Korean and Chinese editions of Color & Light

I am pleased to announce brand new Korean and Chinese editions of Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. 

The Korean edition is published by DooboCMC in Seoul by arrangement with Andrews McMeel Publishing in Kansas City.

The Chinese edition is published by the Posts & Telecommunications Press in Beijing, under authority of Andrews McMeel.

Korea and China are rapidly becoming global powerhouses for visual effects, animation, concept art, and fantasy art, not to mention traditional painting, so I hope the books will be of interest to the artists in those countries, and to those artists in this country who are more comfortable in their native language. I would be very interested to learn more about how color theory is taught in the art academies there.

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Thanks, Peter, for the photo

Other Asian editions previously mentioned on GurneyJourney:

Color and Light in Japan

Imaginative Realism in Japan

Imaginative Realism in China

On Amazon US: 

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

Signed book from our website store

Bookshelf Brotherhood

Stefan Kopinski has Color and Light and Imaginative Realism on his bookshelf. 

Stefan is a freelance illustrator for the games industry who visualizes "weird and wonderful ideas" for Sega, Capcom, Forge World, Mantic, and THQ. Here's his illustration portfolio.

The photo appears in the new issue of ImagineFX magazine. Thanks for putting me in such good company!

Spectrum 19: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art
John Singer Sargent: The Later Portraits
Cover Run: The DC Comics Art of Adam Hughes (Adam Hughes Cover to Cover)

Lucian Freud 1996-2005

Best of Norman Rockwell

Fables Covers by James Jean

EXPOSE 5: The Finest Digital Art in the Known Universe

Universe des Dragons, Galerie Daniel Maghen

Digital Painting Techniques, Vol. 3
Color and Light
Imaginative Realism

P. S. Ian Malcolm Miles sent me a photo of his bookshelf, too. Thanks, Ian.

Previously on GJ: Rearranging Art Books

Gamut Mapping at MICA

Many painting teachers have been using Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter as a textbook in the classroom. Patrick O'Brien, who teaches painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, described the lesson he taught out of the book:

We experimented with your method of gamut masking and mixing color strings. We used pages 123-131 in Color and Light, and also referenced pages 106-107 and 116-117.
For the exercise I brought in some simple photographs for them to copy, because I wanted to take the drawing element out of it, so they could concentrate on the color scheme. On the morning of class I went to the MICA library to find a color wheel to use. 

 In flipping through all the books about color, I could not find a single good color wheel that went to grey in the center. So we had to use the small color wheel in your book on page 75. We used index cards and tape to make the masks. As you can see, some students' first instinct was to photograph it with their phone and bring it back to their seat.  

 I had each student draw the subject twice. We did one small painting in one color gamut, and then their homework is to do another painting of the same scene in the other gamut. Pretty much exactly what you did in your video with the CircusCircus sign. 

 And now I've been inspired to incorporate these ideas into my own painting as well. I'm working on a New York 1940s maritime scene that would be perfect for a cool gamut.

Thanks for the great ideas! ---Patrick O'Brien, MICA

If other instructors are doing class projects based on ideas in Color and Light, please send me photos and a description, and I’ll try to share them on the blog.

And if you want to use Color and Light as your course guide, please let me know. At our little web store, we can offer you discounts on group orders, and I can sign them for each of your students.

MORE INFO:
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter signed from my web store
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter on Amazon
All photos by Patrick O'Brien
Previously on GJ:
My painting demo for Patrick's class at MICA 
Jason Dowd's use of C&L at LCAD

Video on Gamut Mapping

The Yurmby Wheel

Yellow in Context

What do all these color swatches have in common? They're all bright yellow. 

OK, so what's the catch? They are all bright yellow as seen in the right lighting context. That pale one and gray one at the bottom left are bright yellow in a bluish light. The dark brownish colors are yellow in shadow.

All of those swatches come from screenshots of the "minions," the bright yellow characters in the animated film "Despicable Me."


(Link to video) Here's the new trailer for Despicable Me 2 where the screenshots came from. The lighting designers did a great job of shifting the gamut from one range to another in less than two minutes of screen time.

To achieve a feeling of colored light, a painter must often shift the mixture far from the local color. A good rule of thumb is that the color of a given mixture is a combination of the local color and the color of the light source.

Related post: Color Constancy
All this is covered in my book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Images ©Universal

Teaching Art in Malawi

Freelance illustrator Jessica Casner sent me this inspiring email:

"My name is Jessica Casner, and I recently traveled to Malawi for two months to teach the process of storyboarding and illustration to a wonderful group of students. My professor, Ron Mazellan, said that you would be encouraged to know that I left "Imaginative Realism" and "Color and Light" with the teachers due to the fact that their library had insufficient examples on understanding art and the process of its making."

