Color
by Ruth Housley on 1/21/2009 10:57:49 AM
...Oil Painting Techniques...
The color wheel is the best way to get familiar with the concepts of color. Since there's a great range in the hue of many primary colors (compare Cadmium Red Light to Alizarin Crimson) you will get different results from the generic color wheels painted in books. Use on a color wheel these colors - Grumbacher Red, Cobalt Blue, and Cadmium Yellow Light since they're closest to the spectrum colors. Then mix equal parts of red with blue, blue with yellow, red with yellow to form purple, green and orange. The secondary colors, place them between the primaries from which they were mixed. You can see then that the primary color has a complimentary color that is opposite it on the color wheel. Color temperature can also be quickly understood by looking at the color wheel. Basically, all the oranges, yellows, reds and purples are considered warm colors, while the blues, greens, and blue violets are thought of as cool colors. Thinking about color temperature is a good way to relate the colors to each other. Green compared to red, cool or warm indicates on which side of the color wheel a particular hue appears.
But they need to be used carefully so they don't threaten the prominence of the dominate hue. The color wheel can also guide you in mixing some exciting grays. Mix pure color with its compliment to get grays. Mixing equal amounts of a color and its compliment will make a neutral gray but by varying the amounts, all sorts of rich and subtle grays are possible. Reds grayed with Sap Green, as well as Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Orange aand white tones in a pleasing rhythmic pattern, and I let the lights and darks flow around the focal point.
Color adds depth, just a line drawing you have no depth. Good color harmony can help a poor drawing, the two must work together, a good drawing plus color; one should not overpower the other. To obtain the illusion of depth is to overlap objects with the scene. A vertical object placed in front of horizontal objects work wonders on the imagination of the viewer to assist in creating the illusion of depth. Another way to create depth is to soften lines. Hard edges catch the eye and seem to come forward in the painting.
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