Split Complements, Structured Colour

Most of the time I paint with a regular palette based on the primaries and secondaries.  Once in a while I like to revisit colour schemes that are more simple.  Recently I decided to paint in a split complement.  I was outside in strong sun, facing into it.  I chose Cad Yellow Light, Cad Orange, and Cad Red Light along with Ultramarine Blue Deep.  Titanium white to lighten.

Outdoor Palette

You can see where my regular palette pigments usually go.  The clear space is my mixing area.  I try to keep it clean.  Without the other colours on the palette I was restricted to what you see.  This forces you to determine what basic hues will go where as opposed to what you see.  Hence a structured approach.  Forces design decisions.

Split Complement on the Pigment Wheel

Here you can see the colour gamut available.  Along the side of the wheel is the value scale.  So with this choice of pigments I can get a dark and I have white to lighten (and the canvas if I choose).  If I happen to choose a split complement scheme that does not allow me to get a dark value I can darken with Black or I can mix a black and use that to darken.  Interesting options.  Try them.  I can mix the true complements Ultramarine Blue and Cad Orange and get colours both warm and cool.  A great array of warm and cool greys are also available.  In this case I chose not to show the red and yellow tilted towards blue.  Here is what I mean.

Analogous colours plus a Discord - Another Name

The application gets interesting.  On my shape and value thumbnail I made a note of what colour and value goes where, making sure to vary the amounts.  Here is the painting that came into the studio from the morning painting session.

Over My Head, 12x16, Oil on Canvas on Board

This image is very red on my screen.  The camera had a hard time with this one!  The value intensity scale is off what is really there.  In any event the question I am now facing is how far to take this one, and how to proceed.  This is good training.  Another option is complementary painting and yet another is monochromatic.

Atomic Bottle and Orange

Here is the second still life setup from my Foundations I Class.  The emphasis has been on value and shape.  Developing the ability to see.  Sounds simple.  Typically there is not too much trouble with the bottle and its shadow.  More trouble with just local tone - no shadows - how to make that interesting?  Well, just add an orange to the setup and have them paint it in a complementary pair such as blue and orange.

Light and Shadow

Yes, you can see the core shadow and the reflections and they can be confusing.  Everyone says they can see what is in light and what is not.  But most everyone painted the shadow side of the orange much too light, but not the bottle so much.  The light sides were often too dark.  Seems that as soon as colour is introduced, value judgement disintegrates.

Grey Scale

And the Notan might look something like.....

Thumbnail on Newsprint

It is not easy to paint light and shadow (a predominant mode) when one cannot distinguish what is in light and what is in shadow.  Seems like the colour in all its glory confuses all those rods.  The Practical Colour Wheel shows approximately the local colour and value relationships for paint pigments.

On Value 5 Grey

So Ultramarine Blue is dark and Orange is light.  Somehow we get it for the blues, not for the warm colours.  Squinting and value matching sure will help this.  Practice, practice.

What Colour Is It?

Today we painted in a moody overcast day with a lot of sky activity.  While setting up we noted two things.  The sky, the source of light, was not the lightest shape.  The snow was a lighter.  But what colour was it?

Blue Red Violet Sky

It was easy to see the value difference.  So we looked through a colour isolator and asked "is the snow blue, yellow, or red?"  That at least established the coulour family.  Mix some up and try it out.  Get the right value.....  This is easier with a limited palette.  Fewer decisions, simpler.

No Shadows

Too white, too red, a tad dark.

Overcast

Too warm, a tad light.

So this is an iterative process.  Establish the colour family - blue violet.  Check against what you see.  Get the value right.  Check the relative value.  Against the sky - darker, against the birches - darker and warmer.  Then your decision is whether to exaggerate the values and colours or not.  Depends on your concept.  What you are trying to say?

On Site Photo Comparison

In reality the sky showed quite a bit darker than the snow.  Two or three steps.  The cedars cool greyed green isn't too bad in the reference.  Compare, compare, compare.

Value Colour Conundrum

If value is the foundation, then colour is the icing.  For most getting the colour the right value is not easy.  Then figuring out how much colour and the right colour seems a mystery.

I often find students and others confused between light and bright.  For example, when you look at a shape in full sun it is light (value), but it is not the brightest (chroma).  A painter who dealt with this brilliantly is Aldro Hibbard.

West River

Winter Farm

These images appear full of light and colour.  Look closely and you will see that Hibbard lowered the value (darker) in order to show the colour.  It is easy to see this with white surrounding the images.  This is also a form of compressing the value scale to bring the big shapes together for a strong design - the big look.  How did he do this?  Practice!

I am teaching a 4 session art course in February - each Thursday morning.  It is called Oil Painting Foundation.  It will be held at the Williams Mill in Glen Williams.  If you happen to be interested, email me for the details.  gperdue1@cogeco.ca

Stunned by the Colour

Totally stunned by the colour.  For some reason I have not painted in Algonquin park till this year.  We hit the peak of the colours.  Walls of colour.  Odd colour - wild purple, loud rose, every red in the book and a few more.  Excited.  We drove for near 250 kilometers looking for something to paint.  Harold screaming to just sop and paint.  Brain on overload.  Finally we started looking for small patches of colour that might tell a story.  A wall of brilliant hots just doesn't do it.  The human eye with its large field of view sees the large sweeps of colour in context with complements, structures, greys etc.  So we looked for chunks that would stand on their own.  We ended up on the outskirts of town (Whitney).  Set up on a dirt road.  Middle of the road!

End of Day Light

Using the Stapleton Kearns fingers trick we determined that we had about 30 minutes till the sun disappeared below the tree line.

Some Structure

The odd person driving along, creeping, thinking moose or who knows what, didn't get upset with characters set up mid road.  It got us painting instead of driving.

The next day we woke up still stunned.  We faced walls like this.

No Justice with Photo

So we settled in to a spot without hordes of picture snappers.  Quiet and beautiful.  Paintings in every direction.

My Studio

Chunking down I settled on a scene with greens and violets dominant.

Massing In Shapes - Big Brush

A quick wash, a thumbnail sketch to determine shapes and values and wait for the wash to set up. First, the complements to the final layers of colour.  Then....

Stand Back

This time we decided to use chairs to help with stamina.

Perfect!

Van Gogh in Ottawa IV

The up close view that Vincent enjoyed from early in his painting career continued as part of still life studies, portraits, and cropped landscapes, and as part of his more integrated pieces.  In 1889 Van Gogh moved into the asylum at St. Remy just north of Arles.  Once settled he was very prolific.  The quiet allowed him the peace to focus.  Along with his compositional directions he worked on his brush strokes and his unique place amongst avant-garde artists of the time.

Iris, 1889, St. Remy

A garden close up with no horizon.  Note the black outlines and the vigorous brush work.  Mostly mid values.

Butterflys and Poppies

This up close garden scene feels very Japanese.

From the Window at St. Remy

Here we see the high horizon and the directional brush stroke alongside up close detail.  Balancing the up close with the distant is tricky and creates tension in this flattened scene.  The tilting of the planes is vigorous and multidirectional as a Cezanne.  More interest (maybe) and more tension.

Cypruses

This Cyprus portrait demonstrates organic brush strokes.  Here the sky competes with the foreground in the flattened, local tone painting.  Patterns on shapes.

Front and Back

Notice the value of the sky in this front and back image.

Trunks and Ivey

The Japanese print influence is apparent here as Van Gogh applied the cropped tree trunk as a veil.  There is a hint of a horizon in the upper tenth of this painting that is otherwise a tapestry of colour, brush strokes, and texture.

Cropped Tree Trunks

Trees and Dandelions

The use of cropped and exaggerated tree trunks became more prevalent along with the vigorous brushing and colour in a short picture box.

Van Gogh in Ottawa III

After almost 2 years in paris Vincent headed south at then end of February 1888.  He ended up in Arles.  Province.  There he found the light bright, intense, and clear.  Perfect for continuing his explorations begun in Paris.  And a chance to get away from the action and the influence of so many avant-garde artists.  Yet he stayed in touch to keep abreast of the latest trends and find his own niche by comparison.  Unique.  His admiration for things Japanese continued and he emphasized its modern quality along with his Impressionist influences and his own drive to be unique.

Amongst the most obvious devices he used were a high horizon, focus in both the detailed foreground and the distance, tilted planes for flattening the perspective and bring the foreground into focus, the use of tree trunks to both flatten and provide up close vs far away tension.  Then there was his brushwork and the basic lack of shadow.  These made the works more decorative in nature.  Today the approach is know as local tone painting.

Irises Front, Arles Back

The detail in the front carefully balanced with the town in back creating tension.  Notice the diagonals used to infer depth in the flattened image.  Such detail was the result of studies of simple motifs such as a clump of grass.

Clump of Grass

And from still life work.

Light on Light

Cropped and up close compared to standard still life of the era.

Very Japanese wood block like

Wheat Fields with Diagonal

The Sower

Wheat Field with Sheave of Wheat

Arles Hospital 1889

Here tree trunks are used.  Still most of the tree is shown.  Seems like two views at once, on from high above and one from lower down.

Notice the continuous development of his use of colour and his brush stroke.

That Camera Thing

John MacKenzie sent me a photo of his painting done in a dry creek bed in Belfountain.  The light swatches caressing the tree were basically Tints of Cadmium Yellow (Titanium White plus Cadmium Yellow - cooling the yellow, making it opaque and lighter).

