Paint Color is Personal
by George Strickland
Color really brings personality into a painting. I think it is one of the most personal aspects of painting because it is such a subtle window into the artist's personality. Like how different singers inflect their voices in a song that hundreds of others may have recorded, but it seems to reflect a uniqueness in their heart.
Of course, just as singers, we visual artists must get enough experience behind us to allow that to truly be an honest representation of ourselves. In the beginning, we are trying all kinds of techniques and approaches to our art, but things start to stick after a while. Slowly our paintings begin to have a recognizable look, and people with a discerning eye can pick our work out because of its distinction.
Color is usually a big part of that. There are a lot of choices as we mix our paint, and the exact color we see and put down on canvas can be strikingly different from an artist standing next to us painting precisely the same scene under the same light. It is a personal part of our vision, influenced by feelings, ideas, and unique makeup. That said, our perception of color is usually skewed by deeply ingrained ideas locked in our brains. The trick for artists is to disconnect from those ideas and believe what our eyes see. There are many techniques to do that, and it can be an incredible epiphany when color truth starts to unfold for you.
“Our perception of color is usually skewed by deeply ingrained ideas locked in our brains. The trick for artists is to disconnect from those ideas and believe what our eyes are seeing. ”
There are several properties to differentiate in describing a particular color:
Hue…That is the name of the color. Yellow, Red, Blue, etc. It could be a more exact description like…Yellow Orange, or Red Orange. There are twelve (12) colors on the color wheel to be described.
Intensity… How much richness (chroma) is in the color you want to mix? Is it pure, right out of the tube, or grayed down? If so, how gray is it? I use descriptive words such as pure, slightly grayed, medium grayed, and very grayed.
Value…Describes how light or dark the color is. You might use a 1 to 10 description. 1 being almost white, 10 being almost black
Using the above, you could approximately describe any color you see. For example, an area of a barn in shadow could be described as 1. Red Violet, 2. Medium Grayed, 3. #6 Value. You could do this description on a pencil sketch and paint it later. Not ideal, but it works in a pinch. A perfect way to gray color is to add its compliment color located opposite it on a color wheel.
Another way is to make a batch of gray to add to each mixture.
Working with a limited palette of, say, Cadmium Yellow, Alizarine Red, and Ultramarine Blue plus White as needed, you can get fantastic variety with just those. If you need to gray a color you add a little of the other two and white to help get the value.
Color is just one topic George focuses on among a multitude in his video download series. Click below to find out more: