Submitted by Gurney Journey
Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow
In the world of printing and photography, the three colors that mix the widest range, or gamut, of colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow.
These “printer’s primaries,” together with black (K), are known by the shorthand CMYK. CMYK inks are used throughout the industries of offset lithography, computer printing, and film photography.
If other industries use CMYK primaries instead of yellow, red, and blue, why don’t painters use them too? One reason is simple force of habit. Cyan and magenta don’t match our mental image of blue and red. These color concepts are deep rooted from childhood.
Can we find these colors as artist’s pigments? Until recently it was hard to find lightfast chemical pigments that would match up with CMY. The pigments Cadmium Yellow Light (known by the Color Index Number PY 35), Quinacridone Magenta (PR 122), and Phthalo Cyan (PB 17) come close. (The Lukas colors above are PY 3, PB 15:3, and PR 122).
Intriguing as this may be, it’s not really the answer. Most of these colors are very transparent, which can be a problem for oil and gouache painters. For painting we need a range of properties, opacity being just one of them. And most of the time we’re not trying to get the widest range of intense colors in a single painting from just three starting colors.
We can add as many starting colors as we want, especially if we want to get a wide range of mixtures. That’s what the top-end computer printers do, as do lithographers printing high quality art reproductions.
We can keep all our favorite pigments, even if they don’t match the printer’s primaries. We aren’t bound to using just three pigments when we’re painting.
But returning to the color wheel, we still need an accurate map to chart our pigments and mixtures. What we’re looking for is a universal way to understand color relationships regardless of the medium or technique we’re using.
CMY circles from Alias 3D Media
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Many contemporary realist painters use the system that Albert Munsell developed about a century ago. Munsell’s color system was adopted by Frank Reilly at the Art Student’s League in New York. From him and his students it passed on through several generations of teaching to contemporary academic realists, such as Jacob Collins and Graydon Parrish.
Munsell’s system divides the spectral hues into ten even steps. In deference to Munsell, I’ve painted the wheel with the reds on the left.
Instead of dividing the pie into threes and twelves, the structure is based on multiples of five, so I’ve represented it as two overlapping star shapes. Division by ten makes sense. We’re used to base ten in money and the metric system.
Students of the Munsell system become accustomed to the ten basic hues: yellow (Y), green-yellow (G-Y), green (G), blue-green (B-G), blue (B), purple-blue (P-B), purple (P), red-purple (R-P), red (R), and yellow-red (Y-R).
This is a much more useful wheel than the traditional artist’s color wheel because the spacing is better, and it allows for exact numerical descriptions of color notes.
The Munsell system is a big topic, which I hope to explore in a future post. A great benefit to the system (as some of you mentioned in the comments after Part 3) is that it permits exact 3-D mapping of hue, value, and chroma, allowing you to navigate precisely through the color space.
But for now, let’s just recognize the Munsell wheel as a different and effective way to lay out the 2-D hue and chroma relationships.
Thanks to Charley Parker of Lines and Colors for the post about this series, and check out Charley’s post about the history of the color wheel.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
The March issue of The Artist’s Magazine has Koo Schadler’s tips for workshop teachers: “So You’d Like to Teach a Workshop,” and the top 10 winners of the “Artists Over 60 Contest.” The common themes of the age 60+ artists were “supportive spouses and families, strong senses of style, and the resolute desire to never stop learning.”
And thanks to Holly Davis for the write-up about the Dinotopia exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
There are a few problems with the traditional artist’s color wheel, and its concept of primary, secondary and tertiary colors.
First of all, no color from the original spectrum has any higher claim to be a primary color than any other. Each hue occupies an equally legitimate place on the outer rim of the hue circle and can claim full status as a primary color. Nor are any particular hues by their nature secondary colors. Green is not a composite color any more than blue is.
You could set up a palette with high-chroma orange, violet, and green as primaries and paint a satisfactory image from them. It’s a good painting exercise to do so, and it can result in a perfectly acceptable painting.*
Secondly, it turns out that the traditional YRB wheel is out of proportion, like a clock face with some of the numbers bunched up in one corner (see center of wheel). It expands the yellow-orange-red section of the spectrum too much, so that red is at 4 o’clock instead of 2, and blue is at 8 o’clock instead of 6.
This uneven distribution came about partly because our eyes are more sensitive to small differences among the yellow, orange, and red hues, and partly because pigments are more numerous for warm colors, compared to cool ones. The precious pigments Vermilion and Ultramarine became our mental image for red and blue. There have always been many available pigments for the oranges and reds, but few for the violets and greens.
So, are primaries all relative? Can we set up the color circle in a different way? The answer is an emphatic yes. Tomorrow we’ll look at the Munsell system, which has served as the color map for many great realist painters.
——-
*In the case of mixing colors from OVG secondaries, you’ll have a hard time mixing a pure yellow, because yellow is a special case: it’s purest form is much lighter than the pure form of other colors, so it isn’t easy to mix yellow as a secondary in pigments. But the OVG colors have been used as primaries for the autochrome photo process.
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
“The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” ~ Psalms 119:130
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Complements
A color that holds a position directly across the wheel from another is known as a complement. In the world of pigments and color mixing, the color pairs are: yellow-violet, red-green, and blue-orange. When pigment complements are mixed together, they result in a neutral gray, that is, a gray with no hue identity. This is all pretty familiar to anyone who has fooled around with paints.
But in the realm of afterimages, light mixing, and visual perception, the complement pairings are slightly different. Blue is opposite yellow, not orange.
You can see this for yourself with the diagram above. Stare at the middle of the colorful circle for 20 seconds. Then shift your gaze to the middle of the white circle and relax your eyes. The complementary colors should emerge. Note that the afterimage of blue is yellow and vice versa.
But if you were to mix that yellow and that blue as paints, you wouldn’t get a gray, you’d get a green. In fact, pigments can behave unpredictably when mixed. Intermediate mixtures don’t always land on the straight line drawn between the two starting colors.
How does this affect the way we design a color wheel? First of all, you have to decide whether you want to try to represent the practicalities of pigments or the behavior of color in an optical or a mathematical realm. In other words, your color wheel must either represent the ideal world of optical color or the physical world of paints, but no single wheel can accurately represent both color universes.
Chroma
Many color wheels include the dimension of grayness versus intensity, known as chroma, also commonly called saturation. Here’s the traditional artist’s color wheel I made years ago, which goes to zero chroma at the center.
(By the way, which term do you use? Please vote in the poll at left). “Chroma,” a term invented by Albert Munsell, is the degree a color ranges between neutrality and vibrancy or purity.
Tomorrow I’ll try to take a look at that question posed yesterday: Are some colors really more primary than others?
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Submitted by Ancient Artist: Developing an art career after 50
When I was studying The Book of the Hopi, I came across the phrase “seeds in the sky like stars.” It stuck with me. As artists we are constantly under pressure to come up with creative ideas - what to paint or photograph, how to promote ourselves, how to grow our artistic experiences - plant seeds for future projects.
But sometimes you just feel empty. Margie Middleton-Hudson recently wrote about waking up one morning to discover that her website was gone. Everything - her photos, her creative life had disappeared.
This time of year it’s difficult to see any of the seeds you might have planted. The ground is cold and hard. So how do we, as artists, go about the business of creating our ideas without burning out?
Margie talked about an earlier post of mine, Life Lessons From The Pursuit of Art, and she wrote honestly about her response to what I’d written. I saw myself in each of her answers. In the blog world, in our local artist communities - there’s overwhelm in the information available, telling us how to do everything except maintain balance and create in the face of the unknown.
When circumstances overwhelm us there are ways to take back our power. Our experiences are not ours alone, and we can learn from others.
How to you face creative overwhelm? What strategies, practices, and thinking work best for you?
How do you plant seeds in the sky like stars?
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Submitted by BRENDA YORK’S PAINTING A DAY
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Artists generally regard red, yellow, and blue as the most basic, or primary, colors. If you ask most artists to select three tubes of paint to match their mental image of the primary colors, they will most likely pick something like cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and ultramarine blue.
Why those three colors? From Greek and Roman times to the Renaissance, most people thought green should be included as a primary, too. As we’ve noted on a previous post, green actually has more psychological salience than yellow. It’s mentioned much more often in the English language.
What is a primary color? The idea is that you should be possible to mix every other color out of the three primaries. You may have noticed that with the traditional artist’s primaries you can mix clear oranges, but the greens and violets are on the dull side.
The traditional artist’s color wheel,” above, presents yellow, red, and blue spaced at even thirds around the circle, in the position of 12 o’ clock, 4 o’ clock, and 8 o’clock.
Mixtures of the red, blue, and yellow primaries create secondaries. The secondary colors are violet, green and orange. They appear at 2, 6, and 10 o’clock on the traditional color wheel. But in truth when I painted this wheel, I didn’t paint those secondaries from the primaries. If I had tried, they would have come out much duller.
As we’ll see in future posts, there’s nothing written in stone about any of those colors being primary or secondary, and we can take a fresh look at the whole arrangement.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
How we name and separate the colors on the color wheel is a subject with roots in physical science, visual perception, and artistic tradition. That’s what I’d like to explore over the next seven posts. The color wheel is our mental map of the color universe.
This may seem like boring review, but if you read all the posts this week, you may end up completely rethinking the color wheel—at least that’s what happened to me.
When white light is bent or refracted by a prism or a rainbow, it separates into a continuous gradation of colors. Within that smooth spectrum, there’s no clear division between the colors. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) proposed wrapping the spectral colors around a circle by merging the two ends, red and violet. The result was a hue circle, better known as a color wheel.
Newton observed that the hues gradate smoothly into each other. But in his diagram he identified seven colors we’ve come to know as ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). The tradition among artists has been to drop the indigo and to concentrate on six basic colors.
Tomorrow we’ll look at the colors that Newton and his contemporaries called “primitive” and which we call “primary.”
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Back in 1987, while on assignment for National Geographic, I got lost in old Jerusalem.
I wandered down the narrow, twisting alleys. The sound of tapping hammers and the smell of contact cement hit me. Three guys sat in a little arched alcove making shoes. A boom box played Elton John.
They set up a plastic bucket for me to sit on and poured me a cup of tea. I pulled out my sketchbook and drew their portraits in pencil and ink wash.
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
Quoth the voters, Nevermore! A recent Art Fund poll asking “Which of these people has captured your idea of romance in art?” came up with the answer of Paul Gauguin’s Nevermore (pictured, from 1897). Voters could choose from among five thought-provoking selections picked by a diverse team of experts. It’s more ironic than romantic, and fascinating, that the winner of a Valentine’s Day-themed poll reflects a much different view of Romantic than the hearts and flowers variety. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of “Isn’t It Romantic?“
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
This painting and others of Connie Tom’s is available and up for bid on Barry Chappell’s Fine Art Showcase shown every Thursday and Saturday night, on Direct TV, Channel 223 starting at 5 PM PST. You can also watch the show online at FINE ART SHOWCASE.
“A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” ~ Proverbs 18:19-21.
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
“For me, a picture, since it is easel paintings that we have to paint, should be something lovable, joyful, and pretty: yes, pretty!,” Pierre-August Renoir once said in self-defense. “I know how difficult it is to get people to admit that a picture can be joyful and still be a very great painting.” Ever since rising to prominence with the generation of the Impressionists, Renoir has felt the sting of the beauty without the brains label. Anne Distel’s Renoir, a mammoth new monograph from Abbeville Press, wants to prove that Renoir is much more than just a pretty face.
[Image: Renoir, By the Seashore (1883)]
[Many thanks to Abbeville Press for providing me with a review copy of Anne Distel’s Renoir.]
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Submitted by CAROL NELSON FINE ART BLOG
Day 49
Another great reference photo with perfect lighting - thank you Dori! Here I go with the purple - orange combo again. I just really like those colors together. I struggled with curly hair in the beginning of this project, but now I like painting it.
For purchase information, please see my website, or email me at carolnelsonfineart@comcast.net.
I’d like to thank all of you for your kind comments and wishes about Morris’ upcoming surgery. Kidney disease for him has been a slow, insidious process over the past three years. He has not had any pain to speak of - the main indication has been decreased renal function blood tests. His nephrologist said that over half her patient population has resulted from heavy use of NSAIDs - nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Alieve, Advil, aspirin, etc.
Morris took lots of Alieve for years because of gout. These are all over-the-counter drugs and we tend to think of them as safe.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
In soft or diffuse light, such as overcast light, there is no distinct light side, shadow side, terminator, or core. All of the upward facing planes tend to be lighter, since they receive more of the diffused light from the cloudy ceiling.
The photograph of the ball shows the quality of overcast light. The cast shadow has no definite edge. There’s no clear division between light and shadow unless the form turns on a hard edge.
Here’s an example of overcast light falling on the figure of David Balfour in the N. C. Wyeth illustration “On the Island of Earraid,” from Kidnapped. The planes of the figure’s skin and clothing get lighter where they face more toward the light sky. (The sharp tonal changes in the background are dramatic plane changes in the rock.)
