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Author: Laura Boucher

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Monday Morning Art School: the color of light

Is the light warm or cool in this painting? Two Peppers, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435.00

Additive and subtractive light refer to two different color systems, each operating under different rules. The difference between the two is fundamental in color theory. They both affect painting, as one influences what we see, and the other influences what we put down on our paper or canvas.

Is the light warm or cool in this painting? Tricky Mary in a Pea-Soup Fog, oil on canvas, Carol L. Douglas, courtesy private collection.

Additive Light

Additive color mixing involves combining different colors of light to create new colors. The more colors you add, the closer you get to white light.

The primary colors of additive mixing are Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). When you mix these three primary colors of light at full intensity, you get white. By varying the intensity of these lights, you can produce a wide range of colors.

This is the light system of computer screens, televisions, and stage lighting. More importantly, it’s the light system of the world that surrounds us, thanks to our sun.

Subtractive Light

Subtractive color is what happens in printing, painting, and any medium that relies on reflected light. In them, mixing means absorbing (removing) certain wavelengths of light to produce color. Pigments, dyes, and inks all absorb certain colors and reflect others.

The primary colors of subtractive mixing are, more or less, those you learned in kindergarten: cyan (blue), magenta (red), and yellow. In printing, black is added, creating the CMYK model.

Is the light warm or cool in this painting? Michelle Reading, oil on linen, 24X30, $3,478.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Color temperature

Color temperature is a measure of the color of light, expressed in degrees Kelvin (K). It describes the appearance of light and how warm or cool it looks to the human eye. Understanding color temperature is essential in painting.

At lower temperatures, the light appears red or orange (warm colors). As the temperature rises, the light shifts to yellow, white, and eventually blue (cool colors). Yes, that’s counterintuitive, because what we call warm or cool is influenced culturally, not by science.

Now that lightbulbs are tunable for color temperature, we may change how we feel about this, but historically, we’ve said:

-Warm light appears yellow/orange, and creates a cozy or sunlit atmosphere.

-Cool light appears blue/white, and creates a crisp and focused atmosphere.

-Neutral light: doesn’t have a color… and neither does its shadow.

Manipulating these in painting gives paintings an overall mood, which is why photographers covet the golden hours of early morning and late afternoon.

Is the light warm or cool in this painting? View from Bald Mountain, 24X36, oil on canvas, Carol L. Douglas, private collection.

The color of shadows

Shadows being the absence of light, they are also the complement of the light source (what’s left when the light is blocked). However, they’re not the complement within the subtractive light system, but the additive light system. It’s not as simple as saying “it’s gold light, so the shadow is purple,” although most people wouldn’t quibble about that.

Every color of light has RGB values, which are a system for representing colors on digital displays. We could find the complement, or shadow color, by subtracting the RGB values of the light from 255, which would give us a blue-violet. However, that would be an absolutely insane solution to the question. Instead, use your eyes, which will tell you that the shadows of evening are blue or violet. Or, better yet, use your imagination along with your eyes.

Bouncy, bouncy light

There are some surroundings where reflected color is so strong that it blows out this kind of light structure. The greens of the deep forest are one, sitting under an awning is another, and my studio with its natural wood paneling is a third. In these instances, the dominant color influences everything.

Learn more

I got home to find that I only have one more seat left in Applied Color Theory, which starts tomorrow. But there are always my workshops, below.

My 2024 workshops:

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Monday Morning Art School: angle drawing

Slightly more obtuse than 90°, almost exactly 90°, more acute than 90°. It’s far easier to see when you can compare it to accurate reference (and no, you don’t have to know those terms).

During last week’s workshop, Beth, Sharon and I were looking at a house on Pearl Street in Camden. I’d given them a lesson on two-point perspective and then said, “That’s just so you understand the principle. In real life, you’re going to measure angles rather than draw to a vanishing point.” That’s harder to do, because angle drawing takes practice. However, all drawing rests on angles and measurement.

“That gable end looks like it’s at a 90° angle,” Sharon said. Beth and I immediately disagreed. Of course we were roughly twenty feet away from her, so what we were seeing wasn’t what she was seeing. I heaved myself up (it was a hot day) and looked at what she was doing. She was holding an L-shaped composition finder up to the sky. Immediately I grasped an important new idea.