 

"The Chichewa word for car is "gallimoto", and needless to say there were many shrieks of delight as they understood that some "gallimotos" could fly. Please know that the teachers and students are overjoyed to be able to learn even after I have left, and that you have given them hope and inspiration to create beyond our understanding."

Thanks, Jessica! I have a special feeling for your gift because my own interest in becoming an artist came from art instruction books I found when I was young. 

If anyone else would like to share my books in a special teaching setting, or with their local community center, teen hangout, retirement home, or hobby group, you can order directly from me, and I would be happy to sign it specially for your group.  

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JamesGurney.com online bookstore

Jessica Casner's website

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Matching dappled light to projecting leaves

On a recent sunny day, I noticed this pattern of light and shadow cast across a road. The shadow looked like a piece of dark paper with holes punched out of it.

The circles of dappled light were about three inches in diameter, and they were all of constant size. However some circles were brighter than others.


I looked up to see what was casting the shadow. It was a maple branch 18 feet above the ground. The branch presented a fairly flat projecting surface with a fixed distance from the ground. This is why the circles were the same size.

Typically a tree or a forest presents a variety projecting of surfaces positioned at many different distances from the ground, so the circles or ellipses vary in size and focus. The farther from the ground, the larger—and blurrier—the circles.

I wondered if I could match up the projecting surface of leaves with the pattern on the ground.

It's a pretty close fit, but doesn't match exactly because they aren't shot at exactly opposite angles. At the bottom of the photo on the right you can see the sharp cast shadow of my arms holding up the camera.

Anyway, it's clear that every opening in the leafy surface, regardless of its size or its ragged shape, has its corresponding circle or composite blob of light on the ground.


The branches aren't thick enough to block the sun from that distance, so they disappear completely in the shadow. 

Previously on GJ: Dappled light
More information about natural light effects in my book "Color and Light"

Light Spill

I had the morning free yesterday in Allentown, Pennsylvania so I set up my chair in an alley called West Silk Street and did this little gouache sketch.

I was interested in an effect that I've been calling "light spill." I've noticed this effect in old photographs or in pictures taken with a camera that has a dirty lens.

When an extremely bright field of light is surrounded by very dark forms, the light spills over into them. Even though those forms appear very dark near the sky, I tried not to paint them that way. The color of the light spill is the same as the color of the source of light, so a blue sky will spill blue light and a warm building will spill warm light.

I took some photos while I was doing the sketch. In these two details from the same high-key exposure, you can see the effect of light spill on smaller forms interpenetrating the bright areas. Note how the wires and the streetlight in the top detail are blue where they intersect the sky. The wires turn orange where they intersect in front of the warmly lit rooftops.

Photography has a disadvantage over painting in such super-high-contrast situations, because to really see the light-spill effect in the dark areas, you have to burn out the exposure in the light areas, which appear white in the photos above. 

But in the painting (detail above), I could hold some chroma in both the sky and the building. Gouache is a really nice medium for such experiments.
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Materials: Moleskine watercolor notebook, Winsor & Newton gouache, Caran D'Ache Supracolor pencils
Color and Light book
Related previous posts:
Color Corona

Color and Light in Japanese

Following their publication of Imaginative Realism, Japanese publisher Born Digital has just released Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter.

From the dust jacket: "アメリカを代表する現代イラストレーターの一人であり、博識で知られるジェームス・ガーニーが、自身のアート制作の経験と知識を分かりやすく語る「A Guide for the Realist Painter：リアリズム絵画の手引き」シリーズ VOLUME 2"
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Color and Light in Japanese on Amazon.co.jp
In the USA, get a signed copy in English

Born Digital / Imaginative Realism with sample pages in Japanese.
Color and Light on Amazon internationally: USA | CA | UK | FR | DE |

Information Saturation Reviews

The blog "Information Saturation" has published reviews of Color and Light, Imaginative Realism, and The Artist's Guide to Sketching.

"Color and Light is not a “how to” per se, but rather more of a reference book including a basic history of the usage of the title subjects, modern application, and differing approaches for each. Although the principles Gurney details may be applied to any medium, there is a chapter solely about pigments as found primarily in (oil) paints, which also touches on other tactile mediums such as markers, pastels, etc....


"I like the fact that he is anything but absolute in his discussion of different aspects of color and light; that is, he will discuss different opinions of each and leave the reader to figure out his or her particular stance on the matter. I also like that he consistently describes the scientific explanation for everything he mentions, from the chemical composition of pigments to the angles of reflection and refraction of light in various situations."

