Still Life Colour Studies

We are asked to complete two of the three colour study options here: colour accuracy, complementary colours and/or colour used to evoke mood.

I chose to complete the “still life with complementary colours” and “still life with colour used to evoke mood” options, mainly because I felt these would give me more freedom in the use of colour, as well as being good technical exercises.

Still life with complementary colours

The brief here is to take two hues; one colour and its complementary (plus white to lighten tone) and to use colour in an inventive way to interpret our subject.

The colour I chose was blue (Prussian blue), and its complementary, orange (Cadmium Red plus yellow).  When we did the colour mixing exercises earlier, I found that mixing these colours gave a very wide range of hues from brown through to greens and blues, and these would complement the objects I had chosen.

After completing my prep sketches in ink and graphite, I sat and looked at the composition for a while to try to decide how best to place the colours to the best of their advantage.  To this end, I numbered my mixes from orange through to blue and then roughly noted down which colour (and tone) I would use for each section of the painting.  Although I wanted to have a strong contrast in the painting, I didn’t want it to overpower the image completely, so I decided to use the unmixed hues only in two areas – the oranges and the enamel jug.  The rest of the painting would be tertiary colours in varying tones.

The one area I wasn’t sure of straight away was the background – I knew I wanted a neutral shade which was darker than the cup but lighter than the jug and dish so I had decided on a neutral brown lightened with white.  I also wanted to add a hint of colour to the background so eventually I decided to paint some orange onto the background and then overlay when wet with the neutral brown (each applied with a small plastic filling tool) to get the broken colour effect which was textured, almost like plaster.

The table was painted in next using brown and then bright orange streaked in to add warmth.  The fabric was painted in a very dilute, lightened tone of that used for the walls.  Once I had the neutral background colours in, I began with the main objects.  The cup was painted first, quite loosely in three shades of green to describe form, with the blue primary for the decoration. 

I then painted the jug in the unmixed blue using long brush strokes, adding layers of lightened colour (plus a little green in areas) and neat white for the highlights.  I wanted to be sure of the colours on those two objects before I added the bowl – in reality this is a dark red so I had to observe the tonal variations carefully to be able to depict them in the green-blue tone I choose.  I decided on this colour so it would link with both the jug and cup, as well as being a strong contrast to the oranges.  As I couldn’t darken the green, I used the neat blue for the darker areas and shadows, and then overpainted with the green to achieve shading and form. 

The glass was painted last, as it reflected all the colours around it – blue jug, oranges, brown wall and green bowl – as well as having the strongest highlights. 

After I had finished the main objects, I lightened some areas of the background by the addition of some white paint rubbed in with a rag to give a dusty finish.

I completed this painting fairly quickly – two sittings over a weekend – as I wanted to be able to blend the colour without being too fiddly and so applied the paint fairly thickly (except on the bowl as I wanted to show a smooth, reflective surface).

Reviewing this exercise, the key issue here was colour – using complementaries and their mixes (plus white) to achieve a painting which uses colour in an inventive manner.

I actually found it quite liberating to have a limited palette to work from – this removes the “easy” option of using pre-mixed tube colours and forces you to think more carefully about how you can achieve tonal balance and interesting colour combinations.

I also had to think more in advance about how I would use the colours and the balance of the painting rather than concentrating on the actual local colour of the objects and achieving colour accuracy. 

I think the most challenging aspect (colour wise) was the oranges – as I only had white to lighten the tone, I had to work out what tertiary colour I should introduce for the shading and shadows – originally I had thought a brown mix would be best, but then decided that would dull the orange too much so instead went with a green-blue mix which I think has worked well here.

As the cup is white, and the bowl red, I had to really concentrate on the tonal variations in the object to translate this into the colours I had chosen to use.  I actually found this fairly straightforward on the cup (as it is a cylindrical object) and so creating the form was relatively easy.  However, the bowl is actually a slightly flattened form, and not fully circular, so this was quite a challenge!  The one area I do not like on the bowl is the white highlight on the left-hand side, it stops a bit abruptly and probably should have been blended a little more.

The background colour works – it is a neutral putty shade but by overlaying the opaque over the transparent, dilute orange, and leaving some of the orange (as well as some bare canvas) to show through I feel contrasts well with the jug and cup.  The use of the filling tool gives a texture but again, without this dominating the painting.

