Color and Reflected Light

COLOR, it’s everywhere and as long as we can see, we all experience it from the moment we open our eyes. They say that the human eye can detect around ten million hues. When we paint, we all strive to capture a small percentage of it, and often get frustrated in the process. We squeeze out luscious piles of color onto our palette in anticipation of capturing the beauty of a subject with it. Sometimes, we hit the colors on the mark. Other times, we get frustrated as we struggle through a painting when no matter what we do, we can’t seem to find the right mix. And, to make things worse, it’s not just local color, but also reflected color and the temperature of the light that we need to take into account when deciding on a shade. 

Color Choices

So, what is it about color and our color preferences that excite us? Color evokes strong emotional responses in all of us, but not necessarily the same types of responses. Blue may mean calmness and relaxation with visions of the ocean or a beautiful lake to one person, while denoting sadness to another. Depending on our life experiences, our preference for color can be psychological. For example, white might mean pleasantly clean and sterile to some who feel comfortable with a clean antiseptic environment, but cold and icy like a chilly winter day to others. Cultural traditions also influence our preference to color. If you look at color in clothing, for example, you may find that some of the cultures closest to the equator where weather is warmest tend to wear very strong, bright colors, while those in much colder climates tend to wear more subdued neutral colors.

Local and Relative Color

light creates the local color or colors of an object because each object possesses certain chemical properties or qualities that absorb some rays and reflect others How much an object absorbs and reflects determines the color of an object. However, we cannot go by local color alone. As artists, we need to put away our preconceptions about color and look at the relativity of color, i.e., the relationship of color to its surroundings. Changes to color happen when the light source changes, for example, when a sunny day (warm light) turns into a cloudy one (cool light), or when other colors that surround a subject change.

The Influence of Surrounding Colors

A subject’s colors are directly influenced by the color of objects that surround it. This color is possible because of reflected light. Reflected light helps to model form and gives variety to our shadows. A white building may take on the color of the bushes below and around it, because the light from the sky will bounce off of these objects and project on the surrounding objects.

The color of the Wadsworth Mansion in this painting was not pure white, though I’m pretty sure that if you asked the workers who painted the building what color they used, it would be some variation of white, such as titanium. The day that I painted it, the trees and flowering bushes around it projected a warm orange glow upward that originated from the sunlight that was in front of me, slightly to the left and somewhat high in the sky. There was very little direct light on the front of the building.

Reflections and Adjacent Objects

In the still life, the warm yellow of the lemon was reflected onto the cool bluish white surface, and the red skin of the apple and the peel of the orange reflect onto the normally white dish near the fruit as well as onto the fruit adjacent to them. 

Color Relationships

The six color squares are a good demonstration of the influence of surrounding colors. The orange color in the center is exactly the same for all six squares, yet depending on the color that surrounds the orange, the orange square appears to be a different shade. Note also that the stronger the color that surrounds the orange, the more it influences the perception of the orange hue. 

This is one example of how color values can draw attention to an object or provide a more subtle color shift. One color can become darker, lighter, warmer or cooler in relation to another color. When painting, try to relate and compare all of the colors in your composition to one another. Ask yourself, Is one color lighter or darker than the other? Is one color warmer or cooler than the other?

Next

I’m going to share my moleskin and small sketchbook sketches of people and places that I do for fun and practice. I'll talk about the types of media that I use when doing quick sketches.

Drawing Simplified - Part I

I've heard time and time again, "I can't draw." or, " I can barely draw a stick figure," or, "I'm not talented enough to be able to draw." I emphatically disagree. It's not a matter of talent. Drawing, like everything else, must be learned. The thing is, more often than not, we've never been trained to draw. Think about it, in school, we were taught our alphabet, arithmetic, and grammar. We've never been taught how to draw, maybe because it was considered frivolous to know how to draw, or perhaps being creative is not considered useful.

These days, with so much going on in our lives and especially with the fear of the pandemic all around us, it's more than ever important to have a creative outlet to turn to. Art can bestow a calming feeling, and help us to cope with life's struggles. Studies have shown that creating art decreases negative emotions, reduces stress and anxiety, and can help you live longer. Creativity helps you see things differently and better deal with uncertainty. Studies show that creative people are better able to live with uncertainty because they can adapt their thinking to allow for the flow of the unknown.

So, where's the best place to start? Some people jump right into a fun medium like painting or pastels, or print making, whether from life or from a photo. However, if you don't have at least basic drawing skills and create a line and value drawing of your subject before you turn to your favorite medium, there's a good chance that you will struggle with the design and structure of your subject.

Like learning your A,B,Cs, or simple math, you need to start with the underlying structure. In most cases, it's worked out in a drawing. The best place to start with drawing is with simple shapes.

What are Simple Shapes?

Everything we see, whether from nature or man-made, can be broken down into simple shapes. These shapes include the square or cube, sphere or circle, and triangle or cone.

