Tip of the month – March, 2006 |
Recently, Cindy sent me an email in which she spoke of the challenge of seeing and painting an individual tree in a forest. This is the same predicament as trying to find a face in a crowd.
 
How can I show where a tree begins and ends? Is the tree forward or to the back of the forest? How do I make a tree focal in all of that green forest?
 
Bouquets of flowers, flowering plants, and fields of flowers present themselves in the same way as the trees in a forest. We look over the entire floral presentation; we cannot focus on one area.
Color can be used as a tool to highlight an area of focus in your painting. Color has a number of properties that can be used to enhance an area of the painting.
Cadmium Orange
Yellow/Orange
Burnt Orange
The HUE is the name of the color. In this case, all of the oranges above can be described as an orange hue. They are all in the orange family.
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A particular hue can have saturation or intensity.
Phthalocyanine blue
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It can also, be bright or dull.
Cadmium Red Light
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It can be light or muted.
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Permanent Rose Permanent Rose
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A hue can contrast with its neighbor by being
lighter
or darker and/or warmer or cooler.
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When a hue or color has dominance in a work, it is sometimes difficult to see the shapes. In the top left photo, green is the dominant hue. If I want to see one area more clearly, I need to be thinking about the properties of color as a tool to highlight that area.
Next time, I will look at the design of the composition as a tool to highlight an area in the painting.
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