark side of the form can be separated by as many as five steps of the tonal scale. Just as musicians are always conscious of intervals between notes, artists must be aware of maintaining consistent tonal intervals. Circa ones Ate these swatches lnbeled correctly? Of course not. The swatch on the left {isn’t black. I’s a midrange gray, and so is the one on the right. The swatch in the middle isnt white. It's darker in value than the other two. The value of a color isa measure of its lightness or darkness in comparison to a scale of grays between pure white and pure black In fact, the swatch labeled #1 below is black acrylic paint, #3 on the far right isa jet-black dress shirt, and #2 in the middle is a white newspaper. ‘The X-factor is sunlight and shadow— and the tricks that our visual systems play on us. The samples were all lifted straight out of the single photo taken outdoors. 8 Checherband Hhson Our vl yee wis conten pero overseer information our eyes recive. The Tt squace in sacdow 2) equ the dark square inh (1) Even when the tones are adjacent, such as 2 and 3, our minds tell us that the “White” is lighter. It’s good to keep this rule in mind: In bright sunlight, a ‘newspaper in shadow is darker than a black shirt in the light. LicuTinc Rario Is easy to underestimate the tonal separation between the light side and the shadow side in sunlight. When lighting experts set up artificial lights for a movie shot, they call this separation the lighting ratio, and they usually try to reduce it to cancel the unflattering effect of harsh or dark shadows. As artists we may want to do the same, depending on the feling we want tocreate But most often, bevinning painters tend to ignore the dominance of direct ilumination and play up secondary sources fo0 much, 1f youre counting steps on a value seale from one to ten, you might typically see five steps of tone from sunlight 0 shadow, or two fstops on a camera's aperture setting, The separation ‘would be reduced if there were high clouds, hazy atmosphere, or a lisht- colored ground surface.Ligut AND ForM Cast SHADOWS When a form intercepts a parcel of direct light, it projects or casts a shadow onto whatever lies behind it. The resulting dark shape can be a useful design device to suggest depth or to tie together elements inside and outside your composition. ‘Tue EYEBALL ON THE ANT In outer space, shadows appear pro foundly black. The lack of atmosphere ‘means that there's no luminous glow to fill the shadows, But on Barth cast shad- ‘ows are flooded by various sources, To understand thase sources, try to imagine yourself as alittle eyeball mounted on the back of an ant, As you walk across the shadow. imagine yourself looking up at all the bright patches of light around you, not just the blue sky, but also white clouds, buildings, or other bright objects. Those patches of light determine the lightness and color temperature of your shadow. ‘On sunny days, cast shadows tend to *” be blue only because they look up to the blue of the sky. But the eyeball on the ant doesn’t always see blue patches. On partly cloudy days, the light above is more white, and sometimes the blue sky patch is small and other sources are more dominant. ‘Tue Liu AND THE SHapow EDGr ‘The nature of the cast shadow is closely related to the nature of the light source. A soft light will cast a shadow with a blurry edge. A hard light will cast a shadow with a relatively sharp edge ‘Two side-by-side lights (such as car headlights) will east two side-by-side shadows. Bol eft: Dali's Dl. 2168 Oi on cas ‘mounted to peal, 9% 12a lo ish rie, 2002 OL on pane, 10> 8 The edge of every shadow gets softer asthe distance inereases from the object that casts the shadow. If you follow along the edge of the cast shadow of a four-story building, it will go from sharp at the base to nearly six inches wide \where the shadow is being cast onto the street below. This softening of the cast shadow edge is visible in the foreground of the painting opposite. The long shadow gets softer as it crosses the steps, and then even softer as it spreads over the building across the street. In the painting of a bridge in County Kerry, Ireland, above, a setics of east shadows ereate parallel bands of light and shade that the viewer must eross to enter the village in the distance, This parallel pattern of light and shadow is aan effective device to create depth in a paintingLicht AND Form HALF SHADOW One way to create drama, especially with a vertical form, is to light the top half and leave the rest in shadow. The plein-air study at right shows sunlight touching the top of an old neon sign, The color of the red sign is lighter in tone and more intense in color where it appears in the sunligint compared 10 the shadow. Likewise, the white letters hhad to be painted lighter and warmer where they appear in the light. In shadow they're really a dull blue-gray, The edge between light and shadow is soft, suggesting that something far away is casting the shadow The watercolor study of the minaret shows the bottom half of the tower in shadow, Both the golden brickwork and the white horizontal stripes had to be changed the same relative amount. Since I was using watercolor, it wasn’ possible to premix the colors the way you could in oil. Instead I put a Payne’s gray wash over the shadow areas before painting the rest of the colors. I painted the glowing passageways at lower left after the sun set. The sky is painted with ‘opaque watercolor to get an absolutely even tonal gradation. The painting opposite appeared in Dinotopia: First Flight in 1999. It shows Gideon Altaire, the first skybax rider in Dinotopia, standing beside his pterosa named Avatar. They have ju fully vanquished the machine army of Poseidos after its invasion of Dinotopia ina failed attempt to steal the ruby sun- stone power crystal. The shadow and Tight help accentuate the fecling of a conclusion to an epic story by suggesting, the dramatic end of the day: pit tal 168i,Liaut anv Form OccLUSION SHADOWS Dark accents occur at places where forms come close enough to each other to crowd out the light, leaving a small, dense area of shadow. They're commonly seen where materials push together in folds or at points of contact with the ground. ‘The Dinotopian domestic scene above has a variety of humans, creatures, and objects resting on horizontal surfaces. At cach one of those points of contact, the light is occluded or interrupted, resulting in a dark accent ‘These dark areas are called occlusion shadows or crevice shadows. They occur wherever two forms touch each other for wherever a form touches a floor. You can see the effect by pressing your fingers together and looking at the dark line where they touch, ss Ocelusion shadows also occur when objects get clase enough to each other to interrupt the light, even though they may not actually be touching. This is often visible at the inside corner of a room where the walls meet. Early computer-lighting programs didn't create this dark accent automati- cally. Until recently, it had to be added manually, But software pioneers have made lighting tools that can anticipate ‘when the light will be occluded, and then such an accent will automatically appear, _Abon: At Home 207 io board, 10/18 in Published in Diop Journey 0 Chonda Oppose: Local Grown, 2004 (ion cans mounted Lo pal, 18 14aLicur and Form THREE-QUARTER LIGHTING Most portraits are painted with light coming from about forty-five degrees in front of the model. The light reaches most of the visible form, leaving only a fraction of the form in shadow. The light is low enough to illuminate both eyes. Aber Boe Artur; 1993 Oi on board, 56 Published in Diop: The Wor Beneath. igh: Gren Byes, 1996 8. boa 129i, In the portrait of the man and dinosaur at left, the main light casts a shadow from the nose onto the cheek on the far side of the face, leaving a lighted triangle on the shaded cheek. This general pattern is called three-quarter lighting. The light emphasizes the nearer or broader side of the face, so is also called broad lighting. The sketch group study below called Green Eyes uses a low, broad, three- quarter light coming from the left Photographers call this main light the key light. The shadow receives a weaker, second source of greenish light coming. from the right. This light entering the shadow is called the fill light, In TV and. ‘movie lighting, a separate electri light usually provides the fill light. However, painters usually make do with natural reflected light for the fill ‘The mountain man on the opposite ‘page is lit with dramatic broad lighting to bring out character. The shadows help to define the wrinkles in the brow, and the low sun increases the squint. The side plane of the cheek on the left catches the blue light from the sky behind, tying the face to the background. The portrait of the man on the bottom of the opposite page uses ight on the “short side” of the face—the farther, foreshortened side. Short lighting can help make a face look thinner.Aone: Texan Po in Pale i Di it on bound, 9313 Left Jo Lac, 1994, Oil onboard, 11> 14a When short lighting is arranged so that the nose side of the fi fighting. This lighting technique results ina lighted triangle on the cheek closest to the viewer. All of these arrangements are flatter ing and unobtrusive, good reasons why artists have used them almost universally ww merges with the shaded its called RembrandtLicut anp Form FRONTAL LIGHTING Light that shines directly toward a model from the viewer's perspective is called frontal lighting. The light can be hard and direct, like a flashbulb, or soft and diffuse, like a north window. In either case, very little of the shadow is vi Frontal lighting oecurs when you're sketching someone with your back to the light source. The subject of the pencil portrait at right was lit by an airplane window behind me. The thin line of illumination along his profile came from his window. ‘The profile portrait, opposite, has the key light shining from slightly to the left and above, leaving very little of the form in shadow. The shaded parts of the face are the planes below the nose, the lower lip, the chin, and the front of the neck. The illuminated side of the face is mod- eed in close values, using variations of reds and greens more than tonal changes Using a flat, posteriike treatment helps the portrait to read strongly from a long way off. In the Abe Lincoln bust, the planes get darker as they turn away. The shadows are narrow shapes just under the nose, chin, and hair, Frontal lighting can also ‘be employed in landscape, asin the street scene below, where most of the scene receives direct illumination, and the shadows are minimized. Frontal lighting emphasizes two- dimensional design instead of sculptural form. It’ a good lighting to choose if ‘you want to emphasize local color or ppattern—to feature a fashion or costume, for instance. And its one of the few times when outlines actually appear in real life. The outline is really the thin fringe of shadow that appears at the very edge of the form. That line deserves close study. It varies in weight in propor- tion tothe width of the plane that is ‘turing away. Aton: Ladner, 2008 Peni 54 in Lofts Morton Lary 204,00 pe, 8% 107 ge Tery Mose Profi, 208 Oi. an, 129i, 8Ligut anp Form EpGE LIGHTING Edge lighting comes from behind to touch the sides of the form, separating it from the background. It’s also called a rim light or kicker in the film industry, and it usually requires a relatively strong source of light. ‘Shearing Day, 2008 ion peel, 10 8. Edge lighting oecurs outdoors when the sun is Iow in the sky and shining toward the viewer. The plein-air sketch, ef shows some Teelandie sheep waiting their turn for shearing, The sun was just above the top of the composition, casting, shadows directly toward us, making this a form of backlighting. A halo of warm light touches the top and side fringes of each ewe. The color of the brightly lit edge isa lighter version of the white or brown color of the wool. ‘The painting of the small dinosaur at right applies some of the lessons from the sheep sketch. ‘The background is dark enough to allow the edge light to stand out dramatically, making each hairlike feather clearly visible. A star- ‘burst of light radiates from the brow of the dinosaur, sugpesting a hard, bony surface, which reflects a Larger quantity of light, enough to ereate a flaring highlight, ‘The width of the rim light varies according to the sizeof the planes that face backward to the fight, Edge light isnot just a thin white line around the form. In the Abe Lincoln cast, above, the broadest plane and the widest part of the rim light is on the forehead.Licht AND ForM ContrRE JoUR Contre-jour lighting is a type of backlighting where a subject blocks the light, often standing against a bright sky or an illuminated doorway. The field of light takes on an active presence, almost surrounding or infusing the edges of the object. ‘When a form is placed contre jour, its silhouette shape becomes prominent, The colors lose saturation, and shadows stretch forward, Details disappear as the glare of the light spills over the edges of the Form. The sun itself often shines from inside the frame of the picture, making the viewer squint involuntarily. One approach to contre-jour lighting is to think of the light area behind the subject not as flat white paint but as 11 sea of illuminated vapor, with light streaming out of the background, melting away the edges of the form, ‘The portrait opposite shows the milky ‘white light spilling over the edges of the ‘man’s shoulders, and lighting the side planes of his helmet and cheekbones. This can be an effective way to vignette Oppose: Aero Miner. 1982.Oilon panel, 24% 20in. a subject against the white of a page in a printed illustration ‘The sketch at Jet shows a white house and a white sign against an even brighter sky. The air is extremely hazy, which has the same effect as pouring a litle bit of rill into a glass of water. The nearer Sides of the forms are cooler and darker. It's often affective to keep a litle color in the background haze, and to lower it a bit from white- The skyin this painting blends a light cool gray and a yellowish ‘white together atthe same valueLight AND Form LIGHT FROM BELOW Strong light doesn’t usually come from below, so when you see it, it grabs your attention. We tend to associate underlight- ing with firelight or theatrical footlights, which can suggest a magical, sinister, or dramatic feeling. Faces that are familiar to us—family, friends, and celebrities nearly always appear lt from above, We hardly even recognize them when we see them with the light shining upward on their features. Sources of light that shine upward are often strongly colored, either with the ‘warm orange glow of firelight, or with the blue flicker of a computer screen. The portrait of the character Lee Crabb from Dinotopia, below, shows 66 him at a dramatic moment when he wants to take control of a powerful slowing sunstone. The ruby-colored light from the sunstone gives him a threatening, power-mad look. But not all ‘upward light arrangements suggest evil, A person relaxing with a sun-flooded book might have ber face lit mainly by the reflected light, which would have positive connotations. Crabb Tromphant, 195. Oi on boxrd 11 (2m Publted n Dope The Nols Bent Nici Scene ‘The scene on the opposite page was a poster for a science fiction festival in Nantes, France, the hometown of Jules Verne, wo is visible in the lower left comer of the composition. ‘The scene takes place in 1893. A flying rmachine called a lepidapter is taking ‘off at night from the town square. The ation could have been staged in the daytime, but that wouldn't have been quite as magical OF course in real life, it would have been very difficult to light an aetual ‘outdoor set with this much light coming froma single source. “The source would be hidden on the far side of the fountain. The light is hitting the smoke and dust kicked up by the force of the wings. The east shadows on the buildings on the right suggest that the aircraft is interrupting the lighting. Note how the light is much stronger at the base of the wings, which draws the attention downward. One way to make something look large in a nighttime setting isto have the ight shine on just part of the form and fall off rapidly. A very large object, such as a spacecraft, ‘an ocean liner, ora skyscraper, will lok even bigger if only parts of itare lit from below by small, weak lights shining upward at it. Building a small maquette ‘or model, opposite, makes it easier to experiment with aetual Tight.Licut anp Form REFLECTED LIGHT Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun into our night landscape, every object in a scene that receives strong hight becomes its own source of light. Therefore, any nearby area of shadow will be affected by it. ‘Faucet. Photograph of mo erage alls gure 2. Posograh of green bol ana yellow bal What's wrong with the croquet balls in Figure 1? They are set up indoors in a shaft of sunlight, and they're resting on black velvet Figure 2 shows another photo, this, time of a green ball and a yellow ball Perhaps you've guessed that the images have been doctored in Photoshop. ‘The thing that’s wrong with the ‘croquet balls is the color of the reflected light. The left balls are switched in the two pictures. The ball that was there before the switch reflected its telltale color in the shadow of the yellow ball The green ball shifted the shadow toward greenish yellow, and the red ball umed the shadow to orange. Figure 3 shows what happens when we sot the balls up in a shaft of sunlight and let their reffected light spill over to an adjacent piace of white board, The light bounces up and to the right, Its influence falls off rapidly as the distance increases from the balls, and the colors mix in the intermediate areas, Toledo Ale 22. Oo Fare. Photogra of the croquet alls fcing ght ont a white src in UPFACING AND DoWNFACING PLANES ‘Most of the time we think of shadows as blue, Surfaces in shadows do tend toward blue if they are facing upward beneath an open stretch of sky. We can make a general cule if we hedge it a bit Upfacing planes in shadow are relatively blue on a clear, sunny day. In the sketch of the library in Millbrook, New York, opposite, there's plenty of blue calor in the cast shadows on the sidewalk, for example. But planes in shadow that face downward are different because they pick up the warm reflected color of illuminated surfaces below them. You can see this effect in the white pediment above the columns. Where the projecting forms face downward, they’te distinctly warm, not blue at all‘This natural effect is exaggerated in the photo of Abe. The shadows are strongly colored from the reflected light bouncing, up from an orange pieve of cardboard hheld nearby in the sunlight, while the blue sky influences the upfacing planes In the painting of a narrow street in Toledo, opposite, the shadow side of the yellow building has taken on a strong range color because of light reflected from an illuminated red building across the street, Normally you would expect the shadow side of a yellow building to bbe much lower in chroma, especially if it ‘were lit mainly by ight from the sky. Coxctusions aBour Rertecrep LiGHT Let’ review five general truths about color in reflected light 1. In shadows, upfacing planes are cool, and downfacing planes are warm. 2. Reflected light falls off quickly as you get farther from the source, unless the ‘souree is very large (such as a lawn). 43. The effet is eleares if you remove other sources of reflected and il ight. 4. The color of the shadow is the sum of all the sources of reflected illumination, Mars Lira, 208. Oi1on panel, 11> Iain combined with the local color of the object itsel: 5. Ona sunny day, vertical surfaces in shadow usually receive two sources of illumination; warm ground light and blue sky light. 6Ligut AND Form SPOTLIGHTING In theatrical illumination, the light is almost never completely uniform. Less important areas of the stage fall into shadow, while the spotlight rivets the attention of the audience on the most important part of the action. Above: Night Fright, 1982.01 on boar, 10> 6 in Oppose: Warrior Leder, 1984, 0 on cas hound to puna. 16% 9a Published a Witches of Kreger DAW Books Here are two imaginary scenes. Both are set at night. In each picture a spotlight picks out the central figure, leaving the rest in shadow In the quick concept sketch, left, the light is coming from the right, casting a long shadow from the running man. The shadow should match the color of the sidewalk ahead of the spotlight beam, because itis receiving the same ambient light as the rest of the scene. Ambient light isthe light left over when the key light is removed. ‘The shape of the spotlight implies that it comes from a circular source, given the way it wraps across the forms of the building. It subconsciously gives the impression that the man is being followed and is evading capture. The painting on the right shows a man on a ledge standing in a slanting bar of light that shines from below. The cast shadow from his arm is red on the bottom and blue above, The colored shadows give the feeling that there are actually two adjacent spotlights, a red one below and a blue one above, This is typical of theater lighting, where adjacent colored spotlights cast shadows, with chromatic edges, A spotlight effect can be used on a small form, (oo, such as the face above. ‘Eyclights” were common in classic cinema to concentrate the viewer's attention on the eyes.Licut anp Form LIMITATIONS OF THE FORM PRINCIPLE Solid objects with a matte finish behave predictably in strong light, with a light side, a shadow side, and reflected light. But other materials, such as clouds, foliage, hair, glass, and metal, respond to light differently and require a flexible approach. Clouds are so variable in density, thick- But it’s safe to make the following ness, and composition that itshard to statement: Clouds transmit a greater make general rules about how light inter- quantity of light to the shadow side ‘cts with them. Even in direct sunlight, through internal scattering than the sometimes there's a definite light side volume of light they pick up from and shadow side, and sometimes there __ secondary sources. just isn't ‘The scene below shows a single cloud sass rising above the ranks of shadowed clouds to receive the first morning sun, which penetrates the coud and lights up the near side. IF you try to make clouds follow the form principle, they risk Jooking like hanging lumps of plaster. Foliage, too, is extremely variable in 0the way light interacts with it. The old elm tree at right was dense and opaque enough that you could begin to see a light side and a shadow side, But the trees behind it were thin enough to let the light pass completely through them, ‘The form principle, with its analysis of light, halftone, shadow, and reflected light, is just a starting point. The world is not made of plaster. I's composed of a wide variety of materials and surfaces, which we'll explore further in Chapters 9 and 10. ‘ight Ei, 2004, Oson pare, 8 Dia. Belo: Lost nthe Clout, 1998. Oi on pare, 9 «28a Published ia Darts Fis FightELEMENTS OF COLORELEMENTS OF CoLor RETHINKING THE COLOR WHEEL When white light is bent or refracted by a prism or a rainbow, it separates into a continuous gradation of colors. Wrapping those colors around a circle creates a hue circle, better known as a color wheel. Flute 2 Gadang ues round a cde re 3. The radon color wheek How we name and separate the colors isa matter of discussion, related to physical science, visual perception, and artistic tradition. In the continuous spectrum produced by a prism, there's no clear division between the colors, Sir Isaae Newton (1642-1727) proposed ‘wrapping the spectrum around the circle bby merging the two ends of the visible spectrum, red and violet. He observed that the hues gradate smoothly into each other (Figure 2), but in his diagram. (Figure 1) he identified the seven colors known as ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). ‘The tradition among artists has been to drop the indigo and to concentrate on six basic colors, ‘Tue Artist's PRIMARIES Antists generally regard red, yellow, and blue as the most basic colors. But from Greek and Roman times to the Renaissance, most people thought green should be included, too. ‘The idea of a primary color is that it should be possible to mix every other color out of the three primaries. If you ask most people to select three tubes of paint to match their mental image of the primary colors, they will most likely pick something like cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and ultramarine blue. You may have noticed that with those colors you can mix clear oranges, but the greens and violets are very dull. The traditional artists color whecl, (Figure 3) presents yellow, red, and blue spaced at ‘even thirds around the color wheel, about Fiewe l. Se lave Newteris ec in the position of 12 o'clock, 4 o’clock, and 8 o'clock. Mixtures of the red, blue, and yellow primaries create secondaries The secondary colors are violet, green and orange. They appear between the primaries at 2,6, and 10 o'clock on the traditional color wheel. CompLeMents Any color that holds a position directly across the wheel from another is known as a complement. In the world of pigments and color mixing, the color pairs are: yellow-violet, red-green, and blue-orange ‘When pigmentary complements are mixed together, they result in a neutral gray, that js,a gray with no hue identity. In the realm of afterimages and visual percep- tion, the pairings are slightly different. Blue is opposite yellow, not orange, Curoma ‘The wheels in Figures 2, 4, 5, and 6 include the dimension of grayness versus intensity, known as chroma. Chroma is the perceived strength of a surface color, seen in relation to white, (Saturation, a related term, property refers to the color purity of light.) As the color swatches, progress outward from the hub to the rim of the color wheel, the colors increase in chroma, At the center is neutral gray ‘Tue TraprrionaL WHEEL ‘There are a few problems with the tradi- tional wheel in Figure 3. First, the idea that red, yellow, and blue are primaries is not set in stone Any of the infinite hues ‘on the outer rim of the gradating wheel could make an equal claim as a primary,In addition, none of the hues are second- ‘ary or composite by their nature. Green is ‘no more secondary than blue is. The third problem is that the spacing of colors on the traditional whee! is out of proportion, like a clock face with some of the numbers bunched up in one comer (center of Figure 3) It expands the yellow-orange-red section of the spectrum too much, s0 that red is at 4 o'clock in- stead of 2, and blue is at 8 o'clock instead ‘of 6. This uneven distribution came about partly because our eyes are more sensitive to small differences among the yellow! ‘orangelred hues, and partly because pigments are more numerous for warm colors, compared to cool ones. There have always been many available pigments for the oranges and reds, but few for the violets and greens. The precious pigments vermilion and ultramarine became our ‘mental image for red and blue ‘Tur Munsett System Many contemporary realist painters use the system developed by Albert Munsell about a century ago, Instead! of divisions of threes and twelve, the structure is based on ten evenly spaced spectral hues. In deference to Munsell, the diagram here shows the reds on the lef. This is a much more useful wheel than the traditional artst’s color wheel because itallows for exact numerical descriptions of color notes Students of the Munsell system must become accustomed to the ten basic hues: yellow (¥), green-yellow (G-Y),, green (G), blue-green (B-G), blue (B), purple-blue (P-B), purple (P), red-purple (RP), red (R), and yellow-red (¥-R), Cyan, MAGENTA, AND YELLOW In the world of printing and photography, the three colors that mix the widest range of high-chroma colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow: These printer's primaries, together with black (K), are known by the short hand CMYK. They are used throughout the industries of offset lithography, com- puter printing, and film photography. If all other industries use different primaries from the yellow-red-blue primaries we artists are accustomed to, ‘why have we kept them? One reason is simple force of habit. Cyan and magenta don't match our mental image of the blue and red color concepts we've accepted since early childhood. Rep, GREEN, AND BLUE At right is a corrected wheel, first in digi- tal form, and then painted in oil. Note that the halfway mixtures between yellow, ‘magenta, and cyan are red (really orange- zed), blue (really violet-blue), and green, ‘These three colors (RGB) are significant, because they are the primary colors of light, as opposed to pigment. Lighting designers and computer graphics artists consider RGB as their primaries, and CMY as their secondaries. Mixing red, green, and blue lights together on a theatrical stage or a computer screen results in white light. Until recently it was hard to find chemi- cal pigments that would match up with CMY primaties, and it's still impossible to find pigments that have all the proper- ties that artists want. The pigments cad- ‘ium yellow light (PY 35), quinacridone ‘magenta (PR 122), and phthalo eyan (PB 17) come close, but the latter two are unsatisfactory if you like opacity. Tue “Yurmpy” WHEEL Placing RGB on the wheel evenly between CMY creates a universal color wheel, useful in many different settings, Think of these as the six equal primaries: yellow, red, magenta, blue, eyan, and {reen, Counting clockwise from the top of the wheel, they are YRMBCG. You can remember them as “Yurmby” or “You Ride My Bus, Cousin Gus.” Should painters adopt this six-primary color wheel? I's good to learn this ‘mental image ofthe ideal color wheel, regardless of what pigments you actually use as primaries. Whats important is that you know where the colors you're using ‘actually belong on a mathematically accurate color wheel. Pipe 4 The Mul whch y B Pion. Distal created Yury wh B igre 6, Handpainted Prt wheELEMENTS OF CoLoR CHROMA AND VALUE Whenever you paint directly from observation, you have to translate the wide range of tones that meet your eye. The colors on the palette often can’t match the wide range of tones in a given scene. As we saw on the previous page, every color can be defined in terms of two dimensions: hue—where it appears around the edge of the color wheel, and chroma—how pure or grayed-down it appears. The third dimension to consider for any color mixture is the value or lightness, This value dimension is ‘generally represented along the vertical dimension above and below the color ‘wheel, creating a spherical, cylindrical, ‘or double-cone shape. Since it’s a three- dimensional volume, it's also called a color space or color Solid One of Albert Munsell’s contributions to the understanding and practical use of color was his numerical clasitiea- tion system forall possible colors ac- cording to these three dimensions: hue, value, and chroma. Instead of trying to describe a given color as a “beige” or a “maroon,” one could unambiguously define them as a YR 1/2 or a R 3/6. The letters “YR" stand for yellow-red. The first number stands for value, ranging from black (0) to white (10). The second number refers to chroma, counting up ‘ward to the strongest intensity possible. ‘Many painters have adopted Munsell’s color notations to help them accurately observe select, and mix any color Artists trained in Munsell notation become accustomed to navigating three-dimensional color space each time they think about a color. oak chroma value charts showing yellow; red, and blue carted by valu top o bottom) an chroma right to ley, ion Board, 9 12 shes 16 Peak CHROMA VALUE Munsell observed that a given hue reaches its greatest chroma at one particular value, called the home value or the peak chroma value. That peak value varies from color to color. Yellow, for example, is most intense at a very light value, while blue is strongest when it is very dark, Red reaches maximum chroma at a middle value. The hand-painted chart below takes those three hues through all possible degrees of chroma and value, Chroma is constant along a vertical line, while value is constant along a horizontal line Rep Neon Red neon was the subject of the rainy- ay plein-air painting opposite. The ‘neon presented a problem because the effect on the eye couldn't be mixed with pigments, ‘The neon color was one of the light- est values in the scene. The red-orange color was also extremely saturated. The only paint that could simulate that high value was pure white oil paint—but then it would have no hue character at all. Likewise, any light tint of the red was noticeably weak in chroma, and looked orange or pink. And a bright red as it came from the tube wouldn't work be- cause peak chroma value was far too dark compared to white. ‘The compromise was to paint the neon bulb in a pure tint of red-orange and to surround it with a flood of red-orange at midvalue. The digital photo, above, which has its own limitations, also failed to capture the full effect of the neon light, but