Category: Art How-to Tips
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Color in Shadows
Techniques of the Impressionists: What Colors are Shadows?
From Marion Boddy-Evans,
Your Guide to Painting on about.com.
How the Impressionists changed the colors we use to paint shadows.
Once you start painting and closely looking at colors, you soon realize that simply reaching for a tube of black paint whenever you need to put in a shadow doesn’t work. The result isn’t subtle enough to capture a realistic shadow. The Impressionist Renoir is quoted as saying “No shadow is black. It always has a color. Nature knows only colors … white and black are not colors.” So if black was to be banished from their palettes, what did the Impressionists use for shadows?
The True Colors of Shadows
Working from the then-relatively new theory of complementary colors, the logical color to use was violet, being the complementary of yellow, the color of sunlight. Monet said: “Color owes its brightness to force of contrast rather than to its inherent qualities … primary colors look brightest when they are brought into contrast with their complementaries.” The Impressionists created violet by glazing cobalt blue or ultramarine with red, or by using new cobalt and manganese violet pigments that had become available to artists.
Monet painted his moody interiors of Saint-Lazare station, where the steam trains and glass roof created dramatic highlights and shadows, without earth pigments. He created his astoundingly rich array of browns and greys by combining new synthetic oil-paint colors (colors we today take for granted) such as cobalt blue, cerulean blue, synthetic ultramarine, emerald green, viridian, chrome yellow, vermilion, and crimson lake. He also used touches of lead white and a little ivory black. No shadow was considered as being without color, and the deepest shadows are tinged with green and purple.
Ogden Rood, the author of a book on color theory that greatly influenced the Impressionists, is reputed to have loathed their paintings, saying “If that is all I have done for art, I wish I had never written that book!” Well, I’m sure am glad he did.
Trying to Observe Color
Monet described his attempts to observe and capture the colors in nature thus: “I’m chasing the merest sliver of color. It’s my own fault, I want to grasp the intangible. It’s terrible how the light runs out, taking color with it. Color, any color, lasts a second, sometimes three or four minutes at a time. What to do, what to paint in three or four minutes. They’re gone, you have to stop. Ah, how I suffer, how painting makes me suffer! It tortures me.”
Monet also said: “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.” “When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you own naïve impression of the scene before you.” Doesn’t he make it seem easy?!
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Helpful Hints for the Artist #9
Creating the Illusion of Three-Dimensional Form and Depth in Your Landscapes
Converging lines
Parallel lines, such as railroad tracks, the edges of a straight road and the furrows of a freshly plowed field, appear to close in on each other as they move away from us, and to finally converge at the horizon.
Diminishing size
A faraway object looks smaller than the same thing nearby, even though they are actually the same size. You can use this illustion to put distance betwen three trees and give depth to your picture.
Overlapping shapes
When we see one object in front of another, we know that it is closer to us than the object it partly conceals. That is why the overlapping of shapes in a picture creates the illusion of space.
Softening atmosphere
Objects you see in the distance not only look smaller, they are grayer, hazier and less detailed than objects near you. They are blurred and softened by the atmosphere that is betwen them and your eyes.
Lighting
The way light falls on objects and landscape areas can give a strong illustion of space. One interesting and effective device is to let the shadow of one object fall on another. This creates a space relation betwen them, in addition to unifying the picture design.
Point of view
Before you start to draw or paint, spend a bit of time viewing your subject from different angles to see which is best. This will help you find the point of view that shows the forms to best advantage.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Helpful Hints for the Artist #8
Composing a Landscape
When you are looking at a landscape, it may be a problem deciding where the “edges” come, where the picture should begin and end. An easy solution to this can be a homemade viewfinder which is nothing more than a piece of card with a rectangular hole cut in the middle. Alternatively the viewfinder of a camera can be used. And it is always worthwhile to bear in mind that pictures can be vertical (known as “portrait” shape) instead of horizontal ("landscape" shape).
