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Tag: color theory

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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.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: human vision and color theory

Rachel’s Garden, ~24×35, watercolor on Yupo, museum-grade plexiglass, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Is human vision subjective? Absolutely; so are cameras (although they cheat less than our eyes). We don’t perceive things as they really are, and the gap between what we do perceive and what is ‘real’ is probably unmeasurable. It’s no surprise that witnesses often report wildly different events.

Bunker Hill overlook, watercolor on Yupo, approx. 24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How our eyes work

No other organ is quite like our eyes; they’re really an extension of our brains. The retina and optic nerve develop from the same tissue as the brain and that direct connection is maintained through life. The eyes are not merely sensors; they’re processing information before sending it up to the brain. They use the same neurotransmitters and signalling mechanisms as the brain. No wonder they’re so good at fooling us!

The primary visual cortex processes and interprets the signals received from the retina. That gives us the interpretive part of vision, where we sort color, motion, and depth. It’s there that we integrate and interpret visual data into coherent images and meaningful information.

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, watercolor on Yupo, ~24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How our eyes trick us

All humans have tunnel vision, some of us more than others. We focus on what’s in the center of our vision. What’s peripheral falls off, to various degrees depending on the person. One of the great lies of painting and photography is that they smooth out this tunnel vision.

There’s also wide variation in the distribution and density of rods and cones, which affect how we perceive color. Then there’s the condition of our lenses and corneas. (That’s why I keep hoping I’ll qualify for cataract surgery, but it never happens.)

Once the eyes send their signals to our brain, the relationship to ‘reality’ becomes even more tenuous. It appears that different individuals process various aspects of vision differently in their visual cortex. Our interpretation of what we see is also influenced by our experiences, our mood, and the degree to which we’re attending. And of course, lighting affects how we see (and how we fill in what’s missing).

Context affects how we see color

Certain visual patterns can trick our brains into seeing things that are not there or misinterpreting what we think we see. This is the basis of optical illusion, and it’s helpful for the painter to understand. Colors look different depending on what’s around them. Prolonged exposure to a particular color can create afterimages that affect how we see subsequent colors.

Most importantly, our expectations alter our color perception. For example, knowing that a distant roof is red can mislead painters into painting it brilliant scarlet, even when the atmospheric color shift has made it a far softer tone.

Path to the Lake, ~24X36, watercolor on Yupo, framed in museum-grade plexiglass, $2985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How do we sort all this out?

If we could separate what we see from what we ‘know,’ we’d be left with simple patches of light and color, because that’s all vision is. It’s very hard to do that, but the more we strive for that, the better our representation is.

After all, in our field of vision, things are not inherently large or small, close or near; our brain sorts the data and makes these comparisons.

Why am I thinking about this stuff?

I’m swotting to teach a new class, Applied Color Theory, on Tuesday evenings, starting on August 20. And it all starts with the brain, so that’s what I’m thinking about first.

There are just a few seats left, so if you’re interested you should enroll as soon as possible.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: start with value

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1594 framed includes shipping and handling within the continental US.
Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1594 framed includes shipping and handling within the continental US.

There’s an old saw that goes, “value does all the work and color gets all the credit.” I tend to not repeat it because value is just one aspect of color. It’s like saying ‘my arm hit that ball and my body gets all the credit.’ Nevertheless, it points out an essential truth.

A review, for those of you who are new to color science:

Value – How light or dark is the pigment?

Hue – Where does the color sit on the color wheel? All colors fall into one of the following hue families: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Within those families, however, are many subdivisions.

Chroma – How much intensity, or “punch” does the color have?

Spring Greens, 9X12, available.

Value is the key player in our first reading of a painting. It drives our perception and guides us through the painting. When we understand this, we can substitute any hue in a painting—even unreal, high-intensity colors—as long as they’re the proper value.

The inverse is also sadly true. “I substitute off-value color and chroma for accurate value. Then, except for a couple spots of high-chroma yellow, I wonder why my paintings are flat,” a student told me. He took that observation and ran with it, painting only in greyscale for months.

That might be a little extreme, but preparatory work in value is important. If you've never tried value sketching before, start with this set of grey markers and a simple Strathmore Visual Journal (in Bristol finish). Practice simplifying complex scenes into simple value structures.

There are various ways to sharpen our focus on value: notans, value sketches, and grisaille underpaintings being the most popular. However we get there, the first step of a good painting is to see each composition in terms of its value structure.

The same is true in watercolor, of course. Untitled class demo.

Alla prima painting requires great skill in color mixing, because the goal is to nail it on the first strike. That goes not just the for darks, but every color in the picture. Even a painting with wonderful shadows and lights will have many middle tones, often closely related in value. These are actually the most difficult colors to mix accurately. If you have a painting that isn’t working, ask yourself if it has a full tonal range, or is it simply hitting the highs and lows. For example, when people get in trouble painting texture, it’s usually because they’re overstating the contrast.

All color is relative, meaning it depends on its neighbors. That’s particularly true when it comes to value. Below see a plate from Joseph Albers’ groundbreaking Interaction of Color. The inner violets are the exact same value. But the framing color influences how we see those values, so one looks much lighter than the other.

Plate IV-4 from Joseph Albers' Interaction of Color, demonstrating how all color is relative. The inner violet colors are the same exact value, but what surrounds them influences how we perceive them

There are three things to remember:

Value judgments are subjective. There’s no reliable way to measure the value of a color. The camera is as subjective as the human eye.

You can’t get a color to go darker than its ‘natural’ value without distorting the hue or chroma. Thus, there is no natural dark version of cadmium yellow, so the shadows in a yellow object require a workaround.

All pigments can make about the same number of discrete steps. While the yellows have a shorter range, the steps are more noticeable. Blues can mix from almost-white to almost-black, but the middle points are very similar.

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