Chalk and mud

When an artist refers to an area in a painting as looking chalky or muddy, the problem is usually color temperature.

 “Chalky” refers to white without a specific and appropriate color temperature and “muddy” is probably a darker value without a color temperature. The problem is most likely paint without an identity – something akin to limbo, neither here nor there. This does not mean every bit of paint on a canvas needs to resemble a color wheel of primaries. Just a nudge here and there will identify a color as warmer or cooler.

Highlights and areas of very light values should have variation and interest. A touch of viridian or orange can do wonders for highlights, and larger areas of light value need to have an identity other than “white”. They need to be part of the overall pattern of color temperature but still be descriptive and interesting.

The problem with “mud” usually begins on the palette, but over-brushing an area of a painting will also mix the paint into one non-descriptive mess. The problem is not because the artist mixed more than three colors together on the palette. This “rule” arose in an attempt to find an easy solution to non-descriptive mixtures. Perhaps it works for some, but I am in the camp of sometimes scraping paint on my palette into one big pile and using it (and this is the important part) if it is appropriate and useful. This mixture of multiple colors might need some adjustment for value and color – lighter, darker, warmer or cooler.

Neutral mixtures of paint (tans and greys) are important. They enhance and help identify color. All areas of a painting do not need exclamation points. Just learn to appreciate subtle changes in color and pay attention to the overall pattern of lighter and darker values and warmer and cooler colors.

Do you see blue like I see blue?

For various reasons it is quite likely we don’t see color the same. The names for the colors of the rainbow are arbitrary constructions. The Russian language, for example, has two separate words for the color “blue” found in the rainbow. Most of us have just one word for the same color. Does this make a difference in how we “see” the color?

Recent experiments have shown that if we have a name for a color, we are quite likely to see it in a different way. Naming and seeing are connected and what we see changes according to whether or not the language centers of the brain are activated. (The Secret Language of Color)

The language of color differs depending on where you live. There are evidently still tribes that don't have color names beyond black and white. It is also interesting that the naming of colors across all cultures has a distinct pattern. Black and white are always the first to be named. Red is next. After that, there are variations in the naming of color, but usually yellow or green follow, then blue or violet. Colors such as orange and pink appear later.

The colors of the rainbow have changed over time. As late as the twelfth century, the arc was portrayed with only red and green and a band of white in the center. The rainbow didn't take on additional hues until the Renaissance, and it wasn't until the eighteenth century and Newton that we acquired the colors of the rainbow as we know them today. And then there is the Russian language which has two words for blue, “goluboi” for light blue and “sinii” for dark blue. This distinction is similar to the English language separation between pink and red.

Not having a name for a color does not mean a person can’t see the color. Linguists spent two centuries arguing about whether or not a person who didn't have a name for a color could actually “see” the color. We know now that is not true. We are starting to recognize, however, that the complexity of visual processing is both enhanced and inhibited by the language centers of the brain.

"The Secret Language of Color" by Joann Eckstut and Arielle Eckstut
"Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" by Guy Deutscher

More interesting stuff - robins actually see the earth's magnetic field!

Something about color

The easiest way to understand color is to review Isaac Newton’s experiments with light in the late 1600s. He was the first to understand the rainbow when he refracted white light (sunlight) with a prism. When the light passed through the prism it scattered the different colors of light according to their wavelength, showing a continuous band of colors – violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red, (Newton included indigo which would have numerically aligned his color diagram with the seven tones of the musical octave.)

Newton then turned that band of colors into a circle and created the color wheel. Up until then, for over two thousand years, color theory was dominated by Aristotle’s version of linear color which was arranged from white to black, with red in the middle, yellow next to white, and blue next to black. Obviously, Aristotle’s version was more of a value scale than a color diagram.

However, while the color wheel has its advantages in recognizing color relationships, such as complementary, analagous, and secondary colors, it also spawned multiple variations, numerous color theories and a lot of confusion for artists.