it did a better job than the paintingELEMENTS OF COLOR Loca CoLor Local color is the color of the surface of an object as it appears close up in white light. If you held up a matching paint swatch right against it, that swatch would be the local color. However, the color you actually mix to paint that object will usually be different. Molise Bu, 2008. Watercolor, 4 «80 ‘All the buses in Malta are painted in bands of yellow, red, and white. When I sat down to paint the sketch above, my {job wasn’t too different from the task of filling ina coloring book. The colors on ‘my painting resembled the actual paint colors used on the bus But even in this simple sketch, I had to make a few modifications to the local color. [lightened the yellow in the plane above the wheel where the body projected outward. The red band also * hhad to be lighter at the top where it angled back to pick up the light and color of the sky: The reflection of the blue sky into the red band resulted in a light violet color. ‘One of the reasons I painted the gumball machine in the coin laundry, ‘opposite, is that I was interested in how ‘cach gumball had a light edge where it ‘caught the glare of the window. [also noticed how the colors darkened on the side facing me. There was a little high- light in the center of each ball caused by the fluorescent lights above me, Generally the colors you actually mix in a painting will involve some ‘modulation of the local color. You might lighten or darken the color to model the form, gray it down to push it back ‘through layers of atmosphere, or shift the hue to account for reflected light from other objects.lone Bay LAUNDROMAT, NOVA SCOTIA GORE VermeerELEMENTS OF CoLor Grays AND NEUTRALS Grays or neutrals are the opposite of intense colors. We some- times associate grays with blandness or dullness, but they are actually an artist’s best friend. More paintings fail because of too much intense color rather than too much gray. Pout’ Baty, 2001, OX on board, 8 * 1250 Grays can provide a setting for bright color accents, They give space and scope toa composition, and they can create a ‘quiet, reflective mood. In the painting above, they connect the contrasting blue and red accents by providing transitional notes of soft violets and browns, “There is no single gray color. To the careful observer, gray comes in many subtle variations. It might have a hint of blue ora touch of orange. Recognizing hhue identity in these grayed-down mix- tures takes a bit of training and practice. A gray can be mixed from various combinations of colors. To preserve pleasing variations in grays it's a good idea to mix them from complementary pairs, rather than from white and black pigments. Try mixing grays from blue ‘and orange, red and green, or violetand yellow. You can then place those color aevents near the gray, and they'll harmonize, because the gray contains an element of each of them. For example in the painting at eft, the grays in the sky contain some cadmium red and cobalt blue, which also appear as color accents in the boats, car, and sign, ‘An otherwise dull atea can be enli ened by shifting the value and hue across its surface. In the big dark building on the left of the diner scene, above, the colors move from a relatively dark, cool gray toa lighter, warmer gray at the far back end of the building, Gray is the sauce of the color scheme. Is easier to live with a subdued painting than with one that is highly saturated throughout. As Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) said, “Better gray than garish, Columbia Diner, 2004 io en 18% 2,ELEMENTS OF CoLoR THE GREEN PROBLEM Green is one of the most common colors in nature, but it has presented such a perennial challenge to artists and designers that many have banished it from the palette. Why is green a problem, and how can you solve it? There is no doubt that green is a fundamentally important color. Many modern psychologists and color theorists regard it asa primary color. The word. “green” occurs more than twice as frequently as “yellow” in modern written English. The human eye is more sensitive to yellow-green wavelengths than to any other; that’s why the spectrum or the rainbow looks lighter in that section. Yet in the field of book cover design, there's an old saying that “green covers don't sell” Among the flags of Europe, 79 percent contain red, but only 16 per cent contain green. Costume designers have said that green often looks ghastly in stage lighting. Gallery directors have reported that clients aren't attracted to paintings with a strong greenish cast unless it is handled carefully. Evidently this was an issue even 150 years ago, when Asher Brown Durand ‘commented on “the common prejudice against green.” He said, “I can well un- derstand why it has been denounced by the Artist, for no other color is attended ‘with equal embarrassments.” Durand chided his contemporaries for painting so many autumn scenes instead of summer ones to avoid the problem altogether. In late spring and early summer, the leaves have not developed their full waxy cuticle layer, and the chlorophyll has an electric yellow-green. When light shines through new leaves or blades of grass, the green is particularly strident. To faithfully match that color, some artists mix a color they call “vegetable green,” a highly chromatic yellow-green, which they use in foliage mixtures. Even the most die-hard truth-to- Along Lava’ Kl 1985, 0100 pans $1050 2nature plein-air aficionados eut back ‘on the strength of green in the spring landscape. Above isa plein-air study that tries to match the observed colors ‘without modifying them. Would it have been better with grayer greens? Perhaps it’s a matter of personal taste Tips FoR HANDLING GREEN 1. You can banish green pigments from the palette and mix them from various blues and yellows, The resulting mixtures will be weaker and more varied, both ‘qualities that you want. 2. Avoid monotony. Vary your mixtures The Tay, 20 Oi on bos of greens at both the small scale (leat to leaf) and the large scale (tree to tree). 3. Mix up a supply of pink or reddish gray on your palette and weave it in and out of the greens, Painter Stapleton Kearns calls this method “smuggling red: 4. Prime the canvas with pinks or reds, so that they show through here and there to cenliven the greens,ELEMENTS OF CoLor GRADATION Like a glissando in music, a color gradation transitions smoothly from one note to another. The shift can occur from one hue to another, or from a light color to a dark color, or from a dull color to a saturated one. West Boi fom Orhour’ Cast 2003 fo cava 12 16 The painting above has several systems of gradations going on. The colors change from a light blue at the top of the sky to a rosy gray below, and a thin band of rosy color along the horizon. Gradations don't just happen. They take planning, Usually you'll need to mix the colors carefully before you begin applying paint. 8 The seene with the rising sun, opposite, also uses a gradation to convey the bril- fiance of the sun, From the sun outward to the edges of the picture, the colors grad- ually change in value, hue, and ehroma, Jobn Ruskin observed in his landmark book Modern Painters (1843) that a gradated color has the same relationship toa flat color as a curved line has to a straight line, He noted that nature con- tains movement or gradation of color both on the large and the small seale, even down to the smallest brushstroke or pebble: “Nature will not have one line nor color, nor one portion nor atom of space without a change in it. There is not one of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of perpetual variation.”ELEMENTS OF CoLoR TINTS Adding white to a color raises it to a tint or a “pastel” color. This quality of lightening is typical of distant hues on a hazy day. Mural painting typically sueceeds best with paler ranges of colors, which convey a feeling of light. Casts ore Blihewood 2008. io xavas ‘mound to panel, 9 1218 In music, a melody can be transposed ‘upward in pitch, or it can move from the brass scotion to the strings. A set of colors ean undergo a similar transposi- tion upward in value thereby giving a pleasing airiness or delicacy to a picture In both the landscape painting above 86 and the fantasy painting opposite, the bold colors of the foreground get lighter as they go back in space. To make these high-Key tints appealing it helps to use darker-toned colors in other parts of the picture for the sake of contrast A tint can be made in two ways. One is by adding white, which will often make hhues bluer. Whitened reds, for example, usually become more magenta. The other way to is to apply the color as a thin, ‘transparent layer over white. This usually leads to a more highly chromatic tintCliston Janeee eeePAINT AND PIGMENTS THE SEARCH FOR PIGMENTS For thousands of years, people have scoured the earth looking for brightly colored materials to make into paint. Most intense colors in plants and animals fade immediately. An ideal pigment must be permanent, plentiful, and nonpoisonous. PREHISTORIC PIGMENTS. Pigments are insoluble, powdery, dry materials that selectively abso and reflect wavelengths of light to produce color. ‘Since art's beginnings, a few reliable color ingredients have been readily available to artists. Blacks, reds, and yellows were easy to find: that’s why ‘they appear in all “primitive” art, Black paint made from chareoal or burnt bones dates back to prehistoric times ‘The brownish reds and oranges of iron oxides have been dug out of natural ‘open pits Siena, Ttaly, gave its name to ‘ore-based pigments that were used burnt or raw More Rare THAN GoLp Reliable violets, magentas, and blues were rare. The togas of Roman emperors used a pigment known as Tyrian purple, made from a color-producing cyst from a whelk. It took 12,000 mollusks to make 1.4 grams of pure dye. The rarity of purple made it the color of royalty. The crimson color used in the red coats of the British military, Catholic cardinals’ robes, and in many modern lipsticks originates from a fluid in tiny insects that live as parasites on cactus plants. Those ‘bugs were worth more than their weight in gold to the Spanish, and the processes were kept absolutely secret ‘The most expensive pigment of all was fine blue from lapis lazuli, a mineral mined in Afghanistan, Getting a supply required a long voyage ultramarinus, or “beyond the sea.” For this reason, the ‘old masters reserved ultramarine for the Madonna's robes %0 Toxicrry Other pigments made excellent paints, but they were toxic. Art historians speculate that lead-based white paints sent many artists to an early grave, Vermilion owed its red-orange color to deadly mercury, Emerald green, a form of arsenic, was so poisonous that it was also used as an insecticide, ‘Cadmium remains a popular pigment for reds and yellows, with especially ‘200d opacity. But it’s also a suspected carcinogen and must be handled with care, You can protect yourself from dangerous pigments by wearing latex gloves and avoiding airbrushing. Be especially careful when handling pastels ‘and dry pigments, which can be inhaled into the lungs. INTRODUCED PIGMENTS ‘The nineteenth century brought a flood of new pigments. Some were invented in the chemistry lab, such as Prussian and phthalo blue, The heavy metals cobalt and cadmium arrived in the early 1800s and soon found their way into paintings, ‘Most rare or dangerous traditional pigments have been substituted with synthetic formulations. The lapis lazuli Of ultramarine was replaced by 2 chemically identical formulation in the 1820s, allowing it to keep the traditional name for the affordable, lightfast, and useful blue. Coton Names To avoid the confusion of common names like “peacock blue,” paint manu- facturers have adopted an international shorthand for identifying pigments 3 T . rn a test tof waecoars called the Color Index Name. The first Jetter “P” stands for pigment, followed bya letter such as “B” for the hue, and a number coded to the coloring agent. So ultramarine is known universally as “PB 29,” But not all manufacturers are consistent in linking common names to Color Index names, so there's still some confusion when it comes to generic col- ors like “permanent green.” ‘Some color names, such as “cadmium yellow light” need decoding. “Light” doesn’t mean higher in value; it means leaning toward yellow. “Deep” means leaning toward red. The word “hue,” when used in a color name, refers 10 a mixture of at least two different pure pigments, usually to replace an outmoded or costly historical pigment. Binpers ‘The material that holds the finely ground pigment together is called the binder Traditional painters used gums from acacia trees (gum arabic), oil from the lin plant (linseed oil), or protein from chicken eggs (egg tempera). Recent chemistry has offered! a variety of replacements, including alkyds (based ‘on soya oils), acrylic resins, and other formulations. The painting at right ‘was made with oil paints together with ‘a compatible alkyd-based medium ‘marketed under the name Liguin, which helps with fine detail. Note the sign painter standing on a adder to repaint a shop sign, presum- ably using one of the moder, lightfast pigments.PAINT AND PIGMENTS Masstone Undetone Tat CHARTING PIGMENTS = Each pigment has the three attributes of hue, value, and chroma. It also has other properties, including transparency, drying time, and compatibility with other piements. Bz | Experience and experimentation are the way to get to ope youcmaedals ne | 8 Pre. Sete at andes ad ts for _— — ea, amare Ms, Venn re andere ert adimium yellow Figwe 2 Pigment Whee: oilon board. Based on data compiled by Brace MacE,wrhandprint com. ‘Numbers around perimeter rect CIECAM Be anglesEvery pigment occupies a specific position on the ideal color wheel, 2 combination of its hue and chroma, The chart opposite, shows where many familiar pigments would appear. Many fall short of the maximum possible chroma, and there are gaps where no pigments are available. CONVENIENCE Mixtures ‘Some pigments are blended to make recognizable colors such as “mauve.” Convenience mixtures also il gaps by offering intermediate mixtures for which no pigment exists, such as phthalo yellow-green, In watercolor, Payne's gray isa blue-black made from black and ultamarine or other blends. TINTING AND TRANSPARENCY Tinting strength refers to the ability of a pigment to maintain chroma with the addition of white. Pigments can also be rated according to their transparency or ‘opacity, or covering power. The cadmium red used in the saddle blanket in the painting at right is a very opaque red. A good way to test your paints is to spread a thick layer, called a masstone, across ‘a white gessoed surface, Next to that, spread a thin, transparent film, called an undertone, with a dark mark on the board behind it to test opacity. Oraanics AND INORGANICS Pigments are divided into organic (con- taining carbon) and inorganic (without carbon). Inorganic pigments include such metals as cadmium, cobalt, iron, ‘and zine, They are more opaque, denser, and generally weaker in tints. Synthetic Combination of permanent alizarn erinsoa and utsamasne organic pigments tend to be more trans- parent, lighter in weight, and higher in pay 3. cha of wteol men combinations The arg = tinting strength, Organic pigments tend otro ee dagonl fom lover kf toupee: Wis eS tohhold their purity and brilliance better el Wn rd parmanc azarn rmrn ramarin Be, \ whonmined wih ote organic, and they Setetely tinea ee (| GB Caibines set sry aReR TONING beeen cost et ental me a ee ‘out and see how they behave in various oePAINT AND PIGMENTS LIGHTFASTNESS Some colors and some media fare better than others when they sit for a long time in direct your artwork from fading by us sunlight. You can protect ing pigments with good permanence ratings and by keeping it out of strong light. CARAN DACHE SUPRACOLOR T. CoLaRED PEELS SUIMINCKE WATERCOLORS Cotorep Pencit, Lightfasiness is the resistance of a given pigment to fading as a result of exposure to light. Blue jeans, tattoos, leather stains, and house paint will all fade— and so will some of your paints. The color strips on this page give a sense of how different media and differ- cent coors can change, while others stay remarkably stable, Each strip was cut in half after it was painted. For about eight months, one half of the strip stayed in a dark, cool drawer, and the other hall faced the sun in a south window. Way Do CoLors Fane? The reason colors fade is that the colorant molecules break down when, they are exposed to light, especially 10 the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light, which pack more energy. UV light WATERCOLOR breaks the chainlike color molecules into pieves, like a hammer smashing a necklace. The molecular fragments bond with oxygen to form new molecules that no longer have the same color absorption properties. Some pigments are stable enough to ‘withstand the ravages of light, The iron oxides and the heavy metals such as cobalt and cadmium are composed of solid particles of material unaffected by UV light Dyes Dyes differ from pigments because they dissolve easily in the vehicle or they are liquids themselves, They are used in ‘markers becauise their solubility helps them disperse through the felt tip by ‘means of capillary action, Bic ULTRA Roun sTie aaa Tina PeRVanET PINE PE | TARE PERM Fine pr BLUE! ages 5 a BEeOL PRISMACOLOR ART MARKER, MARKERS ‘Many dyes are suscepsible to fading, The molecules in older synthetic aniline dyes were especially fugitive, or susceptible to fading. Inthe test strip on the opposite ‘pags, the violet color completely disap- peared. However, recent technological ‘advances have improved dyes. Many now ‘use micronized pigments rather than the ‘more vulnerable synthetic anilines In the test swatches atthe far right, highlighter markers fared very poorly. Fluorescent highlighters use relatively unstable colorants that convert invisible UV light into light that you can sce. The conversion of UY to visible light is why a yellow highlighter stripe ean be lighter than the white of the paper. But the effect lasts only as long as the molecules hhang together.