Dry Gulch, 10x12, Oil on Board

Flavours of Tom Thomson.  Nice little image.  As John said, "It didn't look like this!  Go Figure".  He used a Nikon on auto setting for the image.  So here is a Canon version.

Dry Gulch, 10x12, Oil on Board

Interesting.  The second image is closer to reality.  The Canon receptor apparently makes a warmer image  (my Camera guy pointed this out to me some years ago).  The lighting was different.  The Canon was on manual mode which I generally find makes a better picture than automatic.  So, values are different as is chroma.

By painting from life you will find your visual memory improves so you are better able to finish in the studio or to paint from photo reference.

John used a cadmium yellow tint as a ground colour.  The light pervades the painting and the darks also work well.  Experimenting with coloured grounds is an interesting process.

Toning a Canvas

I probably tone my canvas 75%- 85% of the time.  You don't have to do this.  So why do I tone?  First, it takes away the stark white canvas.  That is an easy start to a painting.  I find it makes my colour mixing and value judgement easier (I mix on a warm grey palette).  It eliminates little white spots in the passages of thin paint.  Important when I have a limited time in plein air.  And finally, it helps give me a colour key that I want.  You can tone your canvases, let them dry and take them out to paint.  I sometimes do this, but more often I find the colour I want for the undertone depends on the light, the composition, and the concept for the painting at hand.  So, I put on a wash on site and paint into it wet in wet.  That facilitates easy strokes and paint manipulation.

In Cobalt Blue

I have read all sorts of "you can't tone with blue or yellow, or tone with a warm like burn sienna etc."  If it fits your concept do it.  There are no rights or wrongs.  There might be some advantages to some approaches.  But I find these become personal.  So experiment.  I also like a non absorbent ground to aid paint manipulation and keep the colours fresh without sinking in and losing lustre.  This is important when painting direct or alla prima.

Just minutes ago I toned a larger canvas in hot orange.  A little hard on the eyes at first but as I progress that goes away and the concept comes into play.  I use oil paint to tone on an oil primed canvas or linen.

In the past I had an interesting situation.  Took a small painting to a show.  Put it on the floor against the wall.  Ready to hang.  As I stood up to talk to a friend I knocked the painting a bit.  Nothing much.  After my discussion I bent down to straighten up the painting.  To my surprise a largish chunk of the painting was laying flat on the floor!  It looked like a ragged piece of paper.  Everyone gathered round in surprise.  This painting was done in oil on top of an acrylic coloured ground.  I got separation.

I talked to a well known paint maker in Toronto.  He assured me that you "should be alright" with this practice.  After I told him my story, he admitted that the oil to acrylic bond could only be expected to be a mechanical bond.  It there is nothing to hang on to, the bond won't be so strong, so scuff it up.  After more investigation I learned that oil to oil provides a chemical bond.  More consistent and stronger.  Then I read about the practice on the Gamblin web site.  They do not recommend the practice.  So there you have it!

Designing Your Palette

What pigments should you put on your palette?  Depends.  Lets suppose you want to paint landscapes from life.  In this scenario you are faced with a time factor as light shifts and moves.  So, it might help you to have a short palette to eliminate some of the decisions.  In that case a triad of primary colours plus white might make sense.  Such a palette might be Cadmium Yellow Light, Alizarin, Cobalt, and Titanium White.

Practical Colour Wheel

This version of a colour wheel shows specific pigments, a value scale, on a mid value grey.

Here is the palette suggested above showing how to mix yellow ochre (with the addition of white).

Yellow Ochre "greyed yellow"

So, yellow ochre is a tertiary colour.  It is an earth colour or a greyed yellow, made from the three primary colours here (lots of yellow, some red and a little blue).  If you use Alizarin and Cadmium Yellow Light in a mixture to get an Orange, the colour achieved would lie along the line between those two pigments - inside the circle. The pure pigments are shown on the perimeter.  That is, the orange mixed is not as chromatic as an orange pigment - it lies in the greyed area just like the Yellow Ochre.  This is not so bad if you are painting the landscape with its muted (less chroma) colours.  However, if you want more chroma, you should add pigments on the perimeter of the wheel (not tertiary or earth colours) to your palette.  If you want a high chromatic painting you would add all of the pigments and others not mentioned.

Of course it can be much more complicated if you wish.  I have not mentioned the modern pigments.  For me I use what I have found works for me, and leave a spot or two for guest pigments on occasion.

I typically use Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Orange or Cadmium Red Light, Alizarin, Mineral Violet, Ultramarine, Cobalt, and Viridian.  

The Viridian is a great base for greens and makes rich greys.

The mineral Violet is a weak mixing colour used in greys and greens.  Together with Viridian it makes a silvery grey.

The palette has a cool and a warm of the primaries.  This is good for realizing cool and warm temperature passages.