So let’s go back to the rainbow and the science of color – the band of colors discovered by Newton when he separated sunlight into wavelengths of light with a prism. Color is a property of light. The wavelength of visible light has a pattern. It is a range of color from violet to red. It is dictated by the wavelengths of the spectrum. The colors do not jump around at random. Just as value has a pattern of light to dark (shadow), color also has a pattern. Red turns into orange, which then turns to yellow, then green, blue, and violet. This is the pattern of visible light. Objects have no color of their own; they only have the ability to reflect certain rays of light.

The other pattern of visible light is what we can observe as color temperature. This is not an absolute value, never just warm or cool, but an “as compared to” value – warmer or cooler. The pattern of visible light, violet to red, ranges from cooler to warmer. Blue is seen as cooler than red, but ultramarine blue has elements of red color and is seen as warmer than cerulean blue. Alizarin red, which leans towards violet, is seen as cooler than cadmium red which leans towards yellow.  Understanding warmer and cooler colors is based on recognizing the importance of comparison and being able to see if a color tends towards red and/or yellow, or if a color leans towards blue and/or green. Trying to establish an absolute value with color temperature is confusing and misleading.

And now we need to understand that the quality of the light (warmer or cooler) modifies everything. As light changes, color changes, and our perception of color can change with the surroundings. Identifying the light source as either warmer or cooler will simplify the visual information and help us to observe, quantify, and mix colors. Cooler light (such as a cloudy day or early morning) means warmer shadows. And, please note, I did not write “warm” shadows.  A shadow is an absence of light and that same light has color information, so a shadow is an absence of that color information. That does not mean one cannot see a variation of color temperature within a cooler shadow. The real world is a combination of direct light, ambient light, local color, reflected color, etc. Identifying color is a process of comparison – warmer, cooler, lighter, darker.

To keep everything in perspective, we need to recognize that the science of light and color is different than the science of pigment and color. The former is additive and the latter subtractive. Add all the colors in light together (as Newton did after he first separated the colors with a prism) and you will have white light. Do the same with pigment and one will end up with black – or if you are an artist, something akin to “muck”. There is no such thing as the “right” color – only the color that looks right.

Also, the human eye can distinguish up to 10 million colors. Since the brain is the processing component for determining visual information, and the brain assesses information based on experience and knowledge, then it is safe to say that we can see colors differently. Ultimately, the whole idea of painting “things” is an illusion, smoke and mirrors, merely one person’s impression and interpretation of visual information. Somewhere other than trite and predictable is a place of creativity and discovery.



“Color is life; for a world without colors appears to us as dead. Colors are primordial ideas, children of the aboriginal colorless light and its counterpart, colorless darkness. As flame begets light, so light engenders colors. Colors are the children of light, and light is their mother. Light, that first phenomenon of the world, reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world through colors." - The Elements of Color by Johannes Itten

While the history of art is a study of changes in the use of color, the Impressionist painters are notable for their study of sunlight and how it alters the local tones of objects. Monet explored these changes methodically, sometimes requiring a fresh canvas at each hour of the day. The best examples of Monet’s exploration of sunlight and atmospheric color changes are his series of Rouen Cathedral paintings.

Interaction of Color by Josef Albers - a highly regarded book by one of the most influential artist-educators
Color by Betty Edwards - instructive and informative
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay - interesting, engaging book, part travelogue, part history 
The Rainbow Goblins by Ul De Rico – a classic story with beautiful illustrations for the child in all of us.

Anderson workshop - a short version

I just returned from teaching a workshop in Fredericksburg, Texas. It was great to see a few old friends and meet some new ones. I was privileged to again work with a great group of artists. One of those artists is also a very talented writer. Ruth Heffron surprised and awed us all with her poem about the workshop. We laughed and nodded in agreement when she read it aloud while I was doing a demonstration. Everyone agreed she nailed it. I, for one, will try and pay a little more attention to not just what I say, but how I say it!

Maker's Mark

by Ruth Heffron

SURPRISE YOURSELF
MAKE LIGHT TOUCHES, LITTLE MARKS.
FLYING TRIANGLES, ANGLES OF REPOSE
ARE YOUR BEST FRIENDS TO MOVE YOU
THROUGH. LOSE YOUR EDGE. MAKE
NEGATIVE SPACE.

