"Paintings With Personality"

This little painting is from a photo I took in route to Napa Valley, CA. I loved the texture on the trees and the shadowy heights.

Color is the impression light makes on our eyes. When light rays hit a surface some are absorbed and others reflected. We see the absorbed light as black and color in the reflected light. When all the light rays are reflected we see white. Therefore, the color we see depends on which rays are reflected and which are absorbed. Value in color is a measurement of how much light is reflected from a color. This can all become mind boggling and it is confusing enough to learn how to use color in subtractive light without going into how the color happens.

The artist has to be careful to focus on value and not color. Painting in monochrome forces us to deal with values. It is important to study colors in light and shadow, and practice painting them. If you aren’t sure about the values in a painting or have difficulty seeing value look at the paintings reverse image in a mirror or use a reducing glass, or both. When you have a problem seeing the values in nature, squint to reduce the color and better see black and white areas, or look at the scene through a red film. The main thing is to observe, study and practice.

How light or dark a color appears depends on the color and what is around it. When surrounded by light tones, the value may seem dark, or it will seem light when surrounded by a dark value. Value patterns lead our viewer’s eyes around our work and help them get to our point of interest, to tell the time of day, the weather or to give the viewer a particular feeling. The value isn’t just there, it has a purpose.

When the goal of the artist is to depict a strong mid-day light, less value contrast works best. So, keep the value range to light and middle values. That will put our darkest shadows in a middle value range. If the sun is very bright, light reflects off of objects and into the shadow areas. These reflected lights give the shadows areas of lighter and darker values, and reduce the value contrast. We have all heard that shadows should be painted lavender. We were told this because violet is the complement of yellow. The impressionist painters were among the first to use this principle of complements and to this day we still see lavender used in shadows. The actual rule of thumb is that when light is warm, shadow is cool and when light is cool, shadow is warm. Despite the rule, it isn’t enough to look at a shadow and say it is cool, we have to really look. Shade in our subject might feel cool but that doesn’t mean the colors are cool. When we look carefully we might see warm colors there as well. Light isn’t always warm and shade isn’t always cool and shadows can contain subtle colors.

Soft, filtered light reduces value contrast. If we always wait for a beautiful, perfect day to go plein air painting, we may never get there. When we are out in inclement weather, it isn’t possible to see the darkest darks or the lightest lights, so we get the opportunity to fill our paintings with atmosphere by cutting down on value contrasts and mixing marvelous neutrals. Downplayed colors are as beautiful and compelling as colors at their highest luminosity.

Mixing color becomes easier and less methodical as we practice, learn and grow. It’s worth taking the time to examine and get to know about color because we’ll save time and paint in the long run.

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