Full review of Color and Light.
Order Color & Light signed on JamesGurney.com or from Amazon.

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"Imaginative Realism is a wonderful tool for any artist seeking a scientific method by which to go about the creative process. This is a great book for getting your imagination going, and also for breaking a painter out of the studio and into hands-on research and reenactment. I believe that for me personally, I loved this book because it provided a new perspective for me, and also put concepts I’d already been practicing into words....

"The main idea of this book is as follows: in order to paint the fantastic, you must first start with the mundane. Use real-life references whenever possible: adapt plein-air sketches to fantasyscapes; base your original creatures on mixtures of real animals and people, giving them a solid core of anatomy which is believable; create maquettes and lifecasts – either temporary or long-term use – in order to get your lighting and composition as accurate as possible." 

Full review of Imaginative Realism.
Order Imaginative Realism signed on JamesGurney.com or from Amazon.

"The Artist's Guide to Sketching by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade is a wonderful reference guide for established artists. This is not a “how to” book; this is a book detailing the experiences and methods of two famous, splendid artists....


"It’s a great book. I believe the best way to explain why is to say that this book will invariably alter your way of thinking about sketching, and place that activity in the spotlight as the key to adventure, imagination, and recording your life and times.... Gurney and Kinkade explore everything from how to get a stranger to pose for a drawing to handling curious onlookers to what materials work best for plein-air sketching. This is an essential reference for any artist, as sketching is the cornerstone of all visual art regardless of medium."

Full review of The Artist's Guide to Sketching
Order Order Artist's Guide to Sketching used at Amazon.

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Color and Light is a Making-a-Mark Nominee

The art blog "Making a Mark" has nominated Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter as one of the top five art books of 2011. 

Katherine Tyrrell comments: "One of the things I really like about this book is that it was conceived, written and designed by an artist who drove the production process." To which I would add, and it was hammered in the forge of blog reader's comments and input, for which I am deeply grateful.

The other nominees are:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by: Betty Edwards
Wall and Piece by Banksy
'The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance' by: Edmund de Waal

There's a poll on the post where you can vote for your favorite.
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LINKS
Making a Mark, a art blog that has monthly art book reviews...and 1.25 million visitors and counting.


You can order a signed copy of Color and Light from my website store. (International customers can order one as if unsigned, so as to pay the proper shipping costs, and then email me about how you want it signed)
or you can get it from Amazon or your local bookseller.

Color and Light Article

The brand new issue of American Artist's "Plein Air Painting" magazine has a 10 page feature that I wrote for them called "Color and Light in the Landscape."


It opens with this thought: "When you paint outdoors, the color you mix on your palette is almost never the same as the local color -- the actual surface coloration of a given object. The color must be adjusted -- but how and why?"

The article covers atmospheric perspective, the Yurmby wheel, warm and cool colors, limited palettes, and premixing. It reproduces several images for the first time, including a demo of the gamut masking method that I painted especially for the article.

This is the article you want to stick in your suitcase when you head off on a plein air painting junket.
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Previously: Gamut Masking Method
Also, look for my "Portable Portraits" article is also in American Artist's Watercolor Painting special issue
We've got copies in stock of Color and Light (Most retailers are sold out again).
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Finally: Odd Nerdrum beat out T. Hee in the Unusual Artist Name contest, 76 votes to 74.

Mystery of Magenta

Why doesn’t magenta appear in the rainbow or in a spectrum cast by a prism?

(Video Link) This minute-long video explains that magenta (or "pink" as they call it here) is an "extraspectral" color. It's an invented color made to fill the gap between red and blue.

One way to achieve magenta is to overlap the two extreme ends of the spectrum.

 
Magenta is considered a primary color of printing ink, developed in the 1890s. It's the "M" is CMYK. For the purposes of charting the color universe, we regard it as a pure color, but it’s really a composite of red and blue.

Magenta sits directly opposite green on the "Yurmby" color wheel. You can get magenta light by subtracting lime-green light from white light. Magenta is also an afterimage of green. Look at that green dot for 30 seconds and then look at white screen to the right, and you'll see magenta. This is a reminder that color doesn't really have an objective existence apart from our perception of it.

Color theory is full of these niggly exceptions, and that's why it's so challenging to write about. Color theory just doesn't come out neatly like a geometrical theorem.

In the artist's practice, it lives at the intersection of the vagaries of visual perception, the chemistry of pigments, and the physics of optics. I was aware of all this when I wrote Color and Light, but if you include all the qualifications and footnotes, the book would have been 1000 pages instead of 224.  I see the blog as a way to extend the book. And maybe that's something an app edition could do.

Magenta on Wikipedia
Check out the "Rotating Dot Illusion" from Biotele