HOLY CRAP, WE'LL HAVE NO BASKETBALL
HEADS NOR FRIGGIN' CONTOUR
DRAWINGS! REALLY?

MAKE INSTEAD YOUR "you are here" MAP
GET IN THE BALL PARK AND KEEP
ADJUSTING YOUR
  LINE  SHAPE  VALUE  COLOR



Ruth Heffron Fine Art

Everything you need to know about painting

1. The Art of Seeing - Squint!
2. Design & Composition - Think cause and effect.
3. Everything You Need to Know About Values - Is it lighter or darker?
4. Everything You Need to Know About Color - Is it warmer or cooler?
5. When Your Painting Doesn't Work - Identify the problem and find a solution.
6. When Your Painting Still Doesn't Work - Take a break. Drink coffee. Read No. 5.
7. It Still Doesn't Work - Never beat a dead horse.
8. How To Know If Your Painting Is Finished - You have a run out of time or have nothing else to say.

Artists Paul Mullally and Ned Mueller taking a break from painting.

Why naming the "thing" can be a problem

Look at one or the other of these two well-known optical illusions and notice how quickly you can change the image by saying either duck-rabbit or face-vase.

The duck/rabbit and face/vase illusions are well-known examples of ambiguous information. Seeing is a "best guess" based on the information at hand. In these examples the visual information presents alternative interpretations so we see first one image, and then the other. We don't see the shape apart from the interpretation. The “naming of the thing” simplifies the process of trying to decipher the visual information.

Visual ambiguity is not just confined to optical illusions. Vision is a process, not a picture. We see what is most different and usually group together what is most similar. We see the obvious changes and make assumptions about what we see based on what we know and what we expect to see. ("Vision and Art" by Margaret Livingstone) It is important to understand how seeing can be compromised by knowledge, expectations, and also language.

When we "name the thing" we are more likely to see what we think we know about the object. We are less likely to see its specific and accurate attributes, such as shape variation, color, value and edges. There are varying levels of visual accuracy and artists need to be able to combine the knowing and the seeing. At times it is important to be able to see without the preconceived information of the "knowing." That is why some artists may view reference material upside down. It takes the information out of context and makes it easier to see the relationship of shapes, colors and values.

Realist painters paint “things” – ordinary (and maybe not so ordinary) objects, people and places. Realist painting has certain parameters and an obligation to reflect some aspect of a universally accepted reality. It may be easier to see “things” than it is to see structure, order and how visual information is related. But these are just two different ways of seeing.

Realism can also be about possibility – the possibility of vision and personal expression - the possibilities inherent in using value and color and making marks. Never underestimate how "naming the thing" can compromise the integrity of the visual information.

Do you really want to paint what you already know? Or do you want to know and see something in a different way?

“I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” Henri Matisse

A Christmas story

Many years ago I bought a life-size horse made from cottonwood branches.  Joe Halko, a friend and colleague, made the sculpture. Joe was a well-respected wildlife sculptor, known for his sensitive and beautiful bronzes. The horse made of branches was an anomaly – he only made a very few of them. The work he had done throughout his career was more traditional, both in style and material.

I can still remember the day Joe and his wife delivered the horse and actually helped to set it in place.

A few short years later Joe died unexpectedly. Those of us who knew him were shocked and saddened.

Bronze by Joe Halko

As Christmas neared that year we erected an old Christmas tree with bright white lights near the horse. We had done this before and it seemed appropriate for the vastness of the prairie in front of our house. But that year two deer began showing up every evening at dusk to bed down near the tree. There was something magical and surprising to see them arrive each night. Maybe they were seeking warmth from the lights, I thought. But they never laid down right next to the tree. They were just there, every night, close, but not too close, to the lit tree and cottonwood branch horse.

Christmas Eve came. I waited for the deer to arrive. It seemed so important to have them bed down near the tree on that night – two deer by the lights of the tree and the horse standing nearby. I waited and waited, but they never came – not that night or ever again.

At first I was disappointed. Until I realized what had happened. In that moment I knew where the deer were. I knew they had someplace else, somewhere far more important, to be that night.