Another example of overcast light is this portrait of a girl by William Bouguereau. The form doesn’t have a light side and a shadow side in the conventional sense. The vertical plane of the dress and the upper arm are both darker than the forearm and the leg of the dress, which catch more light because they face more upward.
The coolness of this light source is evident from the relatively warm shadow under the chair. Occlusion shadows require especially careful attention in diffuse light, often appearing as notably sharp accents in the work of Bouguereau and Rockwell.
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Submitted by CAROL NELSON FINE ART BLOG
Day 48
I love this photo of Ellie - her Mom said she was watching a road race that a friend was in. The way the sun lights up her eye on the sunny side is very unique, and the curly red hair just tops it off. This portrait pleases me greatly because I was able to incorporate so many cool colors in it.
For purchase information, please see my website, or email me at carolnelsonfineart@comcast.net.
Creative Blogging Award
Many of you have honored me with the Creative Blogging Award that seems to be making the blogosphere rounds right now. I am thrilled that you would think of my blog and want to share this award with me. As I have responded individually to several of you, I am so swamped with work at this time - the daily portraits, a large abstract commission - that I simply do not have the time to fully participate in keeping the award going.
I am trying to do 2 portraits per day because there are days coming up soon where I know I will not be able to paint. My husband, Morris, is going to have a kidney transplant next Monday - his son Mark is donating a kidney. Much of my time next week will be spent at the hospital.
Thanks for your understanding and support.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Within the shadow is not darkness but the effect of other, weaker sources.
In the case of the drapery study above, drawn in graphite while I was in art school, the key light strikes the form from the left. You can tell it’s a hard source because of the sharp diagonal cast shadow line. Overhead fluorescents, only slightly less bright, illuminate the shadow side.
The drapery study has the look of an academic exercise partly because it is “overmodeled” which means the tendency to put the full range of modeling factors within each passage.
Outdoors, the blue light from the sky usually modifies the shadow planes, depending on how much they face upward. Reflected light often raises the tone of the shadow. It comes from light bouncing up off the ground surface or from other surfaces. The darkest parts of the shadow are usually at points of contact, called occlusion shadows, where secondary sources can’t reach.
Another dark part of the shadow is the area just beyond the terminator. This area is called the core or the hump of the shadow. The core of the shadow only forms if the secondary source of light (edge light, reflected light, or fill light) doesn’t overlap too much with the main light.
In “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” by Rubens, a strong orange-colored reflected light fills the shadow side of Daniel’s form, all the way from his cheek and neck, down his arm and his leg. Keeping the core intact—or painting it in even if it’s not really there—can give the form more impact, but if it’s overdone it can look unnatural.
If you’re setting up a model or maquette, you can place the primary and secondary lights just far enough apart so that you can see the core beginning to form.
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
President Obama has suggested in not so many words the need for a “New Deal” for America today to, we hope, match the success of FDR’s “New Deal” of the post-Depression age. A good way of looking back at that first “New Deal” and deciding on whether a new “New Deal” is the right prescription for an ailing America might be through the government-supported arts of the 1930s. Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943 at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman reminds us of the vast misery of the Depression years and how art not only helped the people of that time understand, but also helped some of them survive. In these images from the past may reside the key to our future. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of “The Art of the Deal.”
[Image: Joseph Hirsch (U.S., 1910-1981), Street Scene, 1938. Oil on canvas, 22 x 24 in. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman; WPA Collection, 1942.]
[Many thanks to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, for providing me with the image above from and press materials for Revisiting the New Deal: Government Patronage and the Fine Arts, 1933-1943, which runs through May 9, 2010.]
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Submitted by Ancient Artist: Developing an art career after 50
“Real students,” said Robert Henri, ” go out of beaten paths, whether beaten by themselves or by others, and have adventures with the unknown.”
Over the past few weeks I have been adventuring into this unknown. I joke that there are paintings from Before and from After. I can tell the difference and it is not some pleasant preening over the fact that I learned something but more like the stomach clenching drop from the top of a roller coaster. I am gripping tightly as everything tilts. This is dangerous country, where something clicks in your perception and painting is no longer what it was but something else, and do you have the courage to push forward into the unknown or are you going to cling to what you thought you once knew like a little girl?
I don’t know. I’ve lost just about all of my innocence now, about painting and art careers and what that might mean. The idea of a career as I once understood it simply does not fit with the reality of the artistic culture. This is not a nine to five proposition with a steady income and yearly promotions. It is far more intimate, visceral. I heard one of the judges on American Idol tell a disappointed contestant that “we’ve all heard no more than we’ve heard yes.” There has to be something else motivating each creative impulse than what our initial naivety once suggested.
I have looked at a lot of my own paintings since the “After” and realized that what puts the magic there - or not - is something that can’t be distilled down to a style, a color combination, a popular motif. I see paintings by artists working in my chosen genres and styles, and the degree of talent is breath taking. For me to focus on competing with that is mind boggling, a risky waste of time and energy. Chasing after subject matter or technique to master a popular style perhaps has value for some artists. But perhaps it is just as important to chase after something through the force of your own need, a desire to discover what it is that reaches into your soul and hangs on tight.
Especially in art.
Across the Valley
22 x 28, oil on canvas
@2010
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Submitted by Art Blog By Bob
One of my first subversive art experiences was watching Terry Gilliam’s animated collage title sequences for Monty Python. The Pythons loved to poke fun at the vestiges of stuffy Victorian culture in British contemporary life with the subtlety of that giant foot stomping down at the end of each Gilliam short. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art kicks back at the idea of a monolithically moralistic Victorian age and shows the subversive side of the Victorians themselves, who poked fun at themselves long before the Pythons. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of “The Other Victorians.”
[Image: Georgina Berkeley (English, 1831–1919), Untitled Page from The Berkeley Album, 1866–71. Collage of watercolor, ink, pencil, and albumen silver prints. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.]
[Many thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for providing me with image above and press materials for the exhibition Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, running through May 9, 2010.]
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
Light striking a geometric solid such as a sphere or a cube creates an orderly and predictable series of tones. Learning to identify these tones and to place them in their proper relationship is one of the keys to achieving a look of solidity.
The form principle is the analysis of nature in terms of geometrical solids, which can be rendered according to laws of tonal contrast.
Modeling Factors
The photograph above shows a sphere in direct sunlight. It has a distinct set of tonal steps from light to shadow, known as modeling factors.
In direct sunlight, there’s a strong division of light and shade. The light side includes the light and dark halftones, the center light, and the highlight. The center light is the point at which the light rays strike the form most vertically. The highlight is the point where, in a shiny surface, we see a reflection of the light source.
Note that the center light and highlight are not at the same location. The Terminator The terminator is the area where the form transitions from light into shadow. It occurs where the light rays from the source are tangent to the edge of the form. If the source is soft and indirect, the transition from light to shadow at the terminator will be more gradual. The form shadow begins just beyond the terminator.
To test which areas are in light and which are in shadow, you can cast a shadow with a pencil on the object. The cast shadow will show up only on the lighted side, not on the shadow side.
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Submitted by Gurney Journey
In the summers of 1898 and 1899, Howard Pyle had an old mill converted into a studio for his students from the Drexel Institute. After establishing his own art school, Pyle continued the arrangement in 1900, 1901, 1902, and 1903. N. C. Wyeth spent the last summer there and later settled in the area.
The artist Leander Fontaine did a colored pencil drawing of that unique tree and a corner of the famous mill.
And you can’t help but wonder if N.C. Wyeth based this tree from Robin Hood on that beloved sycamore.
The nearby Brandywine River Museum displays the work of Pyle and the Wyeths, but that was not the location of the school.
The building, known as Turner’s Mill, has just been refurbished as town offices and meeting rooms.
More modern pictures here.
Thanks to Kev Ferrara for clueing me in to the art based on the tree.
Here’s a very complete biography and bibliography about Pyle.
Addendum: I have reworded the main paragraph to make it a bit more accurate, thanks to the help of Pyle expert Ian Schoenherr, whose blog is a must-visit for Pyle aficionados.
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Submitted by BRENDA YORK’S PAINTING A DAY
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Submitted by A Painting for You!
OK, gents, The Art Love Doctor is IN! You’re pressed for time and short on ideas for buying that perfect Valentine’s Day gift for your lady. Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, a slide from that art appreciation class you took as an elective in college rises before you—Gustav Klimt’s 1907-1908 painting The Kiss. Eureka! She loves art! You hustle down to the poster store and find a copy of The Kiss suitable for framing. Mission accomplished? WRONG! Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of “Funny Valentine.”
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