‘Wnicn Cotors SHoutp BE AvoIDED? The industry standards for light- fastness have been established by the ‘American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). The ratings range from Class I (very lightfast) to Class V (very fugitive). Alizarin crimson (PR 83), for example, has been a popular pigment in many art media since it was first CARB-OTHELLO PASTEL PENCILS Pastet PeNciLs synthesized in 1868. But it has received an ASTM tating of IIL or IV, and will eventually fade out of any painting that is exposed to the light. There are several replacements, which nearly ‘mateh alizarin crimson’s hue and transparency. They tend to come from the quinacridone, pyrrole, or perylene families, and include such numbers as PR 202, PR 206, PR 264 and PV 19. As you can see from the marker and ‘dye swatches, the yellows, magentas, and violets tend to be more fugitive than other colors. But it depends on each individual pigment. The quinacridone family of reds were developed for the automotive industry, which needs pigments that can stand up to years Of brutal exposure to the sun. Pyrrole red, also called Ferrari red for its use ‘on sports cars, is the same bright and reliable pigment in the oil paint called Winsor red. Wuat Dots “PERMANENT” MEAN? ‘The word “permanent” appears on many different art products, but it's a confusing term. On some graphic art products, such as inks or felt-tipped ‘markers, it really means “waterproof,” mn On rather than “lightfast,” Many calligraphy or fountain pen inks, such as the brown, inks at right, are not waterproof, but they're reasonably lightfast, considering ‘that most handwriting isn't usually subjected to light for long periods. SAPEGUARDS To be sure your art will last as long as possible without fading: L. Buy paints that have ASTM ratings of IL or I. If they don't show ratings, assume they're not lightfast. 2. Keep art in a dark place, such as a drawer or a dark hallway. 3. Use UV-filtered glass. 4, Don't hang it in direct sunlight eeArerie AcceNT SHORE ecENT HIGHSIGNTER, HIGHLIGHTER PENS: Dyes | SUHAEFFER ‘sei Fountatn Pen Inks Die MARTINS BYES /'PAINT AND PIGMENTS WarM UNDERPAINTING Instead of beginning a painting on a white canvas, there are several reasons why artists pre-tone the surface before painting in opaque media. This initial color is called the underpainting or imprimatura. Aorta, 1982 Oo pel, 108, 96 If you prime your panels with a tint or a transparent undertone of Venetian red or burnt sienna, you can get a good base for many kinds of paintings. All of the paintings here were begun in this way: ‘An insistent warm underpainting will force you to cover the background with opaque, thereby requiring you to make mixing decisions. Iti especially helpful for paintings of skies or foliage, or any painting with a blue or green tonality ‘The little bits of color that peek through the strokes will make blues or greens sparkle by complementary contrast For plein-air painting you might want to prime the canvas or pane! with oil priming, Oil priming is different from acrylic gesso because it makes the final paint layers tend (o float on the surfce, rather than sink in, Both kinds of priming are equally valid; try them both and see which suits you better. ‘You can buy oil priming in a quart ‘in, and mix up a tint using a palette knife on a serap of palette paper. If you'te preparing for a painting trip, you can use a drop or two of an accelerant like cobalt drier the night before. This will allow you to set up the priming overnight.PAINT AND PIGMENTS Sky PANELS A sky panel is a surface prepared with a sky gradation as a base layer for future painting, Painters before the advent of impressionism would typically paint a sky first, let it dry, and then paint the trees, clouds, and other elements over dry passages. ‘We take it for granted that all landscape painting in oil should be undertaken alla prima, thatis, starting with a blank canvas and completing the entire statement in one session, Keeping all the adjacent areas wet together. Alla prima is an excellent method if you want a soft, painterly handling but it can be unsuitable for describing, intricate details against a light sky, because the wet paint of the sky interferes with the dark strokes placed ontop. Painters before the nineteenth century generally didn't paint alla prima, at least rot in the studio. They usually rendered the details over a dry sky. The tree study, ‘opposite, was done in this way. The sky was painted first in the studio, allowed to dey, and then brought into the field. Sky panels ate useful in situations where your chief interest is the complex middle-ground tracery: road signs, telephone poles, sailing ships, trees, or intricate cloud formations. ‘The cloud study, above, was painted over a prepared cloud-free sky panel. Before starting the painting session, the board was first oiled owt. Oiling out is like greasing a cookie sheet. Rubbing the surface of a dry painting with a thin layer of medium makes it more receptive to paint. You can then paint the details of trees or foliage without any danger of the sky color lifting up and mixing with the dark colors of the branches or leaves. Norrie ark 2004, Oi on panel, 8 * 10. Cuma Sky, 2008 OF. eas pel, 16 2, Since clear skies are fairly standard and predictable, you can create a range of different sky panels a few days in advance of an outdoor painting session and let them dry completely. If you don't remember or can’t anticipate which colors to use for the sky gradation, spend a couple of sessions just painting a variety of clear skies from observation and Keep those color notes available for when you prime new sky panels.Oak,PAINT AND PIGMENTS TRANSPARENCY AND GLAZING Paint that is transparent allows light to pass through it. The light travels though the paint layer, reflects off the white surface underneath, and travels to the eye of the beholder with some of the wavelengths absorbed. Sore our watercolors ajo kp sr from dying ‘TRANSPARENT PAINTING. Most kinds of paints include some pigments that are opaque—that is, they obstruct the passage of light—and some that are transparent, These transparent pigments act like stained-glass windows. ‘They filter out some of the wavelengths of light that pass through them, sending back the wavelengths that yield their characteristic colors. ‘Transparent paints are usually applied to a white ground, the whiter the better, The brilliance of the colors depends fon the amount of light that is able to ounce off the surface. The value or lightness of the color is controlled by the thickness or density of the paint layer. Grays and intermediate mixtures can be produced in several ways. One way is to blend complementary colors on the palette and apply the mixture directly Another way is (o paint complements, on top of each other, allowing the light to pass through both paint layers. A biue layer and a magenta layer will yield violet when superimposed. Giazine A glaze is a transparent layer applied to an existing dry passage of paint, usually to intensify, deepen, unify, or otherwise change the color. A blue sky or aed cheek can be made richer by ‘glazing. The glaze is distributed in a transparent medium, Abo: Dinsaur Nonny, 1991 Oilon board, 4 Hin, Publish in Dior Land Apart from Time Left Some Harber; 208. Wterslor41 >in, Oppose: Mao Altes, 2003, Watercolor, 7% Sinee © ‘ ® a (ats oaHalleuns, Yore soon les Btbns fom! 2003Paint anp PiGMENTS PALETTE ARRANGEMENTS When you prepare a palette of colors, you have three big choices to make: the surface (glass, wood, or paper), the | colors (large or limited assortment), and the arrangement ‘Tue History In the Middle Ages, artists kept their paint in shallow containers like shells or saucers, The first reference to a mixing palette was from an account by the Duke of Burgundy in the 1460s, where he de- scribed “trenchers of wood for painters to put oil colors on and to hold them in the hand.” Palettes were often set up by assistants, which helped standardize the procedure for laying out the colors. The practice of mixing colors on a palette ‘was common in the early 1500s, By 1630 it was a lively topic. Vasari said that Lorenzo di Credi “made on his palette a great number of color mixtures.” References to palette knives show up around 1650, Elaborate premixed tints became a common practice by the late 1600s. During the next century artists more frequently used a “loaded” or premixed palette with fully developed tian white cat pelo ight pre rel ——— below ochre Veet red — urn sea divine be ato eran — Mende wcden pete me, (warm to cool or light to dark). gradations of tints and variations. A ‘Swiss painter’s manual in the 1820s compared the gradations on the palette to the notes of a piano keyboard. James MeNeill Whistler was said to spend an hour preparing his mixtures. Eugine Delacroix’s assistant reported that it sometimes took days to set up his master’s palette ‘THe SURFACE Many oil painters use a tabletop- or taboret-mounted palette. The taboret palette, below right, is mounted on a hinged surface that can tip up to any angle. The tube colors are squucezed out on a color bar, a piece of plywood along the left edge. The paint is mixed on white plastic-coated freezer paper, which hangs fon a roll behind the color bar. Some studio painters prefer to mix on a plate-glass surface, As the palette fills Colo he th ont ‘ash to deine color ran Tobe cols en apiece of Heino Ming sae of paste. ted scr pape whch ts end plowed : ores tpetine ar ‘yd pining meu Mowe tthe top of ‘abort with dor ages fa fiteton fe open not ibe 0 tat teas tp upd to onan Tabor pee up with blended paint, it ean be scraped. if with a razor blade. White or gray paper placed behind the glass provides a background for judging mixtures Instead of mounting the palette on ‘table, you ean carry one in your non- painting hand. The traditional material is wood, typically a walnut plywood. A ‘wooden palette develops a wonderful patina from the oil and the bits of color that remain after years of serviee. ‘Tue CoLors ‘The word palette refers not only to the mixing surface, but also to the full range of tube colors available for a given painting. A full palette might include as few asa dozen or as many as twenty or even thirty colors It can be a challengeto keep such a Jarge orchestra under control. For experienced painters, a a palette offers shortcuts and conveniences, But for beginning painters it's better to start off with a small number of pigments ‘and to learn each of their properties ‘and their combinations, Here's a manageable list: Titantum white (PW6) Cadmium yellow light (PY 35) Yellow ochve (PY 43) Burnt sienna (PBr 7) Venetian red (PR 101) Pyrvole red (PR 254) Quinacridone rose (PV 19) Ultramarine blue (PB 29) Pthalo cyan (PB 17) THE ARRANGEMENT The traditional way to lay out a hand- held palette is to squeeze out some paint ‘on the outer edge, away from the body. ‘The light, warm colors go at the top, that is, near the thumb hole, with the darker and cooler colors away from the thumb. On the taboret palette t left, the cool colors are grouped above the white, and the warm colors, descending from yellow, below it, On a rectangular plein- air palette, you can put white in the corner, with warm colors across the top and cool colors down the side. Promo Boa, 2002. Oi on pane.PAINT AND PIGMENTS LIMITED PALETTES Going on a color diet can keep your color schemes lean and strong. A limited palette (also called a restricted palette) isa. small selection of pigments, often resulting in a painting with a more unified or harmonious effect. More colors don't make a better color scheme. In fact the opposite is usually ‘true. Instead of stocking the palette ‘with a wide range of intensely chromatic colors, it’s often effective to limit the range of pigments that you use on any particular painting. There are af least three good reasons to limit your palette. 1, Paintings from limited palettes are more harmonious. Old masters used limited palettes by default because they Just couldn't get the range of pigments ‘we have now. 2. A limited palette forees you out of color-mixing habits. If you don't have a color called “grass green,” you'll have to mix it from seratch, and you're more likely to get the right green that way. 3. Limited palettes are compact, portable, and sullicient for almost any subject. In fact you can paint almost anything in nature with just four or five colors, ‘The painting below was done at a sketch, ‘group using: lve Gir Oi on board, 6 Rin Titanium white (PW) Ulreamarine blue (PB 29) Burnt sienna (PBr 7) Here's a vibrant two-color combination: Phthato blue (PB 15) Perinone orange (PO 43) ‘The dinosaur, righ, is a transparent oil wash over a pencil drawing, using Raw wnber (PBr7) Burnt sienna (PBr7) Cobalt biue (PB 28) The following colors can mix a wide range of colors in oil and watercolor. This palette meets the needs of a ‘compact plein-air set up: Titantum white (PW6) Cadmium yellow light (PY 35) Pyrrole red (PR 254) Permanent alizarin erimson (PR 202, PR206, or PV 19) Burnt sienna (PBr 7) Ultramarine blue (PB 29) Viridian (PG 18) Sometimes it's fun to jettison even more colors from this already spartan palette, ‘The painting of the shop fronts (oppo- site) takes away three colors, leaving: Titanium white (PW 6) Pyrrole red (PR 254) Ultramarine blue (PB 29) Burnt sienna (PBr 7) cy, atu > ‘A landscape palette doesn't need too much chromatic firepower, unless youre painting flowers or sunsets. The following four will give you pleasing ‘muted harmonies, good for a lay-in: Titanium white (PW6) Venetian red (PR 101) Yellow achre (P¥ 43) Ultramarine blue (PB 29) For figure painting in the studio, you can get by with the palette that served old. ‘masters from Rembrandt van Rijn to Anders Zorn: Titanium white (PW 6) Yellow ochre (PY 43) Cadmium scarlet (PR 108) Ivory black (PB 9)PAINT AND PIGMENTS. THE Mup DEBATE Is there such a thing as a muddy color? There are two different schools of thought on this issue, with great painters and teachers on both sides of the fence. Try both ideas on for size and see which yields the best results for you ‘Tue “Beware oF Mvp” ScHoot ‘Some watercolorists use only primary Pigments laid over cach other transpar- ently to achieve all other colors. They use no browns, blacks, or grays at all, ‘and never blend the colors on the palette. Some oil painters are wary of ‘overmixing to avoid colors that look “dead” or “dirty.” In bis 1903 book, The Painter in Oil, Daniel Parkhurst, a student of Bouguereau, wrote: “Overmixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially when more than three colors are used. When you don’t ‘get the right tint with three colors, the chances are that you have got the wrong three. If that is not so, and you ‘must add a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, of you will have to mix the tint again.” Partially mixed colors, he sayS, are more apt to yield harmonious variations in the final painting. He goes on to recommend that the artist keep the palette scrupulously clean and use a lot of brushes, ‘Tue “Mun Is A Myx” ScHoot On the other hand, there's a group of ‘equally sensitive colorists who argue that there's no such