Garbage in, garbage out

Science has proven what we already know. Listening to someone talking on a cell phone is annoying.

Research has shown that subjects listening to a cell phone conversation had a hard time performing a task requiring concentration. They did not have as much difficulty when listening to a two-way conversation.They also did not have a problem when listening to speech that was completely incomprehensible.

On another annoying note, people are more inclined to perceive a cell phone conversation as louder than a regular conversation between two people.

Scientists estimate we are subject to receiving one billion stimuli every second in our brains. We manage to filter out most extraneous and unnecessary information. We can tune out what we deem unimportant and routine, and we can choose to listen to a conversation or not. But it seems to be difficult to tune out information that doesn’t make sense. It’s as if the brain gets caught in a loop of attention. Our brains are wired to make sense of the world – to recognize patterns and organize information. It is difficult to process incomplete information.

According to Max Liberman, a linguist from the University of Pennsylvania, “… when you're getting lower-quality information coming in, you're having to work harder to understand and reconstruct it."

So what does this have to do with art? Pattern and organization. We need to organize visual information.  But organization doesn’t begin and end with the placement of objects.  Common sense tells us to arrange and edit before we start painting; but organization is also dependent on value patterns, shapes, and the use of color. It is up to us to find the pattern.

In the context of information technology "garbage in, garbage out" means the output quality of a system usually can't be any better than the quality of inputs.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell exhibited the first telephone at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  Just four years later Mark Twain wrote the following:

“Consider that a conversation by telephone — when you are simply sitting by and not taking any part in that conversation — is one of the solemnest curiosities of this modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. . . . You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says.”

The problem with edges

There is a reason why so many books on “seeing” have titles such as “Visual Perception,” Visual Thinking,” “Visual Language,” and “Visual Intelligence.” Sure, we’re dependent on the transmission of light through the eyes to the brain, but how we see is visual processing, not just image transmission. And the problem with edges has to do with how the brain processes edge information. 

Ask yourself what kind of visual information is important on daily basis. What do you need to know when walking around your house or driving down the street? Lost-and-found edges are probably not a high priority. In fact, the human brain is continually asking “what is it?” and “where is it?” We need to know where the chair in the room is so we can either sit on it or walk around it. We certainly don’t need to quantify unnecessary edge information. Vision is information processing on a need-to-know basis.

Imagine how much visual information is contained within one scene. The authors of the book “Basic Vision” did just that when they calculated an average scene viewed in shades of grey. When they also included the fact that the eye encodes roughly 30 images per second, the results showed an astonishing 3900 Mb per second per eye or six compact disks full every second. “The information flow from two eyes would fill up a 120 Gb hard drive on a PC in around 15 seconds.” And that’s without including color information.

How do we handle all this information? Image compression. This is similar to the image processing used in a digital picture when the picture is stored as a JPEG. A JPEG uses much less memory than a an uncompressed TIF image.  Information that is considered unnecessary is discarded. “The information sent back from the retina is not the raw light levels of each part of the scene but an efficient code about the changes, or edges, that are in the world.” (Basic Vision, an introduction to visual perception)

“In the visual system, regions of the image with high information content, such as edges, are signaled, but regions where nothing is changing are not." (Vision and Art, the Biology of Seeing)

If our visual system is wired to see the most obvious changes, then how do we see information that is not as obvious? The answer is simple – just look and look some more and compare, compare, compare. In this case knowledge is power and just knowing you do not necessarily see all the information should allow you to move forward and look for it.  With that said, here is some information that might be helpful.

The rounder the form, the softer the edge. The further away the object, the softer the edge. We are dealing with dimensional, atmospheric and focal information. And since we are dealing with “smoke and mirrors” in creating a three dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface, sometimes we need to exaggerate or minimize the information.

Do not assume there is an edge. Ask yourself if there is an edge, and if so, “what kind of edge?” ”What defines the form?” Is it a change in value or color or is it a change in shape. Often it's a change in information next to the form. A strong light next to a strong dark will usually result in a harder edge. Information turning into shadow will obviously not be as noticeable. A dark next to a light will appear darker than a dark in shadow. Everything is “as compared to.” Look for the doorways that allow one shape to turn into or become part of another shape. Pay attention to the edges opposite one another on an object. They should have variety and suggest dimension.

