vince’s ear

 

May I present to you, dear Readers, the fourth post in my series “How To Paint.” In the series you will learn everything I know about oil painting. It is my hope that you can find some value in this advice and perhaps teach you something you didn’t know already. I know I learn something new everyday and I always seek out new information on painting and otherwise. If you haven’t already you can see the Intro, How To Paint: Materials, and How To Paint: Subject And Composition. Feel free to skip and jump around, but I generally intend these articles to be linear, in that each post should lay some groundwork for the following posts. Have fun and enjoy

Color: Properties And Theory

What is color? Color is nothing more than light reflecting off of objects. The matter in the objects themselves don’t actually possess the color, rather the properties that impact how much light is reflected or absorbed to give our minds the final impact of what we see. Scientists have been interested in color and the properties of color since Isaac Newton first held a prism to sunlight to show the spectrum with all the colors of the rainbow. The Impressionists of the late nineteenth century knew that what we see is basically light reflecting off of objects giving us an “impression” of the object. To them the subjects themselves were not as important as how light played off of them to give us what we really see. In essence, color is light.

As artists we concentrate on the effects of color on our visual perception and how colors react to one another to create a desired visual experience for the viewers. One doesn’t necessarily need to know all the scientific terms and properties of visual light and color, but it pays to know what we’re dealing with in terms of expressing the color on our canvases.

Color Wheel

What Newton also gave us when he came up with his Color Theory was the Color Wheel. (Refer to the Color Wheel at the top of this page as often as needed.) This color wheel can be used by artists of all kinds, designers, architects, advertisers, marketers, window display advertisers, and web designers among others to assist in providing an aesthetically pleasing and effective result. We use this color wheel to help us understand visual psychology.

1. Primary Colors

As a staple of Color Theory today we say that there are three primary colors. These three primary colors red, blue, and yellow a.) can not be broken down further and b.) can be mixed to create all the other color on the spectrum. Therefore they, along with black and white, are the building blocks of all visual fields. They are basic and powerful.

2. Secondary And Complementary Colors

Secondary colors are attained by mixing two primaries. You can see that orange is in between red and yellow on the wheel indicating it was achieved by mixing those two primaries. When two colors are opposites they are considered complements of each other and can be seen on the color wheel as any color directly across from itself. Many effects can be achieved by utilizing complementary colors and their properties.

For instance when two complementaries are put side by side, a garish clash can result. But, with skill, these opposites can be used to “intensify” each other and work off of each other. Van Gogh particularly knew the value of complements as seen in the examples here and here. The blue of the sky in the first causing the oranges in the trees to be stronger, while the purples of the field in the second creating a vibrant yellow in the sky.

3. Tertiary Colors

When you mix a primary with a secondary you are left with a tertiary color. Another way to put it is you make a tertiary with four parts of primaries, the building blocks. Yellow + Red + 2 more parts of Yellow = Yellow-Orange. You can see the tertiary yellow-orange was achieved by mixing the primary yellow with the secondary orange.

4. Analogous Colors

The orange, yellow-orange, and yellow being next to each other on the color wheel makes them analogous. These colors are said to be in harmony with each other.

Other Color Terminology

Aside from the color wheel, some basic color terms are as follows:

1. Hue

This is basically classifying a color as having a property that distinguishes itself from a black and white value. When one color is added to another, a change in hue is the result. As I pointed out in the Materials post, the adding of the word “hue” to the name of a particular paint generally means it is cheaper. In general color terms, hue is another word for color.

2. Tone

Simply put, how light or dark a hue is. Differences in tone are seen as a hue goes closer to black or closer to white. Changes of tone are achieved by adding black or white to any color. The term “value” is used to describe a color on any position of a scale from light to dark.

2. Tint

This goes hand in hand with tone, and is the adding of white to a color. The color Pink is no more than a tint of red, because a little red is added to white to make it.

3. Shade

The opposite of tint is shade, or the adding of black to a color to make it darker. Generally when painting, we don’t actually black to darken a color but rather a dark raw umber or other such earth tone.

