Order 2316287: art appreciation

Art Appreciation

Visual Elements

in COLOR

Joe Clark

Example: I love it when my white shirt glows atomic blue when exposed to a fluorescent black-light.

“Everything we see is made visible by the radiant energy we call light.” Frank

Light is usually classified into two categories – natural light (or light from the sun), and artificial light, which in most circumstances, includes incandescent or fluorescent. Where the light comes from, it’s intensity, color and direction, all affect the way an object appears. The appearance of that object can change as its lighting changes.

Light 1 0%

2 10%

3 20%

4 30%

5 40%

6 50%

7 60%

8 70%

9 80%

10 90%

11 100%

Artists become very perceptive to how light hits a surface. They even have their own terminology to relate to how bright or dark the light on an object appears to be. What most people call “shading,” artists call value or tone. Value ranges from the brightest white to the darkest black. The subtle use of value can help an artist imply the shape of an object. Tools, like this value scale on the right, help the artist recognize then reproduce light on his subject.

Implied Light The diagram below demonstrates that our perception of an object is greatly influenced by its surroundings. The center bar is 50% grey, the same middle value as number 6 on the value scale from the previous page. But notice how the bar appears to change in value from dark to light as it travels across the field.

Chiaroscuro is an Italian term used to describe how artists imply a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface by imitating light. The subtle shift from light to dark on the sphere to the right, enhance its roundness. Notice how the ball doesn’t need an outline to separate it from the background. That’s the beauty of chiaroscuro. When drawing or painting from life, things look more real when you’re able to master this technique. In life we aren’t outlined like cartoons. Our shape responds to the effect of the conditions of light. Learn more about this ball: Click Here

Implied Light – Leonardo da Vinci Chiaroscuro, like a lot of progressive visual thinking, was developed during the Renaissance.

Leonardo da Vinci, was more than an artist. Like a lot of creative people at that time, he had to be accomplished at many different things. He was a scientist, an architect, and an expert painter, draftsman and sculptor. One of his most recognizable works is the Mona Lisa (left).

His mastery of chiaroscuro is evident in the smooth transitions of value in her face and hands. No outlines were needed - by design, he uses light and the contrast of the foreground and background to separate her figure from its environment. The use of “smoky” or blurred edges, called sfumato, invented by Leonardo, enhances the effect.

Read more about Leonardo on page 273.

Color What we call white light, sunlight for example, is actually made up of every color of the visible spectrum. A discovery by Sir Isaac Newton found that when white light from the sun passed through a prism, it separated into bands of color that matched the colors of the rainbow. The sequence of these colors is always the same – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Tip: This can best be remembered by the acronym ROY G BIV.

Objects that appear to have color are only reflecting those color of the spectrum that illuminate them. When light illuminates an object, some of the light is absorbed by the surface, the rest is reflected. Example: In simple terms, a red apple looks red because it absorbs all the colors of the spectrum but reflects red light.

When all wavelengths of light are absorbed, the object appears black. When all wavelengths are reflected, the object is white. Black and white, and their combination, gray, are referred to as achromatic or neutrals. They are not included in the spectrum of colors.

Color Our eye balls can distinguish millions of colors. Artists identify these variations according to three categories: hue, value, and intensity. Hue is another name for color - yellow, green and blue are hues.

Value, like before, refers to light and dark transitions using black to white. Black and white can be added to a hue to change its value. Tinting refers to the addition of white to a color to make it lighter. When black is added to a color, it is called shading.

Intensity, refers to the purity of a hue. The purity of a color is determined by its saturation. Intensity changes when the color is altered in any way. A color is its most intense and bright in is natural form. Shading or tinting a hue diminishes its intensity. The results are a dulling, Softening and loss of brightness of the color. (The illusion of atmospheric perspective in painting is created this way.)

The image on the right is a color wheel. It’s a reference guide for the artist enabling him to quickly compare colors and even see what happens when that color loses saturation.

Primary colors when mixing pigments

Color We experience colors in two ways:

• Pigment Color • Light Color

You computer experts may know the two options for color images-one is printer based, one is web based. Plan on printing the image? Use CMYK. If your image is only to be viewed on a monitor, use RGB. The right diagram shows the pigment primary hues. From a variation of these three, cyan, magenta, and yellow, (with a little help from black “K”,) all colors of the spectrum can be mixed. The true pigment primaries are red, yellow, and blue. These are the only hues that cannot be created by intermixing other hues.

With light primaries, any combination of colors produces a lighter color. This is called an additive color mixture. Your TV uses this to create multi - color images.

The light primaries are red, green, and blue. These electric light colors imitate natural light and actually create white light when mixed. (Left)

Color Schemes Color combinations can be used to obtain certain moods in their work.

A monochromatic color scheme is especially effective in communicating an artist’s content and affecting a viewer’s disposition. Example: A painting using variations of blue would get a very different emotional response than that of a red painting.

A complementary color scheme involves two colors that are completely opposite each other on the color wheel. Because of this, the two colors contrast strongly. The result is vibrant. Some of the best known color combinations are complementary hues. Sports uniforms often use this scheme. The yellow/purple of the LA Lakers. Blue/orange of the NY Mets. And we all recognize Christmas colors as red/green.

Here’s a cool trick to try: This Texas flag was created using the complements of the actual colors. Stare at its center for about 30 seconds and then go to the next slide.

What do you see? What's happened to the original colors? The image has been temporarily "burned" into your retina. The image you see now is called an Afterimage and the colors you see are complementary to the original colors. Learn more HERE: Afterimage

In this painting, pop artist Keith Haring, uses complementary color scheme of red and green equal in intensity. Even though the colors are “complements” they visually vibrate, fighting for attention.

Are these figures dancing? Are they fighting? Are they dead?

Notice how they tend to move when you’re not looking at them directly...

THIS IS MEAN TO HURT. Notice what happens when you juxtapose two colors of equal intensity in the same image.

The results can be unpleasant to look at.

It can also give the illusion of movement.

The colors will fight each other.

Visually competing to see which can hit your eye first.

Let’s take a moment and explore these color schemes by looking at he work of Vincent Van Gogh. If you wanting to understand how these color combinations work, he’s a great artist to begin with. Throughout the short time he was a painter he produced about 900 paintings – and most of them show us that he was definitely not afraid of color.

Many of Van Gogh’s paintings use color schemes based on complementary colors. The painting on the left is a self-portrait of Vincent, it is composed of two colors opposite each other on the color wheel: Blue and orange. If you were to look at a color wheel, you’d see that blue and orange are complementary colors. Using any two contrasting colors will help the artist create vibrant, expressive paintings.

Van Gogh, additionally, relied on color schemes based on analogous colors. The use of colors next to each other on the color wheel help create a harmonic balance that unifies the painting's composition.

These color combinations along with his characteristically energetic lines and thickly applied paint, are reasons why his paintings are memorable.

Self portrait Vincent van Gogh 1889 Oil on canvas

In this painting, Van Gogh uses an ANALOGOUS color scheme which combines colors next to each other on the color wheel.

The results of his pallet of yellow, orange and green gives the viewer a warm feeling that is both comforting and nostalgic.

This painting looks good because the colors used are often found in nature and are harmonious and pleasing to the eye.

Unlike complementary colors, an analogous color scheme allows just enough contrast to get your attention in a subtle way.

Sunflowers Vincent van Gogh 1888 Oil on canvas

ANALOGOUS

Yellow Green Blue

The Olive Trees Vincent van Gogh 1889 Oil on canvas

In this painting, Van Gogh uses a MONOCHROMATIC color scheme of yellow tinted with white and shaded with umber and sienna. The result is the unified composition of a single color and a harmonious balance of lights and darks

Three Pair of Shoes Vincent van Gogh 1886 Oil on canvas

“I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.” – Vincent Van Gogh

In this painting, Van Gogh uses an COMPLEMENTARY color scheme of colors opposite each other on the color wheel:

Red and green.

Below are his thoughts on his choice of colors for this painting.

The Night Cafe Vincent van Gogh 1888 Oil on canvas

Optical Color Mixture “Color sensations more vibrant than those achieved with actual pigment mixture can be obtained when dots of pure color are placed together so that they blend in the eye and mind, to create the appearance of other hues.”

Prebles and Frank

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, (right) is painter George Seurat’s scientific approach at capturing the “brilliance and purity of natural Light.” In step with the Post-Impressionist movement, Seurat used visibly separate, tiny unblended dots of paint to create a technique called pointillism. This labor intensive style was developed through the artist’s studies of color optics.

Modern four-color printing, (CMYK,) incorporates much of the same techniques. Dots of pure color are juxtaposed in stages to create a wide range of color.

Vocabulary Click on the term to return to that page. Value – The relative lightness and darkness of the surface of an object. Chiaroscuro – The use of subtle shifts of value to imply and separate the shape of an object from its background without the use of outlines. Sfumato – Atmosphere created in paintings by softly blurring edges around the figure. Visible Spectrum – The division of white light through a prism. Spectral colors are: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Achromatic – Often referred to as neutrals, these include black, white and their combination, gray. Hue – Another name for individual spectral colors. Tint – Brightening a color by adding white. Shade – Adding black to a color to make it darker. Intensity – Also called saturation, refers to the purity of a color. Monochromatic – Variations in value and intensity of a single color. Complementary Colors – Two colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel. Pointillism – Technique developed by George Seurat in which dots of pure color are placed in close proximity to create new colors.

hot spot

middle gray

core shadow

reflected light

Chiaroscuro on a Sphere Observing the way light and value wrap around a sphere enables an artist to recreate three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional picture-plane.

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