Edges are not arbitrary. They define our three-dimensional reality. They are the transition between value, shapes and color. They help to define or diminish form. Edges are areas of translation – allowing one area to become another.

“How the pieces are connected to each other is at least as important as what the pieces are.” (Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway)

#painting edges

The quack in the grass

A friend recently sent me some photos of the landscape near her home in Missouri. I recognized those photos. I had never been there, to that specific location, but I immediately identified with that Midwestern landscape. I knew the shapes of the trees, I could feel myself walking through the lush grass, and I could smell and feel the damp air. I knew that place and it felt like home. And then I thought about ducks. Baby ducks, to be specific. And, briefly, I thought about the baby duck I had as a pet. But more importantly, I thought about how ducks, and some other birds, will follow and become attached to the first moving object they encounter, usually, but not always, their mother.

I grew up in the Midwest. The shapes, the colors, and the space resonate with me. I know my early visual experiences shaped how I experience the landscape. The fields, rolling hills, lush green trees and moist, humid air are as familiar to me as the faces of my family. I call this the land of foreground and middle ground. The land I live in now is a land of distance only – a land with no beginning and no end. There are never enough visual clues to accurately judge distance or elevation. But this is land of challenge and change. It is continually fascinating, but never comforting.

Visual experience is more than our eyes sending signals of contrast and color to our brains.  What we see in front of us is a combination of what we know and what we expect to see. It is our past and our present, our memories and our sense of space and place. It is time itself. In the book “Basic Vision”, the authors wrote, “We see the world in a particular way, not because that is the way the world is, but because that’s the way we are.”

In a study done on human-computer interaction, it was found there is a tendency for computer users to imprint on the first system they learned and then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. This is called “baby duck syndrome.”

#paintinglandscape

Is it a door or a doorway?

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten what you went in there for? Research by Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky from the University of Notre Dame suggests that the doorway itself is the cause of these memory lapses.

"Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away," according to Radvansky. In other words, your brain files away the thoughts you had in one room in preparation for a new locale and new information.

I think we artists can be misled by edges in a similar way. Just as a doorway can trigger an event boundary for information retrieval, too many hard edges prevent us from visually exploring the possibilities of transition and unity. When we paint outlines and hard edges we are creating barriers which are often difficult to overcome. This "stop and start" approach to painting makes it even more difficult to see how all those "pieces" fit together.

"Edges allow us to define spaces, see their boundaries as well as what flows across them, and work with these flows. They are places of transition and translation, where matter and energy change speed or stop, or often, change into something else."
                                          Gaia's Garden, a Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
                                          by Toby Hemenway
 

More myths and realities

   The more we paint, the more we see, and the more tools we add to our tool-belt. That should be a positive, but sometimes we don't see enough and sometimes we see too much. As our abilities increase, so should our expectations. I do not view painting as merely a craft - as something to be mastered. Painting is part of a journey of exploration and one of our most powerful tools is intent. Without intent all the skill in the world is merely craft. Intent can be the driving force that moves us forward and allows us to take risks and explore our perceptions of boundaries. If you want to learn to paint, you need to paint - and paint a lot. If you want to create, you need to be able to take risks and accept that not all paintings are created equally. One of our biggest myths is that this is all about skill - a craft to be mastered after long and arduous study - and once you have mastered the skill and learned the tricks, you will paint beautiful paintings forever and ever. The reality is even great artists struggled with their quest for exploration.

Claude Monet once wrote, "I'm hard at it, working stubbornly on a series of different effects (grain stacks), but at this time of the year the sun sets so fast that it's impossible to keep up with it . . . I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but the further I get, the more I see that a lot of work has to be done in order to render what I'm looking for: instaneity, the envelope, above all, the same light spread over everything, and more than ever I'm disgusted by easy things that come in one go."


Art Chats with Linda Fisler: The Myths and Realities of Creating a Painting with Carolyn Anderson

AMO Art Chat: Mastering Edges with Carolyn Anderson