Before you protest that you can't draw a straight line, there are tools for that. If you can draw a straight line with a ruler, you can make a square. If you can use a compass, you can make a circle. From a square, you can make a rectangle, and, if you can draw a triangle, you can make a cone shape.
The Square A container like this tea tin, when viewed straight on, is a square.
Extending the lines of your square upward will help you to draw this canister.

           

The Circle

If you have a compass, you can make a circle. When drawing an apple, start with a circle and add the necessary curves and indents that will make up the bottom and the area of the stem.
Add the lip and handle to make this pitcher. While drawing, think about the placement and size of the negative shapes, the areas around the subject.

  

Use a Guide Line

Draw a straight line up the center of your shape and use it to help guide you as you draw your subject. You can measure from the line to both sides of the circle, square, or triangle to check your shape. This is especially helpful with symmetrical shapes.
The Triangle

Start with a guide line in the center of this conch shell and bottle, then draw your triangle. Curve the short side of the triangle, and you have a cone shape. Do a line drawing, then add shading.
       

Measuring

Whether working from life or from a photo, it's important to check your measurements as you draw. Use your pencil or some kind of measuring device to check both length and width. Check the proportions carefully as you go. When you start with a drawing, it's a lot easier to make adjustments to both the measurements and the composition than it is to make changes in your medium.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil 

-Balthus

Next

I'll continue with some basic drawing techniques in Part II.

Class Schedules

I'm dying to get back to teaching my classes and I know some of you can't wait to sign up.
I've updated my class schedule for the fall. It's obviously going to depend on whether and when the high schools decide to be open for Adult Ed. classes.
If Artsplace is open, I hope to schedule a class there.
For seniors, it's whether the Town of North Haven deems it safe to reopen the senior center.
For now, you can view my scheduled classes on my website.

While you're there, check out my newest additions to my artwork.

Stay safe and be well.

Tell Me What You're Doing That's Creative

I hope you enjoyed this first session of Drawing Simplified. Feel free to share with others. Please continue to send me photos of your work. I'll do another Creative Challenge in a few weeks.

I'd love to hear from you. Are you feeling inspired? What are you doing to stimulate your creative side?

Recognizing the Effort Behind Your Art

What is talent? The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines talent as “the natural endowments of a person” and “a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude” but, it doesn’t go so far as to say that some people are born with talent. So, are some of us just more inclined towards talent than others? And, if we are talented, how important is that in the scheme of things, especially to those who want to be successful in our artistic endeavors?

When showing my artwork, people who do not paint insist that they don’t have talent, but that I do and I must have been born with it. They tell me that this is why my work is superior to anything that they can produce. It’s very frustrating to hear this. I know that they mean well, but it’s rather insulting. They don’t take into account the many hours and years of work and study that it takes to produce a pleasing work of art. In fact, they dismiss this idea. This implies that talented people instantly produce good work from the start, which we all as artists know is not true. I spoke about this with a friend of mine who is an award winning floral designer and she agreed. No one sees the many lonely hours of practice, the frustrations of color mixing and design, and the countless disasters that end up in the trash. It took her years to perfect her style, in the form of hard work and hours of study.

While not obvious in the resulting work, all successful artists look to others sometime in their careers for guidance. The key is to find an artist that you want to emulate or learn from. And, the resources available to artists now are boundless. I’ve got pages and pages of notes and many work-in-progress photos taken in countless workshops and classes, and articles of all kinds downloaded from the Internet. Anatomy drawings with diagramed measurements are taped to my cabinet doors. My bookshelves are filled with how-to books on art, art philosophy, museum books and biography books on artists that I admire. Many of these books are riddled with yellow highlights, the pages dog-eared from repeated turning. I’ve got piles of old art magazines scattered all over my house.

As an artist, you have to develop a tough skin because you can’t progress without experiencing some frustration and disappointment. I’ve received countless rejections from juried shows and galleries, but I’ve also been accepted by some wonderful venues. I’ve had great experiences and learned a lot in artist workshops and classes, but I’ve also had to endure some harsh critiques from highly respected art instructors. As a student, you invite the criticism, knowing that the instructor is going to pull your work apart and leave you bleeding. But, without the critiques, your work can stagnate; a wall of doubt builds from not knowing how to fix something that you know is not right. You might not realize that the drawing is incorrect or even know how to correct it, or that the values are off. As much as you want a critique to help you improve your piece, you long for some scrap of approval, some small bit of encouragement that all is not lost. And sometimes, you are rewarded.

The day will come, as if an epiphany, when your work starts to improve. Slowly, you begin to unconsciously do things that you heard repeated many times in classes and read in books. It’s finally sinking in! You check your composition and values, your edges and focal point. Your way of seeing things change, and you learn to see things as a critical, conscientious observer. At the same time, you never stop learning and you never stop growing. But you don’t mind because you love every part of the creation process.

To be successful in any type of creative endeavor, you have to want to do it very badly and be willing to work hard and put a great deal of time in to achieve it. It’s not enough to have “talent.” You may have a creative tendency, but, just like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it. The harder that you work at it, the greater the rewards.