This will help you see not only in composition but also in relating the elements to each other, helping you to see in tones rather than shapes. Sometimes tones seem to be overwhelming, and it helps to half-close your eyes, so that although the details is lost the broad masses are more easily differentiated.
Perhaps most important, remember that when drawing landscape—or any other subject, for that matter—put down what you can see and not what you know is there. Rely on your eyes and the messages they’re sending you.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Helpful hints for the artist #7
Watercolor techniques—applying a wash
The most important thing in watercolor painting is to know how to apply a wash—and luckily it’s quite an easy process. A wash is a smooth and even transparent tone of diluted color. To begin with, you need to have sufficient color mixed, because you will rarely get the same tint again if you run out halfway. Use a large brush, fully loaded. Place your paper at a slight slant (you can use a book under your drawing board), and carry the brushful of color lightly across the top of the paper. You can move either from left to right or the opposite, but keep the direction consistent. The wet color will gently roll down like a little wave. When it gets to the bottom, or to the place where you want it to stop, mop off the surplus with a dry brush or blotting paper.
If you want to graduate your color from darker at the top to lighter at the bottom, you will add water to your brush after each line of wash, so that at the bottom you will be using almost pure water. This is an excellent technique for skies. If you want washes that are darker at the bottom than at the top, start with water and add the wash gradually. Another approach is to simply turn your paper upside down. You can introduce different colors into a wash in progress, or even add touches of pure color direct from the tube or palette.
Experiment, and have fun!
Friday, December 15, 2006
Helpful Hints for the Artist #6
Orchestrating color in a landscape
When we start to paint a landscape, nature presents us with an overwhelming variety of colors and shapes. As artists we must have the sensitivity to react to this wonderful display, but one of our main tasks is to select and simplify. Although we must train our eyes to see subtle variations of color, we must also learn to orchestrate these different colors so that they work together to create unity in a paintaing—rather than a confusing competition, with each color trying to attract the viewer’s attention. In other words, we must first organize a painting in such a way that a few large areas of color and value fit together to fill the picture in a way that might be compared to a jigsaw puzzle.
Here are two exercises you can use to develop a good approach to expressing different moods or feelings in pictures:
1. Rule several 4x5 inch boxes. Now write a single-word title under each box describing a mood, such as excited, gloomy, angry,etc. Next fill in each box with three or four colors that will best express the chosen mood. The shapes of these colors can either be abstract or they can roughly suggest natural scenes. They should be free and loose, however, and not detailed.
2. Make several 4x5 inch pencil sketches of pictorial subjects, with or without figures in them. Write a single-word title under each sketch describing the mood you want it to suggest. Now, paint in the colors that will best express that mood.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Helpful Hints for the Artist #5
Advice on using acrylic paints
Acrylic paints (also called polymer or vinyl paints) have become vastly popular, and for good reason. You can mix them with water (or acrylic polymer medium), yet they’re completely waterproof when dry. You can apply them thinly, like watercolor, or you can build them up thickly, like oils, and you can use them in combination with other mediums. They dry quickly and the picture doesn’t have the tendency of oil paintings to crack, chip, or yellow.
Acrylics dry so rapidly that you can paint over a previous layer without disturbing it. You can produce many interesting hues and variations by applying thin transparent washes over your underpainting colors.
Commercially prepared acrylic board is available, but acrylics can be applied to almost any non-oily surface. A butcher’s tray makes a good palette.
You can work with watercolor or oil brushes and painting knives, but brushes need special care, since the medium dries so fast. If you set aside a brush for even a few minutes, suspend it in water. Wash brushes carefully when you finish. You can also obtain special nylon brushes with smooth hairs that resist the binding qualities of the paint and wash easily.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Helpful Hints for the Artist #4
FAS Instructor Hank McLaughlin has this advice on paying attention to values and edges when painting or drawing solid natural forms.
Values
The age-old method to discern the basic lights, middle tones and darks of your model is to squint your eyes. This blurs out the non-essential details and allows you to see the large, overall forms without distraction. The mistaken ideas that we often assume can get in the way. For instance, the “whites” of the eyes and teeth are not pure white…especially in shadow. The lightest of surfaces will grade to almost complete black in shadow, sometimes, if there is little or no illumination. You will observe at times almost a pure white glare on blue water or a green leaf that replaces the local color in these areas. Don’t let what you “know” get in the way of what you actually see!
Edges
Again, squint your eyes…you will see just how soft, soft edges should be painted and how few details, if any, appear in shadow. Edges that appear to go back into the distance usually soften. Edges of heads and hair are further back than the near front of the face. Also the edges of convex shapes like applies, tree trunks and foliage masses when softened make these forms appear more solid. If you keenly observe and faithfully paint these “blurry”, softened edges, the few hard edges you judge necessary will mean something. Remember degree: some edges are slightly blurred and others are greatly softened. Intense observation will tell you the difference. The human eye can only focus on one small area at a time. This shortcoming is a gift to the artist. Allow yourself only a peripheral view of your subject’s surroundings. When observing the head for a portrait, focus only on the face (the center of interest). What you can see of the background, shoulders, clothing, etc., without looking directly at them, is all you want in the portrait. These areas will then support and not compete with the center of interest. The eye is attracted to high contrast and sharp edges and tends to ignore low contrast and soft, blurry edges. When you paint in this manner, your viewer cannot help looking initially at the focal point (center of interest). Then the eye will wander throughout your painting enjoying the “supporting players”. If all of your painting’s forms are hard edges, the effect is flat. Hard, sharp edges come forward and appear to be on the same plane. The eye, being initially attracted to them all, doesn’t find one center of interest and, as a result, loses interest. This applies to all subjects…not just portraits. These principles describe how the human eye receives the visual world. However, since we as painters strive to interpret nature and not necessarily copy it literally, our application of these principles varies with each artist.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Helpful Hints for the Artist #3
Guiding Faculty member Charles Reid has this advice:
Use your artist’s eye
Never look at a subject with wide-open eyes—the more you look, the more you’ll see. Remember, less is more. You must understand your image. Is it dark against light? Is it light against dark? Painting is not as complicated as you might think.If you don’t have a model, set up some objects in front of a window without a strong interior light. Squint very hard and see how objects and shadows merge without apparent boundaries. Still squinting, do you see any object that’s clearly darker or lighter than the thing behind it? All boundaries that are hard to see when squinting should be lost. All boundaries that are apparent when squinting should remain.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Helpful Hints for the Artist—#2
Dong Kingman, a watercolorist who was a member of FAS’ Guiding Faculty for many years, had this advice for artists about the value of on-site sketches combined and enhanced with imagination and whimsy.
I like to begin my paintings on location, then complete the work later in my studio. Most often, I begin this process with an on-site sketch, which gives me necessary design information and helps me firm up my compositional ideas. Once the composition is in place, my imaginary characters take the stage.
Be aware of the surprising ideas coming out of your subconscious mind. Bringing these ideas to the surface takes persistence and hard work. Sometimes they come; sometimes not. The important thinkg is to keep trying. Starting with a design/value sketch assures a satisfying underlying structure for the embellishments that bring each scene to life.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Helpful Hints for the Artist—#1
Today we’re introducing a new feature that will appear here from time to time: Helpful Hints for the Artist. These “tricks of the trade” are drawn from the vast experience of our Artist/Instructors, and are designed to answer questions and resolve stumbling blocks you may encounter as you progress in your art studies. Check back often to read and absorb our latest Hint—and feel free to respond with your own ideas!
Veteran instructor Howell Dodd contributes this hint:
Let me give you a suggestion I find helpful. After I have spent many hours struggling with a painting, I like to set it aside for several days, facing the wall. Then, after giving it—and myself—a rest, I turn it around and look at it with a fresh eye. In many cases it looks better than I had remembered it! But I usually can see the need for adjustments—some minor or very subtle—that will enhance the picture. The need for these adjustments can sometimes be quite obvious. Other times it is necessary to look at the picture for a long time before determining what changes to make. It’s as if you must patiently wait for the picture to tell you what it needs!