4. Warm And Cool Colors

With an imaginary line going more or less from yellow to purple you can generally see cool colors on the half of the wheel with blue on it and generally warm colors on the half with red on it. I use the word “generally” here because technically you can have a warm blue and so forth. Yellow can be split in the middle with cooler “lemon yellows” toward the blue side, and warmer “Cadmium yellow mediums” toward the warm side. Purple can either have more red or more blue in it to change its temperature. On the canvas, warm colors tend to advance, and cool colors recede.

The mood of the painting can be made by making the painting chromatics either warm or cool. Depending on the purpose and desired effect of the painting, all warm colors can make a happier, intense, fiery, or warmer feeling to the painting, and cool colors generally can make a calmer and serene, colder, and sadder painting and so forth.

The temperature of a color can go hand in hand with color symbolism. There are many different opinions on what emotions certain colors can evoke, but here are generally agreed upon symbols:

• Red can mean fire, blood, anger, violence, love or passion.
• Yellow, symbolizing the Sun, shows life and energy.
• Blue, being cool and calm can show serenity, sky or Heaven and holiness.
• Purple is the color of royalty and power, originating from the dye being so expensive, leaving only the rich to wear such a color.
• Black can be death or evil.
• White is the symbol for peace or innocence.

I’m sure many of you could add your color meanings, and these certainly are only a few of what can be interpreted from the psychology of color. A lot can come from the context in which you use the color as well.

Paint Mixing

Now to get to the point of all this color talk: how we use and manipulate colors to create paintings. Paint mixing is an art in itself and must be mastered by any aspiring master painter. It can a very fun part of the painting process but can also be a very frustrating one. With the help of the Color Wheel, one can achieve the desired effect by mixing accordingly. As you progress and grow as a painter you get the feel of the pigment itself and how the oils flow and their traits and characteristics on the canvas. As a beginner there will be much trial and error when attempting to mix the colors you want, but hopefully of few of these tips can be used to make it a little easier.

Points on mixing:

1. Different paints have different levels of transparency. Generally a paint is either opaque, meaning you can’t see through it at all, or has a level of transparency, with a lot or a little of what’s underneath showing. A paint such as Burnt Sienna is very transparent, and applied in thin layers, leaves the underpainting to show. This paint can be made opaque simply by adding any white to it. On the other hand, most paints can be made more transparent by adding more oil or thinner to them. This is used when “glazing.” Thinners and other solvents can be added to paint to make it more usable, generally paint straight from the tube can be too thick to use.
2. Always add the darker color to the lighter color. This means if you want an orange, put an amount of yellow on the palette and continuously add small portions of red to until you reach the desired color. Doing the opposite can mean wasting large amounts of paint in the end.
3. On that same token, don’t worry too much about wasting a little paint and not using all of it. The important part is that you achieved the desired effect and got the exact colors you wanted. I’ve actually read an artist giving the advice of making sure to use all of your paint on the palette to cut back on waste. This is utterly hogwash and will result in a horrible painting. Whether you’re a Realist or an Abstractionist, you have a certain result in mind when you put brush on canvas. A little wasted paint just comes with the territory.
4. Oil paint is a very versatile medium. With oils, paint can be mixed on a palette or on the canvas itself. It can be thick, or thin, can be painted wet in wet, and be pushed around on the surface any which way you want. With color already on the canvas or brush, different colors can be added and mixed simply by stroking the brush. Once again, use trial and error to accomplish your goals.
5. Use color charts to get the color you want, don’t be afraid to use references and color manuals, it’s not cheating.

All kinds of colors can be attained simply be consulting the Color Wheel. As I said in the Materials post, I do recommend having a certain number of extra colors besides the very basics on hand. There are several reasons for this. For one, if you want large amounts of orange, you’re not going to want to mix the red and yellow every time to get it. If you run out of the orange you already mixed, it will be difficult to mix the exact same orange again, and you may end up wasting a ton of paint. Secondly, if you wish to subdue a color or gray it, you’ll want the complementary color right on hand to do this.

Grays and Neutrals

A gray or neutral color is neither warm nor cool. Grays can be made from black and white, or mixing equal parts of two complements. Neutral grays make excellent backgrounds for paintings.

