The Academic Tradition
"Color can be understood only in relation to each other and that no color exists in isolation."
This helped me realize the importance of color relationships in a drawing.
This advice was also given, " Always paint a direct sketch from nature every day." I've never painted anything from nature and I've realized that I need to develop this skill.
The book also said, "working out of doors was essential to capture the truthful effects of light and atmosphere.
Symbolist Dreams, "colors don't have to used in literal or naturalistic ways, You can create a feeling of gloom or mystery you can play with the color scheme.
"The expression of beauty is by emotion," I need to learn to plan out emotion better in my pieces.
Direct Sunlight: At high altitudes or if the air is especially clear the sky is, even more, blue-violet.
Overcast light: Eliminating the extreme contrast of light and shadow. Colors appear brighter and purer than they do in direct sunlight.
Window Light: The daylight that enters a room from outside is usually bluish.
Candle/Firelight: Smoke scatters the light leaving no deep darks in the vicinity of the light sources.
Indoor Electric Light: Is a relatively hard source of light, it's more directional and dramatic. It has crisper shadows and brings out texture and highlights. Regular incandescent lights are strongest in the orange and red wavelengths.
Luminescence: usually a bluish green light.
Occlusion Shadows: Points of contact the light is occluded or interrupted resulting in a dark accent, these shadows help connect things to the ground.
Edge Lighting: The width of the rim light varies according to the size of the planes that face back to the light. Edge light is not just a thin white line around the form.
Reflected Light: In shadows, up facing planes are cool and down facing planes are warm.
" If you try and make clouds follow the form principle they risk looking like handing lumps of plaster" Foliage too is extremely variable.
Grays and Neutrals: "More paintings fail because of too much intense color rather than too much gray" There is no single gray color to the careful observer gray comes in many subtle variations.
Gray is the sauce of the color scheme it's easier to live with a subdued painting that with one that is highly saturated throughout.
Green: Vary your mixtures of greens at both small scales, leaf to leaf and the large-scale tree to tree.
Mix up a supply of pink and reddish grays on your palette wand weave it in and out of the greens.
Gradations don't just happen they take planning.
Limited Palettes: It's often effective to limit the range and of pigments that you use on any particular painting, it helps it become more harmonious and forces you to mix the correct colors.
