Sunday, February 14, 2021

Skin Tones in Sunlight

Could you imagine mixing these colors for the skin tones for a portrait? Hint: it's a light skinned woman in outdoor light. 

 
1. The patch in the upper left is taken from the side of her nose. 
2. The grayish color, top right, is from her cheek facing forward and catching sky colors. 
3. The deep red-orange color is from the side of her cheek facing us (admittedly a different local color).
4. The bright orange color, lower right, is from the top of her neck, catching mostly that orange transmitted light from the parasol.


Charles Courtney Curran (American, 1861–1942) On the Shores of Lake Erie, 1893
Oil on canvas size:18.12 x 22.12 in. (46 x 56.2 cm.)

The white local colors of her dress and gloves go through a similar range of colors.


Charles Courtney Curran studied at the Art Students League and in Paris. In those teaching environments, people were talking a lot about about the effects of colored light.
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Charles Courtney Curran on Wikipedia 




3 comments:

  1. Thanks for pointing out Curran's artwork, he did some incredible paintings. The second piece shown, Woman on the Top of a Mountain, was totally swiped on the 1969 album cover of It's A Beautiful Day! (Which is a great album by the way)

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  2. Hey, Joel, Thanks for mentioning the "Beautiful Day" album cover. I grew up with that and was thinking of it, too. I hadn't checked it to see if it was a copy or the original.

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  3. Maybe also of interest in this context is the prof. Aliyoshi's vein illusion.

    http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/veinillusion-explanation.html

    ReplyDelete

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