The composition is fairly simple – more or less triangular, flowing down from the jug and the diagonals of the table.  I chose this glass because I felt the cone shape reflected that of the jug in the opposite direction, and because it was moulded, would create interesting colours/reflections.  My original composition didn’t include the cup  but I added this as a vertical, and also to stop the eye following the diagonal of the table out of the painting.

There are a number of thinks I don’t like and/or don’t work in the painting:

The shadows are too strong – the colour is OK (brown overlaid with blue/green) but I think they are too dark and too solid, and the shadow by the left-hand orange is too “neat”. 

The glass – the colours are OK (although I think the orange should have been more diffuse) but the angle on the right-hand side is wrong

The basic form of the jug is OK, but the handle is a little too thick and the white highlight on top of the rim is too thick and prominent. 

The reflection of the cup is probably too pale and should have probably been more green.

Project – colour relationships

Exercise: exploring contrasts

For this exercise, I used a number of colours: purple, orange, green and red and, as requested, first painted a larger colour area around the original square with colour mixes close in the spectrum to the original.

As an example, for the green, I used the following colours to surround the original mix:

•      Original green (cadmium yellow & cobalt blue) mixed with white
•      The above mix with a little yellow added
•       Cadmium yellow
•       Cobalt blue
•       Dark, blue-green
•       Above mix & white
•       Crimson red as the complementary

One effect I noticed across the range of colours that I used was that the original mix was much brighter, and stood out more, when surrounded by a lighter tone – whether of a similar shade (ie the green lightened with white) or a different colour close on the spectrum (such as the yellow). 

When placed next to a very similar colour, the central square almost disappears and it is difficult to see the forms, even though they are very geometric.   For example, with the original crimson squares, the ones marked 2 and 3 (surrounded by a colour mix of pink and yellow) and no 5 (a pink/purple mix), the central square is much less visible then no 1 (crimson plus white) and no 4 (pink & yellow lightened with white).  As we have seen before, the most strong contrast is when the original crimson is surrounded by its complementary (green).  In this combination, the border between the red and green can appear to “move” due to the close tones of the two colours.

The next part of the exercise involved surrounding a neutral tone with different colours to assess the effect of colour on a neutral tone.  I found that the neutral tone appeared darkest when surrounded by a square of white (which formed the strongest tonal contrast).  The most noticeable effect was the way in which the neutral gray appeared to pick up the warmth (or coolness) of the colour surrounding it, eg, the gray surrounded by the blue appeared to be much colder (and darker) than when surrounded by the orange.

The surrounding colours also appear differently next to the neutral gray – the colour is more subdued then when painted directly onto a white ground.

Project: Colour Relationships

Research Point: Optical Effects

We are asked to find out how artists in the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist movements exploited the optical effects of colour to create movement and depict the effects of light.  Study their pictures to see how they achieved effects and what their aims were.  Also Op Art and Bridget Riley.

From research and our own experimentation, we have found that using complementary colours next to each other creates the greatest contrast and makes each look the most vivid it can.  However, mixing these colours together quickly neutralises them and creates a range of tertiary colours of browns, greens and greys.  Additionally, placing pure, bright colour surrounded by neutrals (as in the exploring contrasts exercise) makes these brights appear more vivid, especially if the neutral has a hint of the complementary (eg bright yellow against a blueish-gray).

Impressionist Painters

Although there was a very wide range of contrasting styles in Impressionism, I have concentrated on what many would consider the essence of impressionist painting – the application of colour and rendering of light effects.  As there is such a multitude of works to view and research, I have focused on Monet’s work as he has such a wide body of work and did a number of paintings in series to capture the effects of colour and light on a subject.

One reason Impressionist paintings are so colourful is due to technical advances in paint manufacture.  Previously, oil paints had to be created laboriously by hand by mixing pigment and oils and then stored in pigs’ bladders.  The creation of tubes of ready mixed paint allowed artists to be much more portable and to take stable paint out of the studio and to work “plein air” if they wished.  Whilst it is a misconception that all Impressionist painters did this (Manet and Degas were in the main studio painters) others, such as Monet, did create a lot of work outside in all weathers, returning to the studio for reworking and finishing if necessary.  Along with tubes of paint came new synthetic pigments in a range of bright colours such as ultramarine, viridian, vermillion and yellow which allowed for a greater freedom in colour use.

One of the most obvious, noticeable difference between impressionistic paintings and earlier works was the high-key colours used and the sparing use of very dark tones, especially black (although it is not true that they never used black).  As we have all found out by trial and error, just using transparent black or a neutral gray, say, for shadows doesn’t work very well – the colour is flat, non-realistic and can dominate a painting.  In the natural world, there is very little pure black and white, as both can be described as having a complete lack of colour.  In reality, they are almost always tinged with a colour (blue-black or brown-black for instance). 