Graying and neutralizing colors can be used depending on your purposes. Most paint by itself can be very bright and garish and will need its intensity dropped a little. To gray a color, simply add a little of its complement. Adding purple or violet to yellow will dull it just a little, so its not so bright and intense. Use the Color Wheel, if your blues are too intense, add some orange. You may not use the color orange very much in your paintings, but you will certainly want to neutralize blues often, so it pays to have a tube of orange paint around.

Some decent grays I find are mixed with

1. 1 part Ultramarine, 1 part Burnt Sienna, 5 parts white
2. 1 part Ultramarine, 2 parts yellow ochre, 1 part crimson, 10 parts white
3. 2 parts Cerulean, 2 parts yellow ochre, 1 part crimson
4. 3 parts orange, and 1 part its complement Phthalo blue, with white
5. 1 part orange, and 1 part its complement Cerulean, with white

Depending on what you’re painting you can mix and match colors. The first gray above makes for good clouds.

Black

Black is basically what we see when an object absorbs all the colors of the spectrum and reflects no light. The Impressionists were adamant in not using black on their palettes due to it not appearing anywhere in nature. Shadows, you see, are never black but contain some of the color of its object and some complements of the surface reflected on. Plus black can tend to look quite flat on canvas.

To get around this, a “chromatic black” can be attained by mixing 2 or more hues, usually an earth tone with a blue and crimson. Some decent chromatic blacks:

1. Equal parts Prussian blue, Alizarin Crimson, and Burnt Umber
2. 2 parts French Ultramarine, 1 part crimson, and 1 part Burnt Sienna
3. A 50/50 mix of crimson and Phthalo blue

Adding white to any of these makes interesting grays.

Just The Right Color

As I said before sometimes you just have to find colors by trial and error and experimentation. The key to experimenting with mixing is keeping the number of hues involved to a maximum of 3, or 4 at the most. Too many colors mixed makes very muddy colors.

Sometimes the right colors come from unlikely unions. Take olive green for example. This color can be achieved by mixing green with purple, or by adding a little bit of black to yellow. Some interesting colors are Citrine, mixed from orange and green, and Russet mixed from purple and orange.

Here is a list of everyday objects and materials you may want to paint or include in your paintings and the paints used to get them:

• Light flesh- yellow ochre + Cadmium red light, with white. To darken/shadow, add a touch of burnt umber, burnt sienna, or blue. To lighten, add Naples yellow and/or more white
• Light flesh (2)- Naples yellow + Cadmium Vermillion + white
• Dark flesh-Ultramarine blue + burnt umber + a little crimson + white
• Plants- Green plants of all kinds ranging from grass to house plants, to leaves can start with permanent green light and dulled a little with any red.
• Sky- The best sky is made from Cerulean blue and white
• Clouds- The highlights Cadmium yellow + white, the midtones Cerulean blue + Cadmium yellow + a little crimson + white, the darks add yellow ochre to the midtones, and the reflected lights add a little crimson to the highlights
• Gold- 4 parts white + 4 parts Naples yellow + 1 part Cadmium yellow light
• Gold (2)- 3 parts Naples yellow + 1 speck orange + 1 speck Cerulean blue
• Copper (Green)- 4 parts Naples yellow + 1 part Cerulean blue
• Copper (Tan)- 1 part white + 5 parts Naples yellow + 1 speck Cadmium red + 2 specks burnt sienna
• Bronze-6 parts Cadmium orange + 1 part Cerulean blue

Obviously there are many more combinations to use for these objects and many more everyday objects. All you have to do is try it out for yourself. See what you can come up with. Train your eye to see actual colors and how the light affects the subjects in different ways. When you look at a black cat, know that you are actually seeing all kinds of blues, greens, crimsons, and many other colors, not just black. Knowing this can not only help you to portray objects properly but will make your paintings more interesting.

This concludes the post on Color, but in no way concludes the discussion on Color Theory. There are many different points of view on color and visual perception. Seek them out and learn all you can.

Until next time, happy coloring.

Technorati Tags: art, artist, painting, how to paint, tutorial, how to

See also Intro to How To Paint, How to Paint: Materials, How To Paint: Subject And Composition, How To Paint: Techniques and Learning Art