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Judging colours

When trying to judge the exact nature of a particular colour in order to mix it, try looking for another colour that is similar and make a comparison between them. You will find it relatively simple to decide, for example, that both colours are mid greys but that the first colour is lighter, greener and duller than the second, and this will then help you mix it. This is much easier than trying to pin down the subtleties of the colour in isolation.

Colours on the palette

Always lay out the colours on your palette in the same order. In time you will not have to think in order to find the colours, you will know, instinctively, where they are.

Black and white

When is black lighter than white? Whenever you like!
Demonstrate this unlikely phenomenon by placing a table against the wall under a window, put a piece of black paper on the window-sill in full light and a white piece of paper on the floor under the table in the shade.
Now take two small pieces of paper with 1/2cm. hole in the centre of each. With one eye closed, hold a piece in each hand at arms length so that through one hole you see the white paper and through the other you see the black. If you compare them you will see that the black is actually lighter