"Paintings With Personality"

Here is my great nephew, Nathan Paul. I loved the way he was sitting there at the table, listening to the conversation.

A few years ago I was invited to the 90^th birthday party of an artist friend. The party was a buffet dinner and I needed to take a dish. When cooking, I always take the easiest route I can, so I bought some ‘Costco’ precooked chicken meatballs, all I had to do was heat them and go to the party. The meatballs came out of the oven with no problem and I set a few aside for Honey.  I hadn’t thought about a sauce so I grabbed some Creamy Cesar salad dressing from the cupboard and poured it over the remaining chicken meatballs. I didn’t put any salad dressing on Honey’s . Next, I put Soft Scrub on my baking pan, set it in the kitchen sink, gave Honey  a goodbye peck and headed out the door with my hot dish. This was my own creative concoction, but it was a great success and everyone wanted the recipe, which I was too embarrassed to give out.

When I got home, Honey  met me at the door with a stricken look on his face. He was very upset about the food I had left for him. He said the meatballs were “AWFUL.” I didn’t understand, because everyone at the party had loved them. Turns out Honey  was standing in the kitchen while he ate (that’s what he does when I’m not home). He thought the meat needed a little something extra and spotted the Soft Scrub on the pan in the sink. He took a meatball, rubbed it in the Soft Scrub and popped it in his mouth. Choke, Gag, Gasp, and Barf.

Hue and color are a little bit like Soft Scrub and Creamy Cesar dressing. Artists use the two words, color and hue, interchangeably and no one seems to know the difference between them. That confusion makes it difficult to understand how hue can be an attribute of color.

Hue refers to the pure spectrum colors, the primary, secondary and tertiary hues. For example, pink is not a hue but a color tint, red is the hue. All colors can be depicted in terms of value and hue. Hues are differentiated by the length of light waves reflected off a surface. Value is differentiated by the amount of light reflected off a surface.

Color, on the other hand, is a generic name that refers to all hues, tints, shades and tones. It is when we mix neutrals with our hues that they become color. Black, white, and gray are neutrals. Gray includes the colors created by mixing complementary or near complementary hues together. When mixing a hue, the closer we get to its complement the more neutral it becomes.

It doesn’t really matter what name we give the colors on the color wheel. What does matter is to know how to mix them in creating our art. Each hue on the color wheel can be changed by tinting, shading or toning:

• Tinting – Is a hue with white added, or in the case of watercolor, thinned with water to a lighter color by letting the light of the paper show through. A painting using tints is soft and relaxing. They are good colors for painting children or more delicate subjects.
• Shading – Is any color with black added. Many artists, especially watercolorists, don’t use black at all, but prefer to mix their own darks. Shades are deep and mysterious, and are especially good in a masculine setting.
• Toning – Is to lessen the intensity of a painting. ­Study the German Expressionists or the Fauves to see paintings done in pure colors. Tones are accomplished by adding gray or mixing complementary or near complementary color. Tones are less garish and more pleasing to the eye.

Honey  was feeling a little sick after his confusion with salad dressing and Soft Scrub, I only hope the same won’t happen with hue and color.

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