Relative color temperature on skin tones

Mathieu asks:

I have been struggling over the last months trying to understand how to handle the green parts (cool notes) of the flesh in a portrait.

In the Fundamentals of Painting by Mogilevtsev I could not understand the following text: "The light consists of three parts: the highlight and halftone are cold, and the light space between them is warm." I thought only the shadows are warm and all the parts of the light will always be cold. So what does he calls "the light space" between them? 

Gurney—On page 22, Mr. Mogilevtsev implies that the "light space" is the area between the highlight and the halftone (the halftone is the area just before the light side turns to shadow). What he calls the "light space" might also be called the "lights" or just "the light side." 

Within that light side there can be subtle variations in color temperature. 

He is indeed painting the halftones cool, specifically greenish. The halftones are an important area to observe closely for their value, for the abruptness or softness of the edge as it turns to shadow, and for their relative color temperature. 

He makes the point that relative warm and cool tones can give life to a portrait and I would agree with that. His states that the rules he's talking about refer to painting a portrait indoors. Traditionally an indoor portrait would be lit by a relatively cool north-facing skylight. In that case, the lights are generally cool compared to the shadow, because of the coolness of that blue skylight relative to the bounced light of a wood floor or warm-colored rugs, etc.

Charles Hawthorne

However, I would be skeptical of any fixed rules about cool/warm relationships, such as saying "outdoors in sunlight the light is always warm and the shadows are always cool." If there is very warm light reflected back into the shadows, or a secondary light that is very warm, the shadows can be warmer than the light side. 

Or the color of light in the shadow can vary according to the direction the planes are facing, such as a person standing at the beach, with blue sky above, warm sand below to one side, and blue water below in another direction. It all depends.

On the portrait of the woman, I don't understand the logic behind the green parts of the flesh colors. Where to put those greens? Are they at the edges of the planes right before they turn? 

Gurney—Yes, he seems to be placing the greens at the turning of the form. This is something that old masters often did. It may or may not look convincing, depending on how it is handled. Sometimes this cool effect in halftones is the result of the way you glaze color over a grisaille or "dead color" underpainting.

Let's step back for a minute to remember that the appearance of any flesh tone color, whether in light or shadow, is a combination of: 
1) the color of the surface (local color)
2) the color of the light 
3) plus additional factors as subsurface scattering. 

So, warm local color plus warm light equals a very warm color note. 

I try to consider first the local color as it varies across the form. The color across the mask of the face can vary a lot, as any makeup or prosthetic specialist will attest. It's often redder in the cheeks and nose, darker around the eyes, lighter and yellower on the forehead, and bluer or greener in the neck or chin, plus there are effects caused by makeup and sunburn. 

The reflectivity of the skin varies too, and that factor can influence your color and value choices.

Then I consider the sum total of the colors of light shining on each plane. It might help to place a white plaster head near the model in the same light in order to study those influences.

The color you mix for any given plane will be a combination of all those factors. 



Mathieu continues: When speaking about "cool" or "cold" colors in the light areas why do I always feel that the yellowish and reddish color of these parts is warm? On the above portrait by Rubens the light areas doesn't seem "cold" to me.

Gurney—You're right that most skin tones are on the "warm" or orange side of the spectrum, but we're speaking of a relative thing here.

Sometimes it can be hard to judge relative light color when looking at a living model. That's why painting from a white plaster cast can be helpful for understanding both form and light. By removing the effect of local color, you can see what's going on with the relative temperature of the light.

Bottom line: be skeptical of fixed rules, be guided by your observation, and always compare, compare.
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Previous Post: Color Zones of the Face

Dictionary of Color Combinations

A Dictionary Of Color Combinations is a collection of flat color squares placed in over 300 side-by-side combinations.



The book is published in Japan and is based on the 6-volume work of kimono designer and teacher Sanzo Wada in the 1930s, a time when Japan was between wars, and was absorbing Western influences.

Japan has over 1000 traditional colors, based initially on the Chinese color system. Each named with reference to the seasons, and to plants, and animals, and the colors are often associated with social ranking.


The book starts with two-color combinations, and then proceeds to three- and four-color combinations. The back of the book is more like a Pantone book, with each of the colors presented in swatches (with CYMK numbers). The swatches can be cut out and placed in whatever combinations you want.

The only English language in the book are the color names; there is no other context, nor suggestions on how to use it.

I enjoy looking through the book purely in abstract terms, with the intention of trying some of the combinations in actual designs. I like the fact that it doesn't direct the user how to react to the color pairings.
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Resources

Book at Amazon: A Dictionary Of Color Combinations
Previously: Translating "Color and Light" into Japanese
Wikipedia: Japan's Traditional Colors and Japan's 12 Cap and Rank System
Thanks, Steve.

