Sometimes Life is Pretty Black and White

but I have a tendency to use both colors way too much when it comes to painting.  I have been trying to learn more about color and so I'm really studying the book titled "Color Harmony" by Margaret Kessler.  Ms. Kessler addresses the use of white and black on page 15 where is says that, "If you lighten a color, you reduce its intensity. But, if you do this with tubed white (a cool color) without modifying it with hints of warm color, the result looks chalky" and regarding the use of black or paynes gray to darken a color, Ms Kessler cautions that the result may look boring or unnatural.

Now I do know this and yet this head knowledge sometimes escapes me when I'm in the "Zone" and I'm thoughtlessly dipping my brush too often in both the white and paynes gray.  Repeat after me....Highlights from the sunlight are not really white and shadows cast are not really black or paynes gray.  That is just my lack of understanding of color and letting my preconceived idea of how things appear rather than real observations.

A good example is that of a recent painting I did that I'm calling "Feisty Fowls".  I took the piece to my painting lesson with my friend Lily Adamczyk for a critique and as usual there were a number of corrections that needed to be made and just like homework I took the time to make the suggested changes.

Here is the BEFORE:



Corrections made:
  1.  removed the darkness from their faces. I had used paynes gray...BAD! BAD! BAD! I used burnt sienna and dioxadine purple mixed with the red to give the darker tones to their faces
2.  removed the white...BAD! BAD! BAD! on the edges of the combs and used orange as the highlight instead
3.  brightened the grass with a glazing of thinned yellow green
4.  removed the intersection of the background hills that put the second rooster in the cross hares or bulls-eye.
5.  brightened the stones and squared them up to give them more of the appearance of a stacked stone wall

AFTER:

Make Your Colors POP

"The road to color harmony begins with understanding the characteristics and properties of the colors on your palette-how to mix and match them so that they work for you.  You must appreciate the full potential of every color and the effect each color has on another." Margaret Kessler

I've had the book called "Color Harmony in Your Paintings" by Margaret Kessler for sometime and I know that when I first received it I flipped through the pages but up to this point I haven't really studied it.  Today I am reading through it's pages and am anticipating the information that I am going to glean from within it's covers.

I find myself underlining several great points on page 15 that deal with the topic of Intensity.  Kessler says, "The key to making your paintings 'pop' is to juxtapose bright hues against dull ones."  I think that I'm going to write this down on a note card and post it on my easel because even though during my painting lessons this has been discussed, I find that in the heat of painting these important foundational points can be neglected.  You really want an object to "POP" you need to paint the lighter values next to a darker color.  Leaves in a tree are a great example.  As you increasingly lighten the value of your leaf color you want to position the brightest leaves in areas that are surrounded by darkness.  I did this in my painting "Fallen" and the birch saplings seem to almost jump off the canvas. Lily also had me place light colors for rocks in the shadows and dark colors for the rocks in the sunlit areas.

Painting completed during my painting lessons with teacher Lily Adamczyk

Last Leaf

This concept again was used in my painting Last Leaf.  The darkness of the pine needles cause the light gold tones in the leaf to just pop off the canvas.