Colour – 5. What was it all about?

Today I would like to sum up the three fundamental factors of the colour: value, hue and saturation and give you some exercises – if you feel like doing them.

We saw that all these three factors can liven up or subdue the composition. There are no real “rules” how to use them and as I said, many of us use them intuitively. Knowledge can help us to correct not-quite-right-intuitions as well.

For example: I would like to make a picture/quilt/composition with the theme summer heat. If this is an abstract composition the more important it is to suggest the right sensations. I won’t go now into the other principal elements of the design like line, mark etc. but concentrate on choosing my colours right.

So summer heat: a landscape, nothing dramatic about it. My first intuition: no big value differences, keeping it calm and quiet. Hues: mostly warm colours, referring the heat. So I’ve chosen two factors with reduced scales – but I don’t want my composition to be boring. I would like to bring some life into it with the last colour-factor what is left: saturation: I can choose mostly warm hues, little to medium value-differences and pay attention that I use glowing and dull colours enhancing the inherent light and make the picture lively. The beginning could be to collect my colours: make a grid, colour it with paint, pastel, or use your computer or cut small fabric pieces and glue them on. This is generally a good exercise you can repeat with different themes what could be easily associated with colour sensations, like heat, cold, the seasons, water, rain forest etc.

I would like to show some results, how artist had handled this:

Paul Klee’s Castle and Sun is painted mostly in warm colours with reduced value-difference in it. The yellows are light, yes but they take up little surface compared to the reds and browns.

Just to control the values, here is the black and white version:

Back to the original: as said, the yellows bring in some value-difference, but they are a bit too cool colours! What really carry the heat are the pure, intense, glowing reds! Remember, I said last time that when working with saturation-difference, the effect shall appear stronger when the colours are closer in value. And this is what works so beautifully here with the reds, oranges and browns.

Almost the same could be said regarding Claude Monet’s Vetheuil in the Summer and Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun. In both picture you find so many yellows of different saturation making them lively - not overly dramatic but in noways flat either.I'll skip longer explanation, just regard them and try to explain it to yourself.

In contrast to those two, here is Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. This is a painting what shows a summer night scene but the emphasis is not on the heat - thought one can sense it lightly - but on the scene itself. It is so full of tension. Hopper conveys a mood of loneliness. But of this picture Hopper said: `I didn't see it as particularly lonely... Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.' He reaches this dramatic tension using big value differences. The hues are subdued and the saturation doesn’t play a central role either. 

If you have any question to hue, value and saturation, feel free to ask, I’ll try to answer them.

And now, the exercise(s):

1.

Make a simple, maybe geometrical design. (A tip: a simple drawing programm on your computer will help.) Try to keep it simple. You can also use one of your favourite abstract paintings, maybe something from Paul Klee or just use a geometrical grid of squares and rectangles or concentrical circles (like the painting of Kandinsky).

Prepare three variations from the same design: 

• one concentrating on values – use big value differences. Try to create a strong, dynamic composition. Convert the result into black and white, to control it.
• The second colour study should be about hue and temperature. Try to create spatial sensation, a “movement” in your composition.
• The third example should be about saturation. Use a variety of glowing and dull colours to generate a lively, dynamic sensation.

When ready, look at you results and think about it what works for you. All three? Wonderful! You don’t feel very comfortable working with saturation, for example? Leave it or better go on experimenting with it and you’ll get better. Your three compositions will probably all be very different though you’ve used the same forms. Colour is a mighty design factor.

And something fun: convert copies of paintings you like into new colour compositions. Use the same image but change the colour concept. This can be real fun. Important: take time to think over your results: what does work and what doesn’t? Could you bring up new sensations just by changing colours?

2.

More practical could be to collect your fabrics, cut off little squares of 1 x 1 inch and arrange different colour ranges with them:

• broad hue, value and saturation range within one sample
• narrow hue range, broad value range and moderate saturation range
• narrow hue, value  and saturation range
• narrow hue and value range, broad saturation range

When done, note some adjectives you would use to describe the colour sensations these ranges evoke and try to think about in what context you could use these colour groups.

I’ll make a short break here and let you work. If you do the exercises and send me the results – beatakeller@yahoo.com - I would love to show them here. In a few days I’ll continue discussing contrasts.

Colour – 3. Within the hue: Temperature

Colours are often described in terms of temperature as “cool” or “warm”. These psychological associations have a lot to do with certain physical characteristics, like red-fire-warm, yellow-sun-warm or blue-ice-cold, green-shade-cold. Still, the feeling of warm and cool is relative. The same color might appear cool in the company of warm yellows and oranges and warm surrounded by cool greens.