Painting backlit ferns

Instead of painting a standard garden vista, I decide to unravel the complicated rhythms of a bank of backlit cinnamon ferns.

A page of my sketchbook is already primed in casein with a color called "vegetable green" or "parent green." This is the standard hue of the transmitted light that filters through new grass or spring foliage. My intention is to cover up over most of the underpainting, but to let it peek through in places.



(Link to video on YouTube)
I'm experimenting with a sighting grid—similar to Durer's or Leonardo's, but modernized. This helps me to efficiently lay down the main lines of the scene. With repetitive natural forms like this, it's easy to lose track of which frond is which. In this case I want to be as specific and accurate as possible; I don't want to resort to generalized painterly handwriting.

I'll share more about grids and other Renaissance devices in the future.

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More about "vegetable green" in the previous post "Prismatic Palette."

New video: "How to Make a Sketch Easel".

The 1080p HD download is available now for just $14.95 from Gumroad.

The DVD version is available for $24.50, and it includes a slide show. The DVD is also available on Amazon.

Why Aren't Trees Black?

If trees were more efficient solar collectors, the leaves would be black instead of green. They'd look more like solar cells, which are black so that they can absorb as much light energy as possible.

James Gurney, River Suir, Ireland, Oil, 8 x 10 inches

The green color that we see is "leftover" light, a wavelength that the tree's solar engine is not able to process.

This so-called "green gap" is caused by the fact that chlorophyll does well harvesting blue and red light. But because of a deficiency in the organic chemistry, leaves are not as good at capturing light in the green range.

Then why is some foliage red? The red color is a sun block for young leaf tissue as it develops in the early spring. Without it, some delicate leaves would burn in the spring sun. Normally that red color of early spring foliage gives way to green thanks to the action of enzymes.



The copper beech—or Blutbuche (blood beech in German)—keeps its red color all year round. That happens because a metabolic disorder interferes with the normal action of those enzymes.

This type of tree probably would have died out in the wild, were it not for the intervention of human gardeners, who like the way red foliage stands out in gardens.
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I've adapted these ideas from the book The Hidden Life of Trees
Scientific paper on ScienceDirect
Discussion on Biology website

Weird limited palette

I love weird limited palettes. This one is purple, cad yellow deep, raw sienna, and white. (Link to FB vid) From the Metro North app.

World's Blackest Black

Even the blackest pigment reflects back a lot of light.

But now scientists have developed Vantablack, a high-tech surface comprised of a forest nanotubes. It absorbs nearly 100% of the light that reaches it. (Link to video on YouTube)

Cross Processing

Cross processing (also called x-pro) is an experimental form of photography where one kind of film stock is deliberately processed in chemicals intended for another kind of film. The resulting color schemes are weird and unnatural, offering traditional painters some interesting inspiration.

via crossprocessing.info

Here, slide film has been processed in C-41 print film chemicals. The result is a high contrast image, with a hue shift toward greens and yellows and a boost in saturation. There's also a considerable amount of vignetting at the edges, a result of the lens.

 Negative film processed in slide chemicals via crossprocessing.info

When negative film is processed in slide chemicals, the results can go many different ways, but this one is lo-fi, contrasty, and grainy, with a saturated warm color bleaching and infusing all the lights.

Photo by Chick Dastardly-JennR.Williams, via EpicEdits 

With X-pro, you never know how it's going to turn out. This one gets contrasty, with a green-red split in the midtones.

Photo by Laurent Butre via The Darkroom

The colors aren't always saturated. Sometimes they're relatively muted, but still with the high contrast and the hue shift. In this link the photographer describes the process he used.

If you want to check out more examples, check out any of these galleries:
Epic Edits: Ten Reasons to Love Cross Processed Film
The Darkroom: Cross Processing examples

The effect can also be simulated digitally with filters in Instagram in or with Photoshop. Here's a link to a Photoshop tutorial.

How can we use this as artists?
Traditional painters can use cross-processing as a jumping off point for exploring color schemes. One way is to use a strongly colored underpainting. The second example in this post of the guy riding the bike could be painted over an orange base color, leaving that color as the stand-in for all the light values. The scheme in the lower scene of the little kid on the Harley could be simulated with a green-red-yellow limited palette, taking care to bleach the lights, sink the darks, and vignette the edges.
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Linkology 
Cross processing on Wikipedia
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Ultramarine Blue

 

Why does the Madonna traditionally wear blue?

