Blog

      This is sort of an advanced technique I'm going to talk about here, so if you're in the beginning stages of color mixing, just take this post as an introduction into a concept you can look into further down the road. Basically, I'll be discussing how to use paint in a way that can expand it's limited range, while at the same time using techniques that can make the paint quality more interesting. In other words -- this is all pretty nerdy.

    One of the primary things I try to teach students is exactly how limited our range of pigments are, especially as compared to what nature has to work with. I don't emphasize this because I want people to feel confined in the way they're using their paints, but because I want them to be totally aware of the possibilities they have available and the importance of making informed choices. What people do with that knowledge and whether they use the full spectrum of their paints isn't any of my business, but when I watch students behave as though they have unlimited options left to save the important elements of their painting, when I can clearly see they've already used up the most powerful choices on their palette, it makes me want to cover my eyes and keep moving. Trial and error can be a terrific teacher but the students who can also think their way through some of these pitfalls before they come up are definitely the ones who make faster progress.

     My online self-study course, The Puzzle of Painting, is organized in an identical way to how I've taught my in-person workshops for many decades. I take the 3 aspects of color individually ---value, chroma, and hue -- explain what the limitations are, and then talk about some of the techniques artists throughout time have developed to compensate for these limitations. By far the most limited aspect within our pigments is value, and that's why most representational painters emphasize simplifying value relationships over almost everything else.  Chroma can also be quite limited , especially with the cool red pigments, but aside from vibrant flowers that are prominent in the picture plane, this isn't a limitation that a lot of painters pay much attention to. For more on this topic and how I handle this aspect of color, check out the blog posts on CHROMA.

     Hue in the context of the Munsell Color System refers strictly to a color designation along the color wheel -- red, blue, yellow, green, purple, etc. While it may seem like there are no limits in that area, contemplate the problem of an object of one color --- for example a blue mountain --with sunlight that is close to its complement, warm yellow. I have seen artists simply leave out the warmth of the light source and others who choose to mix the hues together producing a somewhat neutral green, but what if, like the Impressionists, you really want to capture both? Basically , given the nature of our paints, the only practical solution will be putting both warm and cool colors down and allowing the viewer's eyes to visually mix them. In a basic sense, visual mixing is what might commonly be called an Impressionist technique although I've definitely seen examples of artists using broken color long before the 1800's when the Impressionist painters first began shaking up the art world.

Above you can see an example of using 'broken color' to expand the range of what my pigments are capable of, both in terms of hue and value. This is a close up of the highlight on the brass vase in the painting at the top of the page and my goal in using color in this way was to convey 3 things at once --- the sharp contrast in value of a highlight on shiny metal, the warmth picked up by the color of the brass, and the slight coolness of the light coming in from my north light windows. Had I thoroughly mixed these three notes together the result would be a somewhat greenish note and darker in value, which wouldn't have served me as well for the three objectives I had in mind. A mixture like that can end up looking more like a piece of light green tape stuck on a brass vase instead of a convincing illusion of a highlight.

      Painters can have all sorts of motives for employing color changes in their work. Sometimes color will add interest in an area such as a foreground where it might lead the viewer into the painting . Color changes can also help to enhance harmony, or be employed as part of a technique that allows the painting hang together as a whole. I'm sure a lot of people add in variations in color just because it's their personal taste or simply because it's fun. When an artist truly wants to create the strongest illusion of light and form that their paints are capable of though, a solid knowledge of the limits, and therefore the possibilities inherent in our pigments, will be essential.

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see” -- Edgar Degas.