thing as a muddy color mixture: There are only muddy relation- ships of color in a given composition. A given color either looks right in its pictorial context or it doesn't. The effect of drabness or dullness comes from poor value organization more than from bad mixtures or bad mixing practices, me some mud,” said Eugéne Delacroix, “and [will make of it the skin of ‘Venus, if you leave to me the choice of the surroundings ier Lhe bd ne mara 106 Some painters scrape up unused paint oon the palette stir it together into a generalized gray, and put it into empty paint tubes, They use these tubes of mud, oF sauce, as they call it for mixing 4 medium-value color and for educing the chroma of mixtures ‘These artists point out that a given gray or brown can be mixed from many different constituent colors. An identically appearing neutral gray ean be blended from red and green, or from blue and orange, or from all the colors oon the palette. It really doesn't matter how you arrive at a given mixture. What matters is where you put it and what you surround it with According to this view, you don't necessarily have to wash your brush all the time or use a ot of different brushes unless the painting calls for intense tints, AA dity brush is infused with unifying ‘grays that can add mellovness to a picture and tie it together Both schools of thought have good advice to offer. The beware-of-muddists are right in advocating practices that lead to efficient mixing. Grays come to life if they're made of partial mixtures, \where some brushstrokes still have some component hues visible. Having to mix ‘grays and browns from more chromatic ingredients makes an artist much more conscious of the particular color note needed for a certain shadow or a skin tone, But one must resist the tendency’ to see grays or browns as dirty, because they're not: They'e the chet’s sauce of the picture, More paintings sufer from the “fruit salad disease” of too much pure colorYou can make colar wheel tests to preview the range of possibilities with limited palettes. The color wheels at right were created with only three or four colors each, plus white It's often a good idea to pick one full- chroma color and combine it with two weaker colors from across the center of the spectrum. A lower chroma pigment like yellow ochre instead of cadmium yellow corresponds with a point well inside the margin of the color wheel. You can also experiment with combinations of transparent and opaque colors. Above: Leds, NY, 2001. i oa bout, 11» Hn, ol: Listed Palettes, 20, Oi on board ach Scho eros ctl he ~ French ile pelow ce 7 aRe Re eee Te ee nee eeeCoLor RELATIONSHIPSCoLor RELATIONSHIPS MONOCHROMATIC SCHEMES A monochromatic color scheme is composed of any single hue taken through a range of value or chroma. There is a long tradition for artwork made only in grayish, brownish, or bluish tones. Any drawing tool, such as a pencil or stick of Conté crayon, automatically ‘makes a monochromatic image. Painters have rendered figures or scenes in Wt and Ari, 990. Oion boas, 7» Si, Pun 0 grisaille, which literally means in gray. Grisaille painting was most often used as a preliminary step to plan the tonal values, or as a part of the process in cpa: A Land Apart fs Tn painting, before the colors were overlaid in transparent glazes. But apart from those exceptions, ‘most painting through history has been created in full color. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the invention of several image-making technologies, including photography, halftone printing, motion pictures, and television, all of which began in black and white, It wasn't until well into the twentieth century before these media changed to full color. The New York Times didn’t run a color photo on its front page until 1997. Asa result, people living thro the early part of the last century got accustomed to seeing the world Interpreted in black and white or sepia tones. Now, of course, full color is universal, and black and white has become an artistic choice rather than aan economic one, Monochromatic sehemes often draw attention for their very uniqueness and understatement In Coday’s graphic novels or illustrated books, monochromatic schemes immediately suggest historical photos, as in these examples, where they're meant to lend credibility to the imaginary ‘world of Dinotopia, In full-color comics, flashback sequences are often presented in sepia. To ereate a monochromatic scheme with dry media or transparent paint such as watercolor, all you need is one tool or pigment. For opaque paints, you ‘ean prepare your palette by mixing the dominant color into a scale of grays.Corork RELATIONSHIPS WARM AND CooL You can’t measure the temperature of a color with a thermometer. The idea of warm and cool color is all in our minds, but the effect of color temperature on the viewer is real anyway. Warm colors Cool colors Let’s take the color wheel and chop it in half, On the top half are all the warm colors, ranging from yellow-greens to oranges and reds. On the bottom half are the cool colors: blue-greens, blues, and violets, Someone might argue about where to divide the wheel. The greens and violets seem to have divided loyalties. But if you consider the heads of the families, blue sand orange, there seems to be some basic psychological difference between them. The cool colors seem to evoke feelings of winter, night, sky, shadows, sleep, and ice. The color blue suggests quietness, restfulness, and calm. Warm colors make us think of fire, hot spices, and blood. ‘They connote energy and passion. (Orange and yellow are ephemeral colors. We see them fleetingly in nature: in sunsets, flowers, or autumn leaves. Onicins oF Coton Terms ‘This basie perception of the two families of color seems to be woven into the fabric of our human existence. The anthropologists Paul Kay and Brent Berlin have studied the evolution of color terms in languages around the world. In European languages we have about eleven or twelve basic terms to describe colors But some so-alled primitive languages, like the New Guinean language Dani, Ihave only two basie terms. Kay and Berlin wrote: “One of the two encom- passes black, green, blue, and other ‘coo! colors; the other encompasses whit, red, yellow and other ‘warm? colors.” Primitive peoples didn’t have poor vision—far from it. Rather, anthropologists suggest that as language evolved, it developed its first word con- cepts around the most psychologically important groupings How Artists Use THE TERMS Artists mean different things when they speak of color as warm or cool A swaich of paint standing alone can bbe described as cither a warm color or ‘cool color. Alternately, some artists elo: Bho a Tvl 20060 on board 11 18in, Published in Dinotopia downey to Chandra Opposite ane: Arce Mountain Maas 1991. ‘ion bour. 13 * IS in Pubinhad Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Ti Oppase below: Monreal, 001, Watercolor, 5 «7. use color temperature more as a relative ‘concept to distinguish two closely related. colors, A green mixed with more yellow might be regarded as warmer than a aren that leans more toward blue-green, This relative approach to assigning color temperature can be confusing when someone is talking about biue, which could be made warmer with the addition, of either red or yellow. How To Use Wars AND Coos You can create a whole painting using the cool family of colors if you want to suggest mystery, darkness, or gloom. But you can also develop interest by placing ‘warm color notes adjacent to cool ones. ‘The painting of the seated colossus, above uses an overall golden tonality to suggest the exotic romance of the desert. The cool blue-green note along the horizon keeps the composition from‘Pesos Sip, 1995 Oilon bord 64 * 91 Sret Scene, Posies, 1995 Ol on board, 698m Both pulsed in Dmoropia: The Word Bencabecoming tiresome or monotonous. That color also appears on the top of the sky, and on the upfacing planes on the shadow side. ‘Warm and cool colors can be used to complement each other in very grayed- down ranges of browns and blue-2rays ‘This quick sketch of Montreal at left ‘was made on location using sepia and Jampblack watercolor. The painting above does the same thing in oil, with ‘warm colors for the foreground, and ‘cooler colors farther backCoror RELATIONSHIPS CoLoReD LIGHT INTERACTIONS When two different colored lights shine on a form, the lit areas mix to create a new color. These mixtures of light behave a little differently from pigment mixtures. It’s called additive color mixing because one light is added to another. Paster Heads, 1940, Of on panel, teh Apprtive CoLor MIXING In the oil sketch of a white head ‘maquette, left alight modified with an ber gel, or color filter, shines from below left, while a blue light comes from almost the opposite angle. ‘There's almost no overlap between the regions lit by each of the lights. One light or the other covers almost every surface of the head. There are just a couple of ‘small places untouched by either light: the dark area where the nose meets the eye socket, and the hollows above and below the ear. ‘Two colored lights illuminate the ‘maquette below. One is yellow-green and the other is magenta, The lights are placed closer together so the illuminated areas overlap on the top of the head, the brow; and the cheekbone plane, In these shared areas, the colors mix to a pale yellow calor, brighter in tone than the lightest tones in each of the two regions that are lit by one light only. Additive mixing is the blending of color in the eye rather than in pigments. It occurs when colored lights are blended, or when a disk painted half in blue and half in yellow is spun at a high speed. Unlike the subtractive color mixing of | pigments or gels, the mixture results in a blended area with a higher value than either light can give alone. The resulting hues of additive mixtures differ, 00. Green and red light mix to make yellow. In pigments they mix to a dull brown, or gray. ‘CompLeMeNTary SHADOW CoLors In the large painting above, a warm light from below and to the left of the observer shines up at the figures. Meanwhile, there's a bluish light that shines toward us from the open doorway, lighting the edges of the figures and also casting shadows toward us. ‘Since the cast shadows on the floor are only receiving the direct illumination, of the warm light, they take on a decidedly warm cast. If you have two light sources of different colors shining con the same form, the cast shadow from each light source will be the color of the other source.Aumoee high Arba shader! = ‘The cas shai rom each colored ight soc is the cuo of theater sureCoton RELATIONSHIPS TRIADS A triadic scheme is composed of any three basic colors, but not necessarily full-chroma colors. For example, the painting below is built mainly from cool reds, blue-greens, and dull yellows. Surin St, 2008, Ot on board, 16% 34, Published in Dinotopia: Janey o Chandra 6CoLor RELATIONSHIPS CoLoR ACCENT You can spice up a black- and-white sketch or a gray painting with a little dash of color. An accent attracts the eye to the center of interest. A color accent is any small area of color that is noticeably different from the rest of the colors in the composition. In the sketch above of a corner market in Rincon, Puerto Rico, the yellow touches in the fire hydrant and the escuela sign give a welcome change from the grayness of the pencil and ink wash. In the larger painting, the yellow speeding vehicle stands out from the background of the gray harbor. Color accents are usually a complement or near complement, and usually more highly chromatic than the rest of the picture. If you restrict the entire image to something close to a monochromatic scheme, anything different will jump out and grab the viewer’ attention. In the context of a forest scene, for example, a red shirt will rivet our attention, Color accents don’t have to be used only for the main focus of interest. They can also be added as a seasoning throughout a picture, to provide relief from large areas of unrelieved hues. IF you have a picture with a strong purple us cast, it can help to sneak in a little yellow or orange here and there—just ‘aset of floating dots or an outline, or a weird reflection in a window, This becomes a matter of taste and of ‘momentary inspiration, keeping your color scheme from being too mechanical or predictable.“To build a triadic color scheme, begin by choosing three colors. They could be red, yellow, and blue, Or they could be something like eyan, magenta, and yellow. Or they could be any other three colors They don't have to be tube colors. You can mix any pigments to get Your starting points. Perhaps two are full chroma, and the third is somewhat ‘muted. Whatever they are, think of them as the thre instruments of your musical trio: guitar, keyboard, and flute le You want to do as much as possible with those three musical instruments. In the case of the painting below, the three starting colors are blue-green, cool red, and dull ochre, Each one of those colors goes through a whole set of variations in the picture, The blue-greens appear in light tints, in dark bronzy ‘colors, and in bright foliage. There are brownish teds, bright pinks, and dark ‘maroons. The gold colors turn up in the sunlit trees, in the gic's vest, the ‘man’s jacket, and on the lute and harp. Each of the three colors appears in a full range of shades (mixed with black), tones (mixed with gray), tints, and intermediate mixtures. ‘There are a few touches of other colors that slipped into the scheme—a bright orange under the sun standard, for example—but the goal was to keep those other hues out.from Powis, 1998 Oi om pane, 12ie) z ia = ia [a4 OuPREMIXING MIXING COLOR STRINGS ‘A color string is a group of prepared paint blobs of a given hue mixed with a palette knife in a set of steps from light to dark values. A big advantage of premixing color strings is that it saves time when you're painting observationally. Bach stroke of paint that you apply to a given painting is almost always blended on the palette from the raw tube colors before it ean be used in ‘your composition. Your palette-mixing strategies have a lot of influence over ‘your final painting, FREE MIXING AND PREMIXING ‘There are two basic approaches: free ‘mixing, where you use the brush to mix each new stroke from the tube colors, and premiving, where batches of colors are prepared in advance. remixed color doesn't mean using tubes of some standardized flesh color, 6 cooking up preconceived colors in the studio. Rather, it means colors that are carefully mixed from observation atthe outset ofa given painting session. The portrait at left was painted from a premixed palette prepared at the beginning of a three-hour sketch session. The premixed eolors matched this particular model and this particular lighting condition. I mixed strings for four separate color groups: the hair, the skin tone in the key ight, the skin in the cool edge light, and a loosely mixed sange of grays for the background. I spent the frst tirty-mimute session premixing. With this preparation completed, it was possible to paint 4 complete portrait in each of the semaining thirty-minute sessions. ADVANTAGES OF PREMIXING 1, Premixing uses less palette surface area than does free mixing. The colors ‘tech Group Study, 1996 Oi on ard, 129i, for the painting of the mountain hotel, ‘opposite, were mixed entirely on a single 9 12-inch sheet of palette paper, with mPREMIXING GAMUT MAPPING The entire group of possible colors for a given painting is called the gamut. It’s shown as a polygon superimposed over the color wheel. Good color comes not just from what you include in a composition but from what you leave out of it. (side Black sh Tors, 1994. Os onboard, 11 1en we looked at triadic color schemes iin Publihan Dima The ri iced, Woen.we looked at tradi ts con page 116, we explored the idea of limiting ourselves to just three hues and thei variations and relationships. Whatever colors you start with, those are the parent colors for your scheme. Everything els that you mix will derive from them The gamut for a triadic scheme would bea triangle. Gamut mapping isthe practice of marking the boundaries of such a shape on top of the color whee! in order to describe or define the range and limits of a color scheme. The gamut map shows exactly what's inside and outside. For example, the painting opposite has strong cyan and magenta, with weaker yellows, violets, and some dull greens The night scene above has an even narrower range of colors It includes only yellow-green, blue-green, and a touch of dull red-violet. There are no subjects ‘Nena Seoondary ay Gann map for Outside Black Fh Tavern 16 ai subjective ord Pew N yellow-oranges, high-chroma reds, purples, or browns. SunEcTIVE PRIMARIES ‘The gamut for the birdman painting is mapped on the color whee! above, ‘The outer ines represent the cleanest mixtures between any two of the starting colors, called subjective primaries. Halfway along the straight connecting lines are the purest secondaries possible ‘within your composition, Whatever colors are outside the gamut cannot be mixed from the starting ingredients, Sumsective NEUTRAL ‘The color note that appears in the geo- metric center of the gamut isthe subjec- tive neutral for that given color scheme. Is the mixture midway between all the extremes, In the painting at left, the subjective neutral i different from a zero- chroma gray. It is shifted slightly to the green. The subjective newtral is the same as the color east, In the tavern scene, a ‘ereenish gray paint stroke will look neutral, and a gray will look slightly reddish in the context of that particular color scheme. SaTuRATION Cost [Note that the secondaries of any Uriadic gamut will be lower in chroma than the primaries, In other words, the halfway point along each side of the triangle is closer to the gray center, and therefore more neutral than the corners of the triangle, This phenomenon of the lessened chroma of intermediate mixtures is called the saturation cost of a mixture,no need for scraping it down or cleaning it midway through. 