In the Renaissance, blue was reserved for the mother of Jesus because it was the rarest color, more expensive than gold. Originally it was made from lapis lazuli, a mineral mined in Afghanistan. Getting a supply required a long voyage ultramarinus, or "beyond the sea."

Contracts for paintings often stipulated that the artist use ultramarine, and sometimes the client was required to provide the rare pigment.

A synthetic ultramarine pigment was developed in 1826. Since then it has been an inexpensive staple of every artist's palette.

Happy holidays to all, and thanks for joining the fun.

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Three Tips for Painting a Sunset

Southland Sunset, oil on panel, 8 x 10 inches

The sun is behind two layers of clouds in this sunset study. The higher deck of clouds creates a thin layer of diffusion around the sun, which keeps the sun's brightness from being too intense to look at. There's just a small window through to the blue sky at upper right.

This sunset obeys three rules that usually apply:
1. Colors gradate to higher value and higher chroma approaching the position of the sun.
2. Hue shifts in broad bands from pale yellows higher up to reddish oranges near the horizon.
3. Foreground elements are not black. They maintain color identity in the darks. This is a big difference compared to how the camera sees a scene like this.

These effects intensify as the sunset proceeds until the sun passes below the tangent line of the earth, after which we would enter a dusk phase.

Any given phase of a sunset lasts no more than 10 minutes, so painting a scene like this from life requires a well organized palette, separate brushes for each color group, and accurate anticipation about what phase is likely to come next. I did not use a light on my palette for this one.
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More on painting sunsets in my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Amazon)
Also available signed from my website (USA customers)

Solar Flare Underpainting

Here's a mini video showing how to prep your sketchbook page with a solar flare underpainting. (Link to watch video on YouTube).

Here's what the page looked like as I was preparing it. It's good practice to do those gradations with a big flat brush, wet into wet.

When I painted this, I didn't know what I would choose for the final subject, but I had to find a view facing toward the sun, where a dark object blocks the light. Note that there's a gradation in the sky, too, going from pale yellow to a cooler and darker tone at the edges.

This is an excerpt from my new video tutorial, "Casein in the Wild."

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Treat yourself to inspiration!

Gumroad (Credit cards)Digital download (HD 1080p 3.1G MP4)
Sellfy (Paypal) Digital download (HD 720p 1.5G)
Buy now
DVD at Kunaki (ships worldwide) or Amazon
Casein Explorers Pack (12) (A good introductory palette that gives you pretty wide gamut.)
Casein 6 Pack (The colors I used for this painting. On its own, it's a rather muted palette. It can be used on its own and it also makes a good supplement to the 12 pack.)
Casein 6-pack with travel brush set (Same set as above with the short-handled brushes).

Technique for Painting a Flare Effect

Here's a technique to capture that lens flare effect we see all the time in photography.

Traffic Lights, gouache over casein, 5 x 8 inches

Note the gradation of the dark values from the brightest spot behind the middle of the utility pole. It becomes gradually darker in the lower left and right corners.

Here's the photo that inspired me (of the new museum in Washington). Note how there are really two gradations going on: the darks go from orange in the vicinity of the sun to near-blacks in the shadows on the left. There's a second gradation going on in the sky.  

Underpainting for lens flare effect

The day before I go out in the field, I paint an arbitrary gradation for the dark areas. I use casein, which dries with a "closed surface," which means it won't reactivate when rewet. It is fully dry when I head outdoors. 

I don't yet know what subject I'll be painting over it, but I want to choose something with a lot of forms intersecting the sky. 

The video shows how I paint the sky as an opaque layer over the underpainting. Whenever I need to add the wires and other details back into the scene, I try to match the underpainting color.

(If you're getting this blog post as an email, you may need to follow this link to watch the video on YouTube)

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Gouache Materials List

Painting a Sunset Light Effect

(Link to YouTube) I want to show you how to paint a sunset light effect. I start with a watercolor sketchbook primed with a tint of Venetian red casein. It is OK to use acrylic paint or gesso for the priming also.

I paint the sky with white gouache. The darks are mixed from ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. All the shadows near the setting sun are part of a large gradation that transitions through orange colors into browns and grays.


Most of the painting is done with a 1/2 inch flat synthetic brush and a very small round brush. I ignore the actual colors and reduce everything to two values. The key to this approach is the intentional sacrifice of detail in favor of a larger light effect.

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The tutorial Gouache in the Wild doesn't contain this painting  (which I did two days ago), but it has other gouache paintings done on location.