(I’ll look at it closer later this month when talking about contrasts.)

When thinking of the colour wheel, it can be roughly divided in half: warm colours stretching from red-violet to yellow and cool colours from violet to yellow green.

Before we go deeper into it, I’d like to make a small exercise.

Please prepare a grid of 6 x 7 squares. Something like it is on the photo.

Take your coloured pencils or pastels or even your scraps of fabric and fill the squares of the horizontal rows as follows:

·      1. row: only cool colours (don’t think much, this is not a beaux-arts competition, chose your colours randomly.)

·      2. row: 5 cool colours and 1 warm colour.

·      3. row: 4 cool colours and 2 warm colours

·      4. row: 3 cool colours and 3 warm colours

·      5. row: 2 cool colours and 4 warm colours

·      6. row: 1 cool colour and 5 warm colours

·      7. row: only warm colours.

When finished look at the composition. Again try to collect adjectives to describe the sensation you get with the warm colours on the top and with the cool colours on the top.

Here is my example:

The warm colours feel much heavier. When they are down, the composition feels stable and static. The top is more airy.

Are the warm colours by the majority on the top, our sensation of balance is disturbed. A feeling of insecurity, incertitude is coming up and I expect those “heavy bricks” to fall down and crush all the airy cool bricks below.

So this is again a knowledge we can use consciously in our design. It works also on the horizontal level. Everything else being equal, warm colours generally “come forward” in the space. Cool colours, on the other hand, reced in our vision. Painters often take advantage of this aspect to create the illusion of depth.

Cezanne used this so called colour-perspective very often, especially in his still lifes:

Just two more examples. First Miro’s Figures at Night Guided by the Phosphorescent Tracks of Snails.

And second a Gee's Bend Quilt von Luisiana P. Bendolph: „Housetop“ Variation

In both the reds are just coming forward, creating the impression of space.

Contrast of temperature can also be used to create mood. Though reactions to colours are somewhat subjective and different from culture to culture, general tendencies apply. Arrangements dominated by cool colours typically evoke feelings of peace, quiet, serenity, and tranquility. Warm arrangements often bring about feelings that are relatively active and dynamic, from vivacity and joy to anger.

Colour Workshop - 2. About value

Value refers the relative lightness or darkness of a colour. Each colour has its equivalent on the grayscale, each picture can be viewed in black and white.

If you feel unsure at this point collect coloured papers in a line and try to define their value on a grayscale. Example:

You can repeat this exercise with your fabrics you intend to use on a quilt as well. (You can check your results by making a photo of your coloured papers and converting it into black and white.)

The question today is: How does value change make the difference in a picture? For that make the following exercise before you continue to read on.

Regard the following three grayscale-compositions for 30 seconds and write down 5-10 adjectives what characterize each grid best.

So let’s compare notes!

My adjectives for the first composition were: quiet, calm, open, light, airy, de-energized, free from tension, monotonous, boring, flat.

Second composition: calm, quiet, gloomy, cheerless, grave, dark, airtight, dense, flat

Third composition: strong, dynamic, vivid, full of suspense, vibrant, sensation of depth.

Of course, you might not be in complete agreement with my adjectives, colour perception is happening in the mind and we’re all different. But the main conclusion is, that full-scale values are very important for a dynamic composition.

It is not just how many hues you use but which values you have what makes the difference.

Black and white photography eliminates hue and saturation, leaving only value. Here is an example of my Cityscapes #2 in colour and in black and white.

The full-scale values (from light to dark) support the dynamic image of the city.

David Hockney has not used many colours in his A Bigger Splash, but he has full-scale values in the picture as you can see. Outside the splash, it is a very quiet picture. No action on it. But using full-scale values, from light to dark, prevents it to be boring. On the opposite it only increases the tension so the splash feels real. This is a very clever usage of the values.

Another example: Picasso painted his famous Guernica in “grisaille”, which is a term for a painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of gray.

He uses light grays for everything living and very dark grays for objects and the background. This huge contrast creates a very dramatic effect supporting the story behind this masterpiece.

Well, this is about value. Pay attention to it, because it can underline what you want to express.

A tip: lay down your chosen fabrics, make a photo and convert it in black and white, controlling the values. Think of the adjectives you collected: which value scale evokes the kind of sensation you aim to create!