Guest pigments might include Cobalt Violet, Permanent Rose, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Red Middle etc.

To reduce mixing, I often use Transparent Red Oxide, and yellow Ochre.

When speed is important I drop a few pigments.

I have painted with the Zorn Palette and other short palettes.  They are great experiences.  Inevitably I like more chroma available. 

You should lay out your palette the same each time.  In poor light you can reach and get the pigment you need.

USG Strategy

It is quietly sneaking in.  Still in the MUD season, just to confuse.

Delicate Ugly Slime Green - In Sun

She is delicate.  She goes with the MUD.  She will outlast the MUD and she will evolve for the next 6 months.  So get ready.

Crop Her Out - In Sun

I have used this strategy to get around her.  But she will soon take over in another form, so better to take her head-on and get ready for the long season of green.

I use the same palette for all types of painting - landscape, portrait, still life etc.  However, I do have a guest spot on my palette to accommodate pigments to try out or to yield variety on occasion.  My palette features viridian green as its only tube green.  It is extremely versatile and naturally it is expensive.  Not a powerful pigment it mixes very well.  For greens I use Cad lemon yellow, cad yellow light, cad yellow deep, yellow ochre, transparent red oxide, cad orange, cad red, alizarin, and mineral violet with viridian in many combinations.  My blue to mix greens is primarily Ultramarine but could also be Cobalt.  Of course I also have white to lighten and cool.  These many combinations produce about any green under the sun.  But when I just have to experiment.....

Some Guests

I have been known to use more than one of these at a time but usually I choose just one.  they come from my two drawers of paint - one warm, one cool, that are labelled "seldom used".  You can tell I love to wander through art stores.  These are from front row bottom left,

Indian Yellow, Transparent Earth Yellow, Emerald Green, Azo Yellow Green

Top row from the left,

Permanent Green Light, Sap Green,  Cinnebar Green, Yellow Citron, Chrome Oxide Green, Pthalo Green Yellow Shade

Remember the answer to "how do you get THAT colour?"   MIX  MIX  MIX!

Have fun.  Clean up when you are through.

By the way, you might have noticed that I use every colour on my palette to mix my large variety of greens.  That is why I introduce a guest pigment infrequently.

Mud without the Mud

With this heat wave the mud season will pass quickly.  But when you paint out in it every day you need some approaches.  Although it is all around you you can ignore it by cropping it out.  An extreme would be to paint a sky scape.  Here I am doing the scene in another season and in fairly bright sun light so I don't want it to be a mud scene.

Mud and Flood, 11x14 Oil on Canvas

The scene is on Scotsdale Farm.  For the next one I travelled to Toronto to paint in High Park with John Presseault and friends.  With the close proximity to Lake Ontario the season is about 2 weeks behind us here in the escarpment.  None the less, mud.  So, leave out the buildings etc. and... lie a bit, subordinate a bit, exaggerate a bit....

Nobby in High Park, 10x12 Oil on Board

A few finishing strokes to soften edges and add some texture and a bit more light will about do it.

Out there today I can see that the mud is beginning to lose ground.  Get prepared for the USG.

More on Winter and Snow

It hit me all over again.  On the way to the office on Saturday morning the low January sun was glazing the fresh inch of snow.  I had to stop.

Bottom of Harold's Hill

And then again.

Top of the Hill

And many more times while most hid under their covers.  I snapped pics and sketched for a half hour on the way to our painting rendezvous.

No Traffic Yet

Still, quiet, beautiful.  Compositions everywhere.  Sitting like cutouts against the light background.  Colours abound.  It is the best time of year to paint and learn.  And my favourite time.  If you don't paint out here at this time of year, you are working part time.

The Colours of Snow Today

The full spectrum.  The full value scale.  Beware the lies of the camera.  Look at the values in the light.  I can distinctly see four, even in the photo.  Perhaps I'll use cobalt today.  Yes, lemon yellow, alizarin, no, maybe permanent rose, and yes, viridian.  Perfect!

The Boots

Only -9C today and little wind.  But with these boots you never get cold feet.  Along with a decent brimmed block heater and a few layers, your only fear is overheating.  Tt is bright on a day like this.  I didn't bring my umbrella, and I know better but.....

The Office

No sun glasses allowed, so suffer the blinding light.  Try to cover the canvas and palette using your body.  In a situation like this the glare will soon render the colours and values incorrect.  Usually the painting will come out dark as seen through those little pin hole eyes.

Can't See?  Hold Brush Right etc.

It is unusual to see this in a photo, but it shows how the fresh snow flakes act as mirrors making the colour of the snow a function of its surroundings holding the full spectrum.  How to paint that is the question.

If You Were There

You could practice seeing the colours.  And you could see how the snow in the light is in shadow - look at this......

A Mystery

Coffee Break