The Impressionists challenged the traditional view that colours should be dark or light (by the addition of just black, white or grey) and instead concentrated on the relationship between colours, particularly primary and secondary colours.  They found that the effects created by a change in hue produced a much richer and more vibrant image than those created by a change in a tone or shade.  These theories probably had their greatest impact in the portrayal of shadows and their use of complementary colours, e.g. bright yellow sunlight would produce a shadow that was blue or violet in tone, or a red/brown image would create a shadow containing green tones (see Monet’s Grainstack (Sunset) below), although this technique had been used previously (e.g. Delacroix).

What most people think of with regard to Impressionism is the application of paint in small touches and brushstrokes, using unblended colours on a white background (which gave additional luminosity) and allowing it to “mix” on the canvas.  This method of application produced work that, unlike the received art wisdom of the time, did not contain clearly defined lines or forms, but concentrated much more on colour and a sense of a fleeting moment in time captured on a canvas.

One of the best ways to compare colour effects (as with the next exercise we are about to do) is to use the same subject but will different colour combinations/ techniques.  Monet frequently did this, making a number of paintings in series; one of the most famous of which is the series of grainstacks (Grainstack (Sunset), Grainstack (Snow Effect) and Grainstack, Sun in the Mist) which he painted in all different lights and seasons. 

He often worked on more than one canvas a day, sometimes only for a few minutes at a time, when the light was exactly right for the painting he wanted to create.

Looking at Monet’s Bennecourt, from a distance this image of a church and buildings appears to be in fairly neutral shades of stone – browns and greys.  However, by looking at this closely (via the zoom function of Bridgeman Education) you can fully appreciate the wide range of hues the artist has used to create these neutrals.  Just concentrating on the right hand side of the painting: the dark shadows are created in shades of ultramarine; pinks and violets are used for walls and roofs; green is used on the church roof; red and green is used on the wall of the church; yellows are used as a base on the lighter roofs; and, as mentioned above, because it is a sunlit scene, the shadows are created using violet, blues and greens.

I think his work Corner of a Flat atArgenteuil clearly illustrates the broken colour technique and complementary colour theories without either being too garish or obvious.  Again, I zoomed this work on Bridgeman Education to have a good look at the colours and techniques used.  Colour complementaries are used around the outside of the painting (the green plant against the red patterned curtain, the blue pot and blue foliage next to the yellow of the curtain). The centre of the painting is a view into a room with a little boy standing on the floor.  This floor (by its pattern) is obviously a polished wooden parquet.  However, if you look closely at the colour detail of this you will find: the foreground appears neutral brown when you first look at it but comprises thin lines of green, yellow, ochre, blue, white, red, pink and purple.  As the floor recedes away from us into the shadows, the colours change to cooler tones of blue, green, violet and white to reflect the light from the window.  Even though none of these colours really relate to the actual colour of the floor, our brain tells us that this is a dark wooden floor!

Post-Impressionist / Neo-Impressionist (also known as Divisionism and Pointillism)

As with Impressionism, Post-Impressionism is a name created “after the event” as a term to describe the work of diverse artists working in France such as Cezanne, van Gogh, Seurat, Signac and Gauguin which emerged post-1886 (the last Impressionist exhibition).

The Post-Impressionists were not a group or cohesive movement and had varying styles and aims.  They continued to use bright colours and thick brushstrokes, but their work appears more solid than the Impressionists – lines are more defined, colours are applied in larger blocks and more geometrically (not small feathery strokes).  The colours used are more arbitrary; based on emotions and symbolism, rather than the Impressionistic portrayal of reality, nature and a fleeting moment in time.

Georges Seurat

Seurat’s two most famous pieces are Bathers at Asniere and Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  Bathers, Asniere, is a very large work which I have viewed on a number of occasions at the National Gallery.  Whilst the colours are very similar to those used by the Impressionists, the technique of application is very different.  Based on sketches, this work was completed in a studio using painstaking, methodical short strokes of paint, in a method which Seurat called “chromo-luminarism” but which is better known as Divisionism (of the even more common name of Pointillism).  