The angles that matter, very roughly, because it’s hot as a pistol in my driveway.

If you hold something that you know to be a right angle up to the angle you’re measuring, you can see how it deviates.

We’re all carrying around something that’s got a right angle: our sketchbooks. Failing that, we always have our cell phones.

Sharon’s view was, in fact, exactly 90°, but the idea was also useful to Beth and me. From our location, the angle formed by the gable end was about 10° flatter than Sharon’s view. I experimented holding my sketchbook up to various angles in the landscape and was pleased at how easily I could see angles.

(By the way, a roof where the gable end is at 90° looking straight-on would be a 12/12 pitch, which is pretty steep. Most of the time, when you see a 90° angle, it’s because you’re looking at it from off to one side.)

What if it’s so far off 90° that it’s hard to make a comparison?

I was on a roll, so I estimated other angles using Sharon’s idea. That was fine until I was so far off 90° that making a comparison no longer worked.

Drawing a hashmark parallel to the top and bottom of the fence was easy. Taking a photograph of those marks was hard.

What if I held my sketchbook level with the ground and marked that angle as a hash mark in the corner, I asked myself. Then I can easily translate that line into a parallel one where it belongs in my sketch. And, yes, that worked too.

My neighbor’s fence. Three minutes, tops, because I was standing along Route 1.

Angle drawing is important

Angles are critical to representing perspective. They also create the illusion of depth and space. Being able to sight-draw them allows us to draw objects from different viewpoints.

But, wait, there’s more. Angle drawing is important for:

Measurement: it’s often easier to see spatial relationships through angles than with the thumb-and-pencil method of drawing. (Fast, loose  painting rests on a base of good drawing. If you haven’t been taught to measure with a pencil, start here, here and here.)

Anatomy: Angles are essential for capturing the relationships between different parts of the body. This is particularly important in drawing limbs, posture and facial features.

Shading: Angles influence how light falls on an object and how shadows are cast.

Dynamism: Angles contribute to a sense of movement and energy in a drawing.

Foreshortening: You can’t foreshorten an object if you can’t see the angles, period.

That means any trick that makes angle drawing easier, I’m going to use, and I hope you do, too. Thank you, Sharon.

My 2024 workshops:

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The gallery is open, finally!

It seems like it’s taken forever, but it’s really only been about three weeks…

I usually open my gallery on Memorial Day, but I was mucking around in Britain until early June. (I don’t regret that one bit.) When I got home, I still had to build the darn thing from scratch. My absolute drop-dead date was the 4th of July, and I’ve made it by the skin of my teeth.

When I moved to Rockport, my gallery was in my studio, which is a lovely, airy, large space on the back of our house. Visitors got a behind-the-scenes look at what I do. However, when COVID came to town, that space was closed down. My solution was a tent in the driveway.

Window frame, by little old me! Good for setting your drink on, but I wouldn’t lean on it too hard.

In the meantime, I started teaching on Zoom and recording how-to-paint classes. When social distancing disappeared, there was no longer room for a gallery inside my studio.

There were things I loved about the tent gallery. People could see it from the road, and there was enough fresh air for even the most dedicated social distancers. But there’s a reason we don’t store paintings outdoors. Wind and rain have done real damage to my inventory. Plus, there was no space to gather people and host an opening.

I researched using a tiny house (not handicapped-accessible) or another structure (difficult to place on this lot). The best solution was to put my gallery in the first 11 feet of our garage. I’m very grateful to my friend Barb Whitten and my husband. If it were up to me, we’d still be trying to figure out places for all the stuff that was in there. My husband worked with me every day since. It’s the most time we’ve spent on a project since we built our first house in 1987.

These are fake walls, in sections so they can come down if necessary.

Coastal color combination

You’d think after all that work, I’d enjoy picking out the paint, but instead I punted to my kids. I made about a half-dozen photo montages of my paintings in front of various paint chips and asked them to choose. The blue you see was not my first choice, but seeing it with the paintings, I think my kids were right.

“This house is becoming fifty shades of blue,” I told my daughter. But that deep blue-violet is a perfect foil for landscape paintings.

I’ve never installed a door before, let alone a door in a false wall. These are interim views of my theater set.

How to find me

My gallery (and studio) are at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME. Hours are noon-5, Tuesday-Sunday until at least Labor Day. See you soon!