2. You can premix generous batches with a palette knife instead of using the brush both for mixing and paint application, which can lead to skimpy mixtures. 3. Premising saves time in the long run because you don't need to waste precious minutes repeating the same mixtures over and over again. Tue Rewty Meraop ‘One of the proponents of premixing ‘was the Art Students League instructor Frank Reilly. He is known today mainly from the teachings and artworks of his students. Mr. Reilly had his students mix several color strings for each painting, and he recommended ten tonal steps for each principal hue, along with a corresponding seale of grays. ‘Ten value steps are more than you really need for most paintings. Mixing four or five steps gives you plenty of control for intermediate values, Two or three steps in the light, and two steps in the shadow for a given hue are plenty, because you can blend anything between those steps. As you can see on the palette at right, there's light, medium, and dark value for the red of the rooftops, and there are strings for a dull yellow, a warm gray, and a couple of blue hues. The greens ‘came from mixing the blue «nd yellow strings. Those are the principal colors in the scene. If I needed a color that didn't exist im the strings, I just free mixed it _Moionk Moun Hoxoe, 200, Oo cas ‘mounted to panel 11x in.PREMIXING CREATING GAMUT MASKS If you can describe a color scheme by drawing the gamut shape on top of a color wheel, why not cut a mask of that shape out of a separate piece of paper or plastic? Then you can slide it around on top of the color wheel to generate new schemes. To make sure we understand gamuts, Jet's look at owo more pictures 10 see which colors are included and excluded from the color scheme. (On the left is painting of a young ‘man in a warm-colored interior. The painting uses high-chroma red, orange, and yellow, with a low-chroma blue-gray asa complementary accent. There are no greens or violets. The color scheme opposite is also very Jimited. The strongest hue is eyan, with some duller greens and dull yellows! browns. There are no reds, violets, areens, or high-chroma yellows. Now let's see if we can define the gamuts. The first color scheme is fairly easy. It can be represented by a triangle shifted way over to the warm side, The digital mask is created in Photoshop, ‘The analog mask is cut out of tracing vellum and laid over a painted Yurmby wheel. You can make a gamut mask whichever way you please. ‘As we saw on page 124, the outside ‘corners of the triangle represent the sub- Jective primaries for this composition, Not all of those primaries go all the way Wi wth Seo 1998. O08 purl, 1215 «6 n Published ia Diop: Ft Fight _ Sabot x Seon. Subjctve Subjective 126 to the outer edge of the wheel, because not all of the basie colors appear in their full-intensity form. The colors inside the perimeter include all the intermediate mixtures that come from blending the subjective primaries. The gamut mask for the Oviraptor painting, opposite, is fairly simple, too. es just a slot from bright cyan to dull yellow-orange, with no strong yellow- areens, reds, or violets. GeNERATING NEW SCHEMES ‘The mask is a valuable tool not just for describing existing color schemes, but also for inventing new ones. It sets you free to choose exactly the colors you want, and it disciplines you from reaching outside the gamut. Iroffers you the following advantages: 1 You're not limited to the haphazard, choices of pigment-based limited palettes (see pages 104-105). You can use whatever primaries you want to start with, and get exactly the gamut ‘you want, 2. By rotating the gamut mask around the color wheel, you can invent and preview new color schemes that you ‘might not have thought of otherwise. 3. When taken as a whole, the colors within the gamut with their subjective primaries and neutrals feel sufficient for ‘a complete color scheme, even though lot has been left out. The effect is similar to what photographers achieve with color filters, but here your control is, ceven better,PREMIXING SHAPES OF COLOR SCHEMES Each of the gamut maps we've seen describes a polygonal shape. That shape might be a triangle, a diamond, or a square. It might include colors from only one side of the color wheel, or it might span a wide range of colors. ie Grn mop for Fee Bgipmest. ih Nena ed ; Pawe 2 Gant map fr tte pee ae Ps ie 3 aru yr we amphi ad bs What other shapes are possible for color zamuts, and what sort of schemes do they describe? ‘AS we've seen, the most common shape for a gamut map isthe triangle. Tt usually has a dominant full-intensity hhue and two subordinate, lower-chroma colors to balance it Inthe painting above of Dinotopian firefighting, the dominant color is red, and the weaker colors are yellow-green and gray-violet (Figure 1) Let’ review another example of the limited palettes discussed on page 104: ultramarine blue, Venetian red, and yellow ochre. The gamut map for this palette (Figure 2) is fairly narrow triangle because the red and yellow are close to each other, A useful gamut mask isan equilateral triangle that is shifted over to one side of the whee! without overlapping the center at all It’s called an atmospheric: Manocptonsty, Sh cs0HEE Yes Telpp- FRO meceNT x i triad (Figure 3). Atmospheric triads are moody and subjective, ideal for color scripting a graphic novel or a film. ‘A complementary gamut looks like along diamond stretching actoss the middle of the wheel (Figures 6 and 7) Although it pits opposites against each other, it’s fairly stable, because its neutral coincides with the center of the wheel Another gamut mask, opposite, shows the “mood and accent” scheme (Figure 5). Most of the picture isin one color environment, with just one accent area from across the wheel and no intermediate mixtures. ‘What happens when you create a complementary gamut shape that shifts the color balance off the central axis? An example would be a near-complement scheme using violet and orange. Throw- ing the balance alittle off-center can ‘make a scheme attractive, but it can also be a little unsettled and jarring.PREMIXING MIXING A CONTROLLED GAMUT Once you have chosen a gamut, you can mix strings of the colors defined by it. These strings become the source colors for the entire painting. The method guarantees that you stay within your gamut and make the most of it. ee ate } ‘Figure 3 Darker and igh values are mised above and els he sobetve pra to eld ring of aes forcadof them 130 We've learned how gamut masks can help to analyze color schemes, and how sve ean imagine color schemes based on other gamut shapes. Now how do we use this system to actually mix colors and generate a new painting? Srartine Cotors To start with, Figure 1 shows the color \whee! taped to the palette with some tube colors of oil paint to start with, ‘You can use as many tube colors as you want at this stage, but in this ease, it’s just pyrrole red, cadmium yellow, cadmium lemon, ultramarine blue, and titanium white Let’ say you want a triad with the dominant high-chroma color in the red-orange range (Figure 2). Use your palette knife and mix a batch of each Of the three colors that you see in the ‘corners of the triangular gamut In this case, i's a high-chroma red-orange, a low-chroma red-violet, and a low- c’chroma yellow-green Mixina Cotor STRING Now you've created the subjective primaries, which are the sources of the ‘color scheme. The next step is to extend each of those colors into four different values (Figure 3). Try to keep the hue and the chroma consistent for each color as you do so. Look again at the color whee! mask. Halfway along the edge of the triangle are little marks indicating the subjective secondaries. These are your in-between colors, which you may want to mix as vwell, You may end up mixing anywhere from three to six color strings REMOVING TUBE CoLors Before you start painting, remove all the tube colors that you squeezed out on your palette, except for white. This is important, because these colors are out- side your gamut. You don't want to have ‘access to them anymore during the paint- ing process. You can make an exception if you want, but for now it’s better to stay within the range you've chosen, ‘The portrait on the opposite page shows the Dinotopian character Oriana in moonlight, I wanted the colors to suggest a cool, magical ambiance, so 1 used an atmospheric triad shifted toward blue-green, With the colors in this ‘gamut, i's impossible to mix any intense ‘warms, even if you wanted to. But as your eyes adjust to the color mood, it feels complete, The relative warm colors ‘appear warm enough in the context of the picture. ReAcHING FoR ACCENTS Using this system will make you more careful to keep the brushes clean and to push against the outside of the gamut. When you mix eolor from a full palette of tube colors, the color-mixing mind-set is the reverse: You're always neutralizing mixtures, With this method, you will be thinking more about reaching for accents. Harmony and unity are a given, because they're built into the process. Tecu Tir Be sure to disable the white balance setting on your camera before you photograph your painting, or it will ‘cancel out the color cast that you have carefully created.Group Porat, 998 on panel, 8% 3; Published in Dinotopia The Hues that are adjacent to cach other along the rim of the color whcel are called analogous colors. They are auto- matically elated and harmonious. When you begin to rotate @ paper mask above 4 painted wheel, there's no limit to the kinds of masks you can create and the infinite combinations you can generate (Figure 7). ‘On the next page, we'll ook at how to take a gamut you've selected and prepare the paints on your palette so that you can use those exact colors in your own painting. Fiore 4. Gat ap or painting ove Fw 6. Complenemary scheme 9 ‘hgtal Yar whet Fue 5 Mos nd coos sche Fine tcheea sc eer ped Yorn wheelPREMIXING CoLor SCRIPTING In a sequential art form, such as a graphic novel, illustrated book, or animated film, no color scheme stands alone. Every page, panel, or frame must be seen in relation to the one that precedes and follows it. {Color Storyboard, 1993 ‘Marker, ath pane 1833) Spo Stebel U.Sc ‘The job of the color stylist of a film or game is to consider the changing color moods throughout a narrative sequence. Above isa color script for the book Dinotopia: The World Beneath. The story takes place in various settings, such as, a network of caverns, a pod village, a jungle, and a city on a waterfall The color script shows, in semiabstract form, a series of consecutive page spreads. Each sequence, or story unit, is held within a given gamut, which shifts ‘throughout the sequence, For example, the cave sequence, above, Dewins with magentas and cyans to suggest a magical, otherworldly quality. As the story leads to the discovery of the sleeping vehicles, the gamut shifis 10 duller greens and browns. The adventure moves aboveground where the gamut changes to pale orange, yellow, pink, and redYou can plan a eolor seript with the aid of a color wheel and a set of gamut masks that you can move around the \wheel. If you need to jump from one sequence to another, making a sudden shift of gamut will immediately signal the cut to the viewer, You ean change not only the location of a gamut on the wheel, but also the type of gamut: for example, switching from an almost monochromatic blue moonlight sequence to a wider gamut for a colorful festival As we'll seein the next chapter, the response to changes of colored illumination are deep-seated and tied to the emotions One of the reasons that sequential art forms are color scripted isto lead the audience through these changing moods, I¢S not just the colors, but also the change in colors that creates the effect ‘High Dive, 199, Oi onboard 1 x 285in. Published ia Dinctopia: The Word BeneathPee a ee eo ee aVisuaL PERCEPTION A WoRLD WITHOUT COLOR What does color add to a picture? How does it affect us? One way to find out is to drain all the color out of an autumn. landscape. It is still possible to understand what’s going on, but much of the emotional flavor is missing. It’s like eating pancakes without the maple syrup. 26 From late September to early October nearly 4 million people visit Vermont to see the color of the fall foliage, The favorite trees are maples, oaks, and birches. The number of visitors is almost seven times the state’s population. They spend almost a billion dollars. ‘Why do we make such a fuss over color? What would we miss if we were blind to it? How is our experience of color different from our experience of tone? Cook BLINDNESS Color blindness affects about 10 percent fof males. Most of those are dichromats, people who have difficulties distinguish ing red and green. Less than I percent experience completely monochromatic color blindness. In almost all eases, people with color deficiencies ean distinguish blue and yellow. Among those with normal vision, most humans are trichromats, meaning they have three kinds of eolor receptors, which note contrasts of red-green and blue-yellow, as well as light-dark: But some creatures, including birds and insects, are tetrachromats, with four kinds of retinal receptors. This additional endowment allows some of them (o respond to ultraviolet or infrared light A sanall percentage of people are tetrachromats, t00, though itis diet to know if thir experience of the world is realy different from the restof us. We can't know for sure how one person sees the world compared to another, even if both have normal cotor vision. ToNe AND CoLor The light-sensitive layer of the eye's rotina is divided into two kinds of receptors: rods and cones. The rods detect lightness and darkness, but they are entirely color-blind, and they function better at lower light levels. The cones respond to color and tone, and they work at relatively high light levels. Under normal light conditions, the rods and cones cooperate to create an interpretation of reality. But according to Dr. Margaret Stratford Livingstone, 4 professor of neurobiology at Harvard University, the visual brain processes tonal information separately from color information, ‘The two streams of information are kept separate from the level of the retina all the way to the vision centers of the brain. According to Livingstone, the area of the brain that interprets tone is several inches away from the area that interprets cotor, making tonal processing and color processing as distinet anatomically as vision is from hearing, ‘Neuroscientists characterize the tonal pathway as the “where” stream, This capacity, which we share with all mammals, is adept at motion and depth perception, spatial organization, and. figure-ground separation. The color capacity is called the “what” stream. It is more concerned with object and face recognition and color perception.VisuAL PERCEPTION Is MooNLIGHT BLUE? According to a recent scientific hypothesis, moonlight isn’t really blue. It’s actually slightly reddish. It just looks blue because our visual system plays tricks on us when we look at things in very dim light. The light of the full moon is about 450,000 times weaker than direct sun~ light. Irs so dim that the color-teceptive cones can