Light through Color: The 2 Application Methods

Color and Light are one and the same in the Impressionist’s eye brain

✓     Light - Presentation of the Elements of Light (Chiaroscuro 5 Elements, Impressionist’s Translucent and Transparent 2 Elements, and Dmitri’s 8th Element of Light)

✓     Light through Color - Color Theory (Optical Mixing and Simultaneous Contrast)

✓     Color - Establishing Your Own Impressionist Palette – (Discovering Your Golden Color, Rainbow Palette/Color Wheel)

Light through Color

Light = Color

Pigments are expressions of the visible spectrum of the color in light; they become the light on the picture plane. Light, as color fills the mind’s eye of the viewer, becomes a delight and a joy-filled experience. One can say it’s the whole reason for painting in the first place.

Impressionist painters used pigments of color as proxies of light. They used their palettes as an ‘event horizon’ to build the illusion of light. When working en plein air, they had to be fast with mixing and matching tones, harmonies, and scales in order to capture the subject and moment.

Impressionist painters were fascinated about what they experienced through their senses such as the ambiance of temperature, sound or feel of their surroundings where they gave us a sense of place and moment. Have you ever had fresh bread or pastry still warm from the oven? To be an Impressionist is to make things fresh. Therefore, the choice of colors and how they are applied are critical in keeping the work looking immediate and not overworked.

The human retina responds to light and so does our psyche to the colors of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. To get greater vibrancy in your paintings, consider applying fragments of pure color on a toned ground. For instance, a canvas washed or toned with a red pigment will make your green forest pop. Or color your picture plan orange as base for a blue sky or a yellow stained canvas in prep for painting a lavender field.

Notice how the Impressionists applied fragments of pure color—the vivid pigments were applied direct coupled with modulations of opacity and transparency. I advise you study the palettes of the Impressionist masters. Copy their work and use their recipes and brush dynamics until you master a few techniques before creating your own recipes.

Application Methods

Simultaneous Contrast

Colors are modified in appearance by surrounding colors. Juxtaposed colors or adjacent colors affect one another to the point that they appear to change in intensity and contrast. 

Juxtaposed colors or adjacent colors affect one another to the point that they appear to change in intensity and contrast.  For example, when ‘A’ color is surrounded by a darker color it will appear lighter, and the same color ‘A’ is surrounded by a lighter color, it will appear darker.  If ‘A’ color is surrounded now by two different colors, ‘A’ will appear to look like a different in each sample.

Impressionist use color opposites called complementary colors found on the color wheel to help them achieve a vibratory or shimmering effect in their artworks. Red-Green, Blue-Orange, and Yellow-Violet are the key complementary pairs that make up Simultaneous Contrast.

Optical Mixing 

 If you want to get the impressionist fix

You must employ the optical mix

The Impressionist painters used color theory to obtain brilliance within their work. Instead of mixing colors together on the palette, they placed them side by side on the canvas. With this understanding of optical mixing, any color can be changed or heightened when placed next to another. The color then mixes in the eye of the viewer.

Optical mixing is when Impressionist painters place pure colors side by side on canvas, not by mixing them on the palette. In contrast, their predecessors overlaid colors through glazing techniques. Optical mixing occurs when a viewer looks upon a painting from a distance where the spots of pure colors painted side by side will mix in the viewer’s mind.

Primary Color + Primary Color = Secondary Color

Primary Color + Secondary  Color = Gray

·      Blue and Yellow = Green.

·      Blue and Red = Purple

·      Yellow and Red = Orange

Traditional Complementary Colors

·      Red – Green

·      Yellow – Purple

·      Blue - Orange

Broken spaced brushstrokes are seen at a distance to mix in the eye-brain of the viewer and changes perception of the 2 colors to one color. Combinations of primary colors seen at a distance look different than at the close range. When color pigments are mixed on the artist palette they lose intensity; colors left in the pure state out of the tube vibrate and are robust. Impressionists do little mixing as possible on their palettes and place colors on the picture plane pure or as close to pure so that colors may mix at a distance. Therefore, impressionist paintings change optically according to what distance one looks at them.

·      Optical mixing of colors occurs in the eye of viewers at greater distances away from the work.

·      Remember to step back and view your work to see how your eye/brain is optically mixing the broken spaced strokes.

·      At close observation, Impressionist paintings look similar to the reverse side of tapestries, yet at several yards distance, these paintings transform from an ugly duckling into a swan.

Broken color also known as spots of color vibrate and quiver when juxtaposed warm and cool, hot and cold, color work as color opposites

Allow the eye-brain to view the painting as a whole. Rather than look at each item in the painting, instead look for an overall mood and feeling. Determine which emotion the painting most evokes, such as peacefulness, serenity, exhaustion, joy or anticipation.