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IS IT WARM OR COOL?
10/2/2012 4:59:03 PM | Comment on this
Whenever we walk out the door in the morning to greet the day, one of our first thoughts relates to the weather: "Is it hot, warm, cool and misty, humid and about to rain?"
Same thing happens when a painter sets up his easel to paint a plein air subject, but he is studying the visual COLOR temperature of what is in front of him: "Is it full sun, an up-close subject, everything is bathed in warmth?”
Or is it a snow scene: "Look at the variety of color in the whites--pinks blues lavenders, cool colors--but look at how the sun bathes the protruding branches of the pines: it's yellow-green, with a hint of orange, perhaps magenta to gray the greens a little."
That's the conversation you can have with your paint as you bring us your interpretation of these rocks along the Big Sur coastline:
"It looks like a warm day: all the horizontal planes will take on the color of the overall sunlight, which appears to be yellow-orange. That means I'll be mixing all those colors into the water's surface, and the horizontal planes of the rocks. Even though the water appears "cooler" than the land, it will need to pick up some of that yllow-orange color of the light source so it looks like it's in the same landscape as the rocks."
"Let's see, the vertical planes are darker in general--those turned toward the light source will reflect the colors of the source, those turning away from it will reflect the complements (in general)--that would mean I could portray shadow colors in blues and violets, with some warms accented therein, so the lit planes and the shadowed planes are integrated. I need the shadows to look less black, less flat.
I could reinforce the idea of warmth in the water, and perhaps gain a visual "hook" into my composition for the viewer by incorporating some drifting seaweed, painted in warm browns and golds as it "snakes" into the composition from the closest foreground."
"Oh, and the whites should also be picking up the color of the light source. I know that titanium white is not neutral, but a "cool color"--actually, by itself it is quite cold. The whitest highlight on the color scale is white mixed with a bit of yellow--that'll keep the whitewater from looking "disconnected" with both the temperature of the light in the scene, and with the water.”
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Part of painting is intuition, the other part is logic. Paint like a swordsman: instinctive and reactive, but with the variety of skills that are based on rational practice and the grasp of fundamentals.
In dealing with color temperature, the organization of colors on your palette is a good way to start--place the warms along one edge, the cools along another.
Ask yourself before you begin, "Is this warm or cool?" You COULD tone your canvas warm if the scene is warm (burnt sienna, orange, yellow ochre are some solutions), or use a cool tone for a "cool" scene--(magenta, blue-grey, for example).
Creation of foreground, middle ground, background is essential in any landscape that would have depth--In general, there will be more greyed color , cooler temperatures and less detail be in the background. Watch out for unadulterated White--Rembrandt only used it for the spark of light on the edge of a sword, the gleam of a candle on the polished metal of a helmet--TEENY!!! Light is color--let's use some!