barely function. In moonlight the color-blind rods are most active, Moonlight is simply the white lig of the sun reflecting off the gray surface of the moon. There is nothing in that interaction to give the light a bluish or greenish quality. Infact, scientific instruments have shown that the light from the moon is very slightly redder ‘than the average color of direct sunlight ‘These facts added together suggest a mystery. If moonlight is neutral or Fane 1. Colored card in aight. siete exper of month. E be reddish colored light, and if itis close to the minimal threshold of our color receptors anyway, then why do so many artists paint moonlight with a blue or green cast? Do we really see it that way? Is it some kind of illusion, or perhaps is it just an artistic convention? When you look at paintings by master painters of moonlight and compare them to your own experience of colors al night, you can decide whether they match up. There’s no way to be sure that {you see moonlight the same way I do, or that either of us sees it the way another artist does. Since we can’t escape the prison of our own senses, paintings by artists are the best way for us to share ‘our personal perception of moonlight. ‘Some of the artists known for painting moonlight include J M.W. Turner, lames McNeill Whistler, Frederic Remington, Maxfield Parrish, Atkinson Grimshaw, and John Stobart, Cotor Response iv MOONLIGHT Do the cones function at all in moon- light? Contrary to what some authorities have claimed, most people ean make very basic color judgments by the light of a full moon, But how much variation in color can we really see? Here's how you can test how your cones actually respond to color in moon- ight, Paint a set of separate, unmarked color swatehes or find a half dozen sheets of colored craft paper. They should all be at about the same value. ‘Take them into full moonlight and let your eyes adjust about fifteen minutes Shuflle the cards, and while you're still outdoors, mark on the back what colors you think they are This photo of the swatches, Figure 1, was shot in overcast daylight. In Figure 2, I manipulated the image in Photoshop to simulate how the colors appeared to me under the full moon, Everything is duller, darker, and more blurry. [could ceasily identify the basic hue family of cach swatch. But beyond that basic Classification, I wasn’t sure, and the gray swatch confused me When I looked at the same swatches in the much dimmer light of a half ‘moon, or in 2 moon shadow, I found that my cones went subthreshold and shut down completely. The swatches now became monochromatic Purxnre SHIFT Although the rods of the eye can't actually see color, scientists have shown that they are most sensitive to greenish ‘wavelengths of light. Asa result blue- green hues appear lighter in tone in, dim conditions, This phenomenon is called the Purkinje shift, Isa different phenomenon from, and often mistaken for, the perception of moonlight as blue You can demonstrate the Purkinje shift by comparing a red swatch and a green swatch that start out indoors at the same value. If you take them outdoors in moonlight, the green one will seem lighter in tone. Many observers have noticed that red roses look black in the moonlight. In the digitally manipulated version of the moonlight color swatches at left, Thave adjusted the values of the red andgreen swatches to sirmulate the they looked to me as a result of the Purkinje shift Trt: KHAN/PATTANAIK HYPOTHESIS Saad M. Khan and Sumanta N. Pattanaik of the University of Central Florida have proposed that the blue ‘east is a pereeptual illusion, caused by a spillover of neural activity from the rods to the adjacent cones A small synaptic bridge between the active rods and the inactive cones touches off the blue receptors in the ‘cones, like an insomniac turning over in ‘bed and rousing a sleeping spouse. This influence of rod activity on the adjacent cones tricks the brain into thinking ‘we're seeing blue colored light even though we're really not ‘As the authors put hypothesize that the rod cells predominantly synapse onto the S-cone (he cone cells sensitive to bluish light) circuitry resulting in the visual cortex perceiving a tinge of blue.” Black Fh Tavern, 1998, Oi on pane, 1824 Published a Diop: The Word Bo How can we use this information to paint more effective nocturnes? Direct plein-air painting with any bue discrimination is virtually impossible in moonlight. And the subjective effect can't be photographed. Every artist must train the memory and imagination. The best thing you ean do is to observe carefully, remember what you see, and reconstruct it in a brightly lit studio. Painting a moonlight scene involves translating a rod experience into a cone experience.VISUAL PERCEPTION EpGES AND DEPTH Edges refers to the painterly control of blurriness, especially along the boundary of a form. Using edges effectively will help you communicate a sense of depth or of dim illumination Gans Rode (Sosphoartipaa), 208. Con pane, 18 (An, rr Deer oF FIELD IF you look at almost any portrait or wildlife photograph, you'll notice that the background is out of focus. The same is true of sports or action photos. Yet most artists use sharp edges to paint everyti Oversharpness in paintings happens because our eyes naturally adjust their focus to both near and far objects when wwe look around at the real world. As.a result, our minds construct the impres- sion that everything is equally crisp. ‘A camera produces an image in which normally only one plane of distance is in focus at a time. This shallow depth of field is most obvious with telephoto lenses typically used by wildlife photographers. Everything that’s not on the focal plane is blurry. The blur increases as objects get farther from the plane of focus. The painting of the extinct giant rodent, left, uses depth of field to make the image seem real. If you'r painting in oil, you can use larger brushes and a \wet-into-wet handling in the soft areas 10 achieve this impression, The painting of the dinosaur on the opposite page also uses this technique. INTERSECTING CONTOURS When one abject sits in front of another in space, what happens at the location \where the contours intersect each other? How can you create a sense of space between the object in front and the ‘one behind? Figure I shows a gray rectangle in frontof a cross of white lines. All the edges are kept sharp. The result i thatthe rectangle appears t be sitting on top ofthe lines, ‘but ties on the same two-dimensional plane. If you soften all the edges of the white Hines to an equal depsee, as in Fig- ure 2, the gray rectangle floats upward This is how a camera would interpret two objects on different planes of focus, Figure 3 softens the edges of the ret- angle and keeps the white lines sharp. It looks like the camera has shifted its focus to the back plane. This creates a perceptual ambiguity. The gray rectangle stil comes forward because itis superimposed, but the white lines also want to come forward bbecause they're in sharper focus. Figure dis an attempt to simulate our human visual perception. [es similar ‘o the photographie mode in Figure 2 but this time the lines get progressively more out of focus as they pass behind the rectangle, suggesting the continual focal adjustment our eyes make while surveying a scene. EnGes 1s MoonLiGHT ‘When you go out on a moontit night away from streetlights, you can’t see the cracks in the sidewalk, the blades of grass, the clapboards on a house, or the small oxigs and branches. Unless you're eat or an onl, these smaller details melt into the larger shapes, Everything looks blurry. The reason we can't see fine details at night is because the fovea, the central point of vision where we see small detail, is filled ‘with cones, and these photoreceptors respond well only in bright light painted the street scene, right, out- doors in the gathering twilight of a rainy evening. To simulate my impression, I softened the edges and suppressed the de tail everywhere except along the roofline and in the brightly lit windows where the iaht levels are higher, I Thad kept all the edges sharp, I \would have put things into the painting, that I really couldn't see at the time. If you use night photography as reference, remember that the camera does not see as the eye sees, particularly at night. ‘Giganasauras Porat, 19S, OR on panel, 11 * 1250 Publish in Dinotopia: Phe Word Boca. Tamers, 1986, on panel, 8 T2in utVISUAL COLOR OPPOSITIONS Complements suggest an opposition of elemental principles, like fire and ice. Blue opposes yellow; magenta challenges green. These antagonistic pairings seem to correspond to the way our visual systems are wired, PERCEPTION ele vn Goethe's color wheel, showing compe ua Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's book Theory of Colors (Zur Farbentehre) was published in 1810. Goethe's theory of color was based on his personal observations about the experience of color vision. Following on ancient ideas since Aristotle, he believed that color arose from the interaction between light and darkness. Darkness is not the absence of light, but rather its rival or counterpart. Blue, he believed, isa lightening of black. Yellow isa darkening of white. All other colors are grouped between them, Goethe looked for chromatic effects, at places where light and dark edges, Intersect, such as along the edges of dark illions crossing bright windows, He noticed that if we stare at a strong red color and then look at a white wall, a green afterimage emerges. Goethe's color whee, left, has the symmetrical six-color spacing that we're familiar with today. Opposing pairs of hues line up across the center. Yellow and red were at the “plus” side of the color wheel, and they represent light, brightness, force, warmth, and closeness.” Color schemes where yellow, red, and purple predominate, he believed, bring forth feelings of radiance, power, and nobility. Blue, he believed, stands for “depriva tion, shadow, darkness, weakness, coldness, and distance.” The colors on the cold or “minus” side evoke fe of dread, yearning, and weakness. “Colors are the deeds of light,” declared, “its deeds and sufferings.” Goethe challenged the theory of color proposed by Sir Isaac Newton a century earlier. Although most of Goethe's can clusions have been discredited from a purely scientific perspective, his ideas can bbe scen asa complement to Newton's rational and objective analysis of color His focus was more about color in psy chological, moral, and spiritual terms In particulary, the emphasis on theare the result of interactions g pairs of color recep- tors. But his greatest contrib 10 story: Eskimos in their do inspire generations of ar about to be buried byVIsuAL PERCEPTION CoLor CONSTANCY Color constancy refers to our automatic habit of interpreting local colors as stable and unchanging, regardless of the effects of colored illumination, the distraction of cast shadows, and the variations of form modeling. A fire truck looks red, no matter whether wwe see it lit by the orange light of a fire, the blue light of the twilight sky, or the blinking light of an ambulance. If the ‘ruck were parked halfway in shadow, we ‘would still believe it to be a single, con- sistent color. If the fender were dented, the tones of red reaching our eyes would vary, but we would still believe that the red remains the same, ‘Our visual systems are constantly making such inferences, When we look at a scene, we don't see the colors objec- tively, Instead we construct a subjective interpretation of those colors based on context cues. This system of processing. happens unconsciously, and it's almost Impossible for our conscious minds to override it. The colored cube illusion, below, illustrates how our brains alter what we actually see. The large cube with colored surfaces appears consistent, despite being lit by reddish or greenish light. The small red-colored surfaces on the near corner seem to be the same from one picture to another, and it's very dis from the greenish square below it But infact, the paint mixture used to render the green square in the red-lit scene isthe same neutral gray paint used to render the red squate in the green-lt scene, The context of each picture tricks us into thinking the actual color notes are different, This presents a problem for art students as they learn to mix colors ‘while painting from observation. Ist possible to switch off the context cues so that you can see colors as they really are? Cotor ISOLATION STRATEGIES There are various methods for isolating ‘a particular spot of color. One way is to look through the hole in a half-closed fist. Another is to hold up two fingers spread slightly apart. Far Colors Cube Hon, Te square marked “Ai panied wah the keel colo mitre sth square mardi Both ane anal gay Yocom te sor hy aig the sane lh si ar eaer Opposite: Saupe Runs, 19, Oi on board, 12 18 in, Pune in Damp: he Word Beneath Other artists have developed special viewing scopes for isolating colors. You can make one yourself, Paint a card half white and half black and then punch ‘hole in each corner, When you look through the holes, you can isolate a given color against white or black. You ean also compare two different nearby colors through the side-by-side holes. You can test a mixture by putting a daub of paint next to the hole, The limitation of any such device is that the illumination onand the color of the object. In theVISUAL PERCEPTION ADAPTATION AND CONTRAST When we look at a scene, the experience of one color affects the way we perceive other color This happens both two- dimensionally, as flat colors influence each other, and in the 3-D realm as well. APTERIMAGES AND SUCCESSIVE Contrast Stare at the central circle (B) above under strong light for about twenty seconds, and then look at the center of the white circle (A). Complementary afterim: should begin to bloom on the white circle, The blue sector at the bottom ‘becomes yellow. Green changes to magenta, and cyan changes to red. Repeat the same experiment, staring first at the center of the multicolored circle for twenty seconds under a strong, light. This time shift your gaze to the cyan circle (C). Perhaps you will notice that the afterimages now change your perception of each of the eyan sectors, ‘Which sector appears the most intense version of cyan? Most people report that the strongest cyan appears where the red sector had been. This is called successive contrast. When you look at an object of a certain M6 color, your eyes adjust or adapt to that color. The resulting afterimage affects what you look at next. This is why providing a few areas of complementary accents helps enliven a color scheme, Cotore ILLuMination Errec The female plaster head at the top left ‘on the opposite page was set up in white light with neutral fill ight in the shadows. The form is rendered in monochrome without any dramatic contrasts of hue between light and shadow. ‘The plaster head of the man at right was set up over a green-colored table surface, which bounced strong green light into all the shadows. Those greenish hues in the shadow actually changed the ap- pearance of the light side, The light side of the plaster head appeared orange-red by contrast When the horse's head was set up over a reddish source of reflected light, the key light appeared to shift toward a greenish hue. All of these plaster heads were lit by the same light souree ‘The change in apparent color of the illuminated side was induced by contrast with the color of the shadow, These experiments show that we don’t see colors objectively. If we did, the side illuminated by the white light would look less of the shadow color. the same, reg The color temperature of the fill ight ‘makes the illuminated side appear to be composed of the complementary color 01 Liu, Warm SHADows Opposite right, bottom, is a concept sketch for a science fiction paperback cover using a coo! key light. To empha- size the coolness of the light, the shadows have a warm hue, Cool light coming from below conveys a weird, artificial feelin because usually only unnatural or un- usual environments are lit in such @ way. The appearance of colors is influenced by at least five factors.VISUAL PERCEPTION APPETIZING AND HEALING COLORS Can certain colors—or certain groupings of colors— promote well-being, or even healing? Do certain colors stimulate the appetite? According to Carl Jung, “Colors express the main psychic functions of man.” igte 1 "Heating colors” montage of swatches fom New deco Figure 2 Gamat of healing alors ‘The montage of photo samples, left, ‘was made by sniping random bits from the pages of New Age catalogs, which offered products designed to promote inner peace. The color scheme includes blues, violets, greens, and cool reds, but avoids hot reds and yellows. The gamut map below represents the range of colors Cotor THERAPIES Aneentire field of alternative medicine called color therapy or chromotherapy has developed around the belief that colors have specific therapeutic properties for the mind and body. ‘These practices are rooted in ancient beliefs of the Ayurveda in India, and in ancient Egypt, where rooms were built with colored-glass windows to promote effects on the body. In China, specific colors were associated with certain internal organs. In various practices of color therapy, patients observe colors through special viewers, or colors are applied to aecu- points on the body, using gemstones, candles, prisms, penlights, colored fabrics, or tinted glass, Cotor Associations Although not all systems of color therapy agree on the associations of each color, most aaree that red signifies blood and the base passions, including anger and power, Orange is often associated with warmth, appetite, and energy, followed by yellow, which represents the ‘energy of the sun, und which is used for glandular problems. Advertisers use these MeDenaa' Sign, 200, i bor, 10% Bin bright, warm colors to whet the appetite for fast food, above. The spectrum of colors continues through green, blue, indigo, and violet, moving more and more toward states of serenity and meditation This progression corresponds to the ascending chakras of yogic practice, and can be charted on the body by superimposing the progression of hues con each of the seven spiritual centers of the body. Mainstream marketers have recently ‘made connections between certain colors and chakra centers. Such claims even appear on the websites of commercial interior paint manufacturers. Vauprry oF CLAIMS ‘Those who doubt the claims of chromo- ‘therapy argue that these associations are1, Simultaneous contrast: The hue, satu- ration, ot brightness of a background color can induce opposite qualities in an object sitting in front of it 2. Successive contrast: Looking at one color changes the next color we see, 3. Chromatic adaptation: Our visual system, like the white balance of a camera, becomes accustomed to a given color of illumination. When the illu nation changes in color temperature, the sensitivity of color receptors chang in relative proportion, resulting in balanced impression of color and Tight levels. 