These short strokes of paint later developed into even smaller dots of paint, hence the name Pointillism.  Seurat used the complementary colour theories of Chevreul and other later theorists (as had the Impressionists) but tried to impose a more disciplined use of these.  He theorized that applying small dots of complementary colours next to each other would create an optical mix when the viewer was a distance from the canvas, and thus the effect would be brighter and more luminous than colour mixed on the palette and then applied to the canvas.  In some cases this does work, but I think because the colour patches are very small, they all seem to blur into one which has the opposite effect – no colour is big enough to stand out, and the mix of a number of colours only serves to neutralise them all.  The other problem with Pointillism is that you lose many of the expressive qualities of paint applied with a brush or other implement – there is no distinction across the painting and so not really any focus or variation.  The paintings appear stilted and stiff, and because there are no distinct edges, it is almost as if there is a film of mist over each one.

Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh was influenced by the Impressionists – he moved away from his dull, dark colours of earlier works towards a much more vivid and intense palette, but took colour a stage further by associating colour with mood and emotions.  His palette lightened noticeably after Van Gogh moved to Paris from the Netherlands.  He was also friends with Signac (another Pointilist painter) and created works in a similar vein, although more usually with strokes of colour rather than dabs.  A great influence on Van Gogh was the art of Japan.  He collected Japanese prints and created his own versions in oil paint – using the strong solid colour, oriental flattened perspectives and the outlining of objects – the themes of which continued to play an ongoing part in his work.   http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/247/Japonaiserie:-Flowering-Plum-Tree-(after-Hiroshige).html

Van Gogh continued to use strong complementary colour in his work, sometimes in quite violent combinations.  The Sower Arles 1888 uses bands of yellow, blue, ochre and purple, while The Night Café, also 1888 combines red walls with a green ceiling and a very bright yellow floor streaked with green. 

Van Gogh’s use of colour and his emotional input into the creative process has been preserved through his many letters to his brother and other artists, and it is through these we see how he felt an emotional attachment to the colour he used.  In a letter written referring to his painting “The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital” while he was at patient there he states “You will realise that this use of red ochre, green, darkened by grey, the black strokes that define the contours, all this tends to convey a sense of angst, of a kind many of my companions in wretchedness often suffer.  And the motif of the big tree struck by lightening, and the sickly pink and green smile of the last flower of the autumn serves to heighten this impression.”  http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?lang=en&page=4060

Van Gogh’s colours were enhanced by his very visible and expressive brush strokes which developed after he experimented with pointillist techniques, soon moving to shorter strokes and then longer, swirling marks.  As he painted very quickly, many of his oils were very much wet-in-wet which gives very his paintings their characteristic texture – you have to use a lot of paint to cover wet oil and each brush stroke would score into the previous layer, adding more texture to the surface.   In “The Starry Night” (a painting from his imagination) you can clearly see each stroke of the brush – from the majestic swirling sky to the more directional lines for the buildings and shrubs.  Traditional landscapes were calm and still – this is anything but.  The length of each stroke, its direction and the curving, while very gestural, must have been thought through in advance to give the painting its sense of majesty – the sky here is the focus: the high viewpoint, the smallness of the village and the towering Cyrpress puncturing the sky all point to the depth of colour and strong contrast of the blue and yellow of the sky.

Op-Art

Op-Art (a contraction of optical art) originally came from the Bauhaus period and “stressed the relationship of form and function within a framework of analysis and rationality. Students were taught to focus on the overall design, or entire composition, in order to present unified works” (Wikipedia).  Op Art really came into its own in the 1960s, first with black and white paintings in geometric forms and/or lines, and then later in the 1960s colour theory and contrasts began to be used by artists such as Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely.  The stark images created in black and white are very dynamic and create a volatile relationship which, after a while, make your eyes hurt by looking at the strong contrasts.

By introducing colour, artists used the same premise, but enhanced their paintings using strong contrasts which have a different effect on the eye and create a more three-dimensional image.  The effect of equiluminance is used which can make an image seem to vibrate by using two contrasting colours which are the same tone.

In “2170 VP-106, 1969”, Victor Vasarely uses sphere shape to distort the basic grid pattern of the background.  By using just two colours here, and lightening the tone of the blue towards the centre of the sphere, it appears to be as if a huge bubble is trying to burst from the canvas, and the centre of the bubble appears to be moving towards you.

In “Untitled”, he again uses sphere pushing out of the canvas, but this time in complementary red and green, using the tonal range of the colour and the size of the square grid to create a very three-dimensional effect.  There are no dimensions to this piece on Bridgeman Education but I imagine that, if it was big enough and you stood in the front of the canvas with your eyeline at the centre it would feel as if you were falling forwards!