Harold Speed on Pigments

Welcome to the GJ Book Club. Today we'll cover pages 227-237 of the chapter on "Materials," from Harold Speed's 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

I'll present Speed's main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

In this section of the chapter, Speed discusses the pigments available to artists in his day.

Portrait by Harold Speed

1. Permanency: "The oils and mediums used, and repainting before the under coat is thoroughly dry are much more the usual causes of lack of permanency [than the pigments] in modern painting." 
I hadn't heard this before. Also, when he talks about permanency, I wonder if he means lightfastness or stability/cracking of the emulsion.

2. "The fewest colors possible should always be used."
This in contradiction to the usual advice to have a warm and cool red, warm and cool blue, plus earth colors, etc. Speed goes on to say: "The more brilliant colours have a fascination for the young students. Prone to messy handling and dirty brushes, they rush to the brighter pigments in the hope of getting themselves out of a mess; whereas with cleaner handling what is wanted could better be got by simple earth colours, the use of which gives one an excellent training in clean handling. The fine, dignified colouring of a Titian, or, among the moderns, a Watts, is greatly due to their extensive use of earth colours."

3. Flake (lead) white: more crisp, better body than zinc. Blackens when exposed to sulpheretted hydrogen" from gaslight. 
Zinc White: shower at drying.
Speed describes titanium white as a "new white, said to be permanent, that has recently been discovered."

4. Earth colors are permanent with good body.  He says: "Always do as much as you can with earth colors, especially early in the early stages of a picture."
I agree. Best to stay restrained in chroma and value in the underpainting, and save punch for final painting.

5. Ivory black
Safe, but slow drier. You can use an accelerator like copal to speed it up. Use for rich shadows. Good to have a blue-black to and to use warm and cool blacks.

6. Notes on specific pigments
Yellow ochre. Useful. Can mix with cadmium to brighten.
Terra vert. Olive green, good permanency, poor body. Good for modifying reds in flesh. Used by early painters for underpaintings.
Cadmium Yellows. He raises permanence issues, but I believe they have been settled in the pigments' favor according to modern manufacturing standards.
Emerald Oxide of Chromium. Speed recommends care because it's dangerous in the sense of being a strong acid color that can overpower a painting.
Madder reds. Again Speed cautions against intense red pigments in inexperienced hands, and he hadn't even seen the quinacridones and the naphthols invented after his day.
Alizarins. Modern substitutes are more permanent.
Rose doré. Good tinting strength.
Vermilion. He recognizes that the traditional pigment turns black (and is toxic).
Cobalt blue. "most useful blue on the palette."
French ultramarine. Best for dark shadows. Permanent. Not as opaque as cobalt.
Cyanine blue. Mixture of cobalt and Prussian.
Cobalt green. "beautiful opaque blue-green."
Cerulean blue. "opaque blue of lighter tone." Good in tints.
Lemon Yellow. "pale brilliant yellow of very light tone."

Next week—We'll continue with brushes on page 237.

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In its original edition, the book is called "The Science and Practice of Oil Painting." Unfortunately it's not available in a free edition, but there's an inexpensive print edition that Dover publishes under a different title "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials (with a Sargent cover)," and there's also a Kindle edition.

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Harold Speed Discusses Color and Taste

Welcome to the GJ Book Club. Today we'll cover pages 192-216 of the chapter on "Tone and Colour Design," from Harold Speed's 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

I'll present Speed's main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

Veronese—Allegory of Love: Infidelity

1. Veronese analysis

Speed does a diagrammatic analysis of the painting, and notes the large arc formed by the woman's arms and shoulders.

2. Warm and Cool Color

Speed groups the following as cool colors: lemon yellow, green, greenish blue and full blue.

Warm colors include orange yellow, orange, orange red and full red. Purple is on the dividing line.

3. If the colors are very vivid and violent they will tend to make their complementary colors tell in the picture.

Harmony and contrast are not always in agreement. More of one quality makes for less of the other.

4. When the color introduced is of a quieter order, those similar to it in the other parts of the picture sing up in sympathy.

For example, a blue note will bring out all the cool colors.

Seago --Thames Embankment

5. The picture that has a prevailing unity of hue, but is full of color varieties subtly introduced in the tones is one of the most beautiful of schemes.

With all the coal smoke in Speed's day, London subjects were often gray days, mostly monochromatic schemes with subtle color—He advises not to overdo it trying to make a pretty picture. Important to get the sober feeling. The prevailing hue must never be of a very pronounced color, but always in the more neutral range.