4, Color constaney: Thanks to chromatic adaptation and our experience of known, “objects, local colors appear consistent, regardless of lighting circumstances that may actually change their hue, valu ‘or saturation, Size of the object: The smaller a colored object becomes, the less distinct the color appears to be. You can observe this effect on the pigment chart on page 92, where the smal spots of color appear to lose chroma as the viewing distance increases How does this knowledge help in paint- ing? If you're familiar with all these phe- nse them to enhance nomena, you the illusion of your picture. As you look at a scene, try to isolate the color, but also try to compare that color to other colors in the scene, Ask yourself: Is it different in hue, different in value, or di ferent in chroma? The only way to really know what color you need to mix is to compare it to other colors in the scene, especially to a known white color. Do the same when you're mixing a color on the palette. Compar mixture to white and black, to a gray of the same value, and to the full-chroma version of the hue. Top: Plane Heads Colored Light 1984 Oi on board, 12208 Abo: Cool Spaceman, 1984, Oi on boar, “rinnothing more than pseudoscience, because the health benefits can't be proven by clinical tests. If the contempla- tion of certain colors has any effect on a patient's recovery, they would argue, it’s simply due to the placebo effect. To some extent, the color symbolism, of New Age catalogs owes as much to fads and fashions as it does to physiological response. More recent catalogs have a rather different palette than we would have seen ten years ago; these days health-promoting catalogs tend to sport gold, dull olive, and Venetian red Regardless of the scientific validity of these claims, artists, designers, and photographers might wish to remain ‘open to the general idea that color cean affeet us at an emotional and a physiological level asberetCourters, 2007. Oona Pablishs a Dinotopia: Jo 9SURFACES AND EFFEcTS TRANSMITTED LIGHT When sunlight travels through a thin, semitransparent material, the light becomes richly colored. Light that bounces off the surface is fairly dull by comparison. This “stained-glass window effect” is called transmitted light. {mio the Widnes, 1999, 01,10 Sin, Pubshed in Dinotopia: Fart High Back Mops, 204, Oto pel, 8% 10 in 132 You can see transmitted light when the sun shines through the green or yellow leaves of a tree. The elfect is also notice able when the sun backlights a colored balloon, a sailboat’s spinnaker, or a translucent nylon umbrella In the forest scene a lef, there are two bunches of magnolia leaves, one on each. side of the figure. On each one, the leat rising up nearest the viewer is an intense yellow-green. Four Kins oF LiGHT on Leaves ‘The plein-air oil study of a skunk cabbage plant, opposite, was made ‘outdoors in early spring while the leaves ‘were still fairly new. ‘The smaller image, below right, shows ‘numbers superimposed on each area of the foliage to analyze what's going on ‘with the light and color. 1, Transmitted light, with a strongly chromatic yellow-green calor: 2. The leaf in shadow, facing downward. This is the darkest green. It would be even darker if it weren't picking up reflected light from the adjacent leaf seen 3. The leaf in shadow, facing upward. ‘These upfacing planes are blue-green because the blue light of the sky influences them. 4. Sunlight reflecting off the top surface of the leaf. This is the highest value, and the most textural, especially at the terminator. But the chroma is not very intense, because most of the light ounces off the waxy cuticle of the Feat A tree that is backlit by sunlight has these four distinct foliage colors happen- ing at a macro scale, even if you can't see individual leaves. Look for the following color groups: transmitted, downfacing shadow, upfacing shadow, and toplit with sun, The colors will mix together like tiny pixcls grouped according to the position of each mass of leaves in relation to the Tight. As you can see in the faraway view of autumn maples, below left, there are more leaves shining with transmitted light at the lower left margin of the tree. ‘The leaves in the central area are darker ‘and duller because they're lit by the cool skylight 1. Tranonted Bit 2 Leaf sad. facing down 45. Lea noha fin op & Dist nih,SURFACES AND EFFECTSSurRPaces AND Errects SUBSURFACE SCATTERING Light enters the skin or any translucent material and spreads out beneath the surface, creating an unmistakable glow. Subsurface scattering affects forms with depth and volume, such as a person’s ear, a glass of milk, or a piece of fruit. Figure 1. Orange slice and plate ow fom the rot Fire 2. The sre oe rbd At left is a photo of a piece of an orange and a toy plastic cow standing together on a blue plate. They are lit by direct sunlight from the front. The ‘vo objects are approximately the same color in terms of hue, value, and chroma, Although an equal volume and quality of light is bouncing off all of the surfaces, only some of the light that touches the surfaces of the forms reflects off it. What happens to the rest of it? If we swing the light around so that it is shining from behind, everything changes. ‘The orange section glows from light that enters the transparent skin on the far side, It bounces around inside the fruit, eventually reemerging through the near surface. The glow is brighter where the wedge is thinner because the light has less distance to travel, and less of it is absorbed, In the cow, all the sunlight that is not roflocted is absorbed at the surface. It does not scatter below the surface, so all we see is weak reflected light on the shadow side, This effect is known as subsurface scattering. It shows up most strikingly ‘when three conditions are met translucent flesh, small forms, and backlighting. Subsurface scattering is also present on the illuminated side of the orange; it’s just not as obvious. If you hold up your hand in front of the sun or against a bright flashlight at night, light traveling beneath the skin turns the spaces between your fingers bright red, Subsurface scattering is what makes aperson's ears turn crimson when they are backli Artists have known about this property for centuries, Peter Paul Rubens rendered skin not as an opaque surface, but as a translucent, glowing, luminous layer. ‘Some art students begin their training, by drawing plaster casts at academic ateliers. When they transition to the live model, they're amazed by the way skin glows, especially in the fingertips, nostrils, and ears. Sculptors who create hyperreal figures know that in order to fool the eye, the Prinklin end Cat, 1995 ion board, 10x Bin Left Photon of wabaafacesctering, 2008 surface layer of skin has to be somewhat translucent. That's why the figures in ‘wax museums look more real than painted plaster. Your eye instantly spots the difference. In the early days of animatronic creatures, the skin was made of latex, ‘which was a little too opaque, but now creature effects experts generally use silicone when they need the surface to seatter more light. IssSurFAaces AND EFrects CoLorR ZONES OF THE FACE The complexion of a light-skinned face divides into three zones. The forehead is a light golden color. From the forehead to the bottom of the nose is reddish. The zone from the nose to the chin tends toward a bluish, greenish, or grayish color. shove: Fron, 996, il on boar, 10% 8, Opposite: Marta Keane, 1988. i 9 board, 10% 8 In real life, these zones can be extremely subtle, almost imperceptible. They are more pronounced in men. In the photo of the Lincoln bust, the colors are digitally superimposed to show the three regions, ‘The forehead has a light golden color because it’s freer of muscles and surface capillaries, The ears, cheeks, and nose all lie within the central zone of the face. Those areas have more capillaries carrying oxygenated blood near the causing the reddish color, A surf person who has been physically active dilation, particularly often in the cheeks in a diagonal line running from the inside of the eye to the comer of the jaw. Chronic alcohol consumption or exposure to cold weather can lead to a permanent rupture of the capillaries The lower third of the face, especially ona dark-haired man, can have a blue. gray cast from the hair follicles. Even women and children don't have this five-o'clock shadow, they can appear bit greenish in the region surrounding, the lips, where there are relatively more veins carrying blue deoxygenated blood. ‘Some artists accentuate this subtle bluish or greenish hue to bring out the reddish lip color.SurFaces AND EFFecTs THE Hair SECRET Like water and foliage, hair has always presented a unique challenge to both the traditional and the digital artist. To avoid the stringy look, use big brushes, keep the masses simple, soften the edges, and control the highlights. Left low: Te Barings 1996. Ollon board, 12 «9a. Right below: Patrick, 2003, Peel in. Defining individual locks of hair too ‘much can make the hair look like a string mop. To solve this problem, group the strands of hair into large masses. ‘You can use a big bristle brush to sweep up individual locks into simple patches of tone. Ware THE Hair MEETS ‘THE FOREHEAD If the edges are too hard, it tends to sit on the head like a leather helmet. Look for a variation along the edge where the hair meets the skin, especially at the hairline near the temple, as well as the area where the hair meets the neck. In the painting of the model with the bun, above lel, note that the curls along her neck are stated in large masses, without inserting many lines in the direetion of the hair growth to define individual bairs or locks. Ichelps to visualize masses of hair as ribbons. In a real ribbon, the highlight goes across, not along, the curving. shapes. When hair is short or pinned close to the head, as with the examples here, the highlight extends across the entire head, ‘with the full mass of hair gotting darker as it turns away from the highlight region. Hair has so many textures and colors that there are no recipes for painting it might be frizzy, curly, wavy, or a crew cut, Often a lighting arrangement with key light and an edge light can bring interest to the hair. No matter what in- dlividual hair type you need to represent, the most useful general advice is to use a large brush, keep the forms simple, and try to state the largest masses.SURFACES AND EFFECTS CAUSTICS A drinking glass or a water-filled vase can act like a lens to focus light rays into spots or lines of light. The same effects happen underwater, the result of the undulating waves acting like lenses. This field of optics is called caustics. WV \\\ athe ip iLe Ma ~St Pere 1. Cone rections oon eater src am uate projection eke Duaseosteus ond Cla 1994. 08199 pone, 1 16in Publshod in Drop The World Beneath Fire 2 Potozanh of ous posectione frm ss bcs fled with er 160 Causties are the spots, ares, or wavy ‘bands of light projected onto a surface by means of refraction or reflection from a curved glass or from waves on water. CAUSTICS FROM TRANSPARENT Omecrs In the still life arrangement in Figure 2, set up in the morning sunlight, note the difference in the shapes of the caustic projections. The objects are bending, or reffacting, the light, essentially acting as imperfect lenses. ‘The light bunches up and forms lines of concentration along the boundary of geometric shapes, sometimes with spectral effects along the edges. The caustic effects cluster inside the cast shadows of the glass objects, ‘The shapes are determined by the curvature of the surface. As we'll see in the next chapter, the rainbow isessentially a caustic projection from spherical raindrops reflecting back the sunlight to the observer. Unperwarer Caustics Caustio patterns can occur when sunlight is refracted downward by the ripples at the water surface, The waves focus @ network of dancing lines on the sea floar or on the backs of ereatures below the surface Inthe painting on the opposite page, a caustic pattern forms on the bhack of an extinct fossil ish called a Dunkleasteus ‘Underwater caustic effects don't occur ‘much deeper than twenty or thirty fet. Itwould be inaccurate to include them in 1 deep-sea picture. In addition, they only occur on sunny days and are visible only ‘on the top surface of underwater forms. Caustic REFLECTION: ‘Caustic reflections can be cast upward from wavelets, a common sight on the downfacing planes of the architecture of Venice, A caustic pattern appears on the inside surface of the vaulted arch at right, Figure 1 shows how the waves act like a coneave mirror to concentrate the reflected rays of light, ‘Caustic reflections can also appear inside concave shiny objects such as cups ‘or bowls, The kidney-shaped patterns called nephroid curves appear at the bottom of an empty coffee cup held under a bright light. ‘You can observe caustic effects almost anywhere the sunlight shines through curving glass or reflects off shiny metallic surfaces. Saupols Gat, 008. Oi on bord, 134% Tin Pubishatim Dtopa Journey to Chandar ItSURFACES AND EFFECTS SPECULAR REFLECTIONS An object with a shiny surface is like a mirror, It reflects an image of whatever is around it. The hood of a car reflects the pattern of tree branches above it, while a chrome hubcap will reflect the road and the sky. Tease Room, 1995. Oi, 1M 1in, Pabsbed in 182 Srecutar Versus DirFusE REFLECTION In specular refleetion, light rays bounce off the surface at the same relative angle that they approached it, In diffuse reflection, light rays bounce in all directions, Diffuse reflection is typical of a matte surface, such as un egg. Many surfaces are a combination of specular and diffuse reflections, ‘You can study the effect of specular reflection by putting a polished apple or «billiard ball next to a silver ball, such as a Christmas tree ornament EXAMPLES Inthe diner sketch, lft below, the napkin holder acts as a slightly imperfect mirror, reflecting an image of the sugar container. The diamond-shaped area stamped in the chromed surface interrupts the reflection. The gold treasures left, don't reflect a clear image, but they have to be rendered with a wider range of values than the