6. The selection of too many varieties of colour masses should be avoided....A lavish display is apt to be vulgar. 

Giampietrino Last Supper ca. 1520 after Leonardo

7. Copy of Leonardo's Last Supper. Strong color notes of red and blue brought together in the figure of Christ. 

8. Arrange masses of color so that warm colors are grouped together and cold colors together.
Kind of like shape welding using color temperature instead of value. 

9. "Whenever any composition device becomes too obvious, one's sympathy is alienated."

Speed cautions against making the contrasts too violent, and leaves that for the poster designer.

10. Begin planning your color scheme with the broad idea and let the varieties be added to this large intention.

11. White masses always need very careful designing, as they catch the eye. 

Harold Speed -- The Alcantara, Toledo

12. Toledo bridge. Painted in monochrome, allowed to dry, with color added later. 

Sargent Wyndham sisters.

13. Grouping multiple white masses into a larger mass.

White needs careful observing. Beware of harsh chalky whites.

14. When painting outdoors, it's easier to get the overall color impression, but when painting from imagination, it's harder to invent a convincing color statement.

Beware of using blue too much as a unifier.

15. Good exercise: Start with a black and white reproduction and invent various color schemes consistent with those tonal values.

16. Two sources of inspiration: the study of nature and the study of the best art of all times.

These are also the keys to freeing oneself from the fashion of the moment, says Speed.

17. Page 211. "What a better world we might have if real experts were allowed to control the formation of our habits, and were consulted by those in authority when anything demanding taste came up for discussion."

Speed goes on a rant here. He argues that ordinary people end up preferring art of lower standards merely from habit, because they're not exposed to finer things. His appeal for a cultural elite must have seemed like a reasonable bastion against the artistic excesses of his time, but I don't think such a top-down program would work in free countries, particularly given the penchant for artists to defy authority. 

Today the aesthetic standards are largely defined by commerce. In the USA art lives or dies in the marketplace, with art that sells for higher prices or movies that make big box office results being justified on those terms.

However, the Internet has fostered the growth of a citizen band of book critics, movie commentators, and teachers of form and style. And the Internet has also introduced crowd-sourcing as a new model of funding and distribution. This crowd-sourced check-valve on the arts has changed how and why creators do what they do. I wonder what Speed would have thought of it.

18. Art takes patience to appreciate. 
Speed says, "The mind only opens to the reception of ideas and experiences that are beyond one's present capacity." He says that art takes patience and reverence to really appreciate. He tells the story of the young museum-goer asking him to explain the merits of an old master to him. Speed advocates spending time with older painters and "getting past the brown varnish" to understand its retiring qualities.

19. Beware the "one better" type.

He might be referring to Cubists and Fauvists, and he makes specific reference to poster designers, all artists in his opinion who strive for effect by making extreme statements. Speed is always a voice for restraint, reserve, and balance.


Next week—We'll continue with Materials on page 217.

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In its original edition, the book is called "The Science and Practice of Oil Painting." Unfortunately it's not available in a free edition, but there's an inexpensive print edition that Dover publishes under a different title "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials (with a Sargent cover)," and there's also a Kindle edition.

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Lens Flare for Painters

Whether you call it lens flare (what happens in a camera when you look at the sun) or color corona (a similar phenomenon that happens in your eye), it's a powerful effect that's popular in photography and video these days, but it's also something that has fascinated painters for a long time.

Peder Mønsted, A Winter's Day

The painting above was done in 1918, before color photography would have been in common use, so it's almost surely based on the effect that you can observe with your eyes. However, I don't recommend looking directly at the sun, which can damage your eyes.

The effect comes from light scattered by water vapor and dust in the air between you and the sun. The light is further scattered by your eyelashes when you squint, and then by the aqueous humor and vitreous fluid of the eye. The effect is best observed when you glimpse a setting sun through trees or when you see a streetlight at night.

Try squinting hard at a streetlight and tilting your head to see how the rays tilt with you. Also, try walking through the forest where the sun is mostly blocked by branches and glance up toward the sun as you walk to see how the corona comes and goes.

Giuseppe Pellizza (Italian, 1868-1907) Volpedo, The Sun, 1904

Both Mønsted and Pellizza show the corona with lines radiating from the sun. They also observe a shift from yellow into red. Pellizza breaks the effect into particles of varied color. Note how simply and softly he paints the foreground areas.



Lens flare is easy for digital artists to add, and a little harder for physical painters, depending on the technique. As a photographic effect, it has origins in camera optics. Its artistic use—and overuse—in film, television, and photography is well explained in this Vox video (link to YouTube). Thanks, Dan.
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Related GurneyJourney posts:
Color Corona
How to Get a Feeling of Misty Light
Practical Lights
Light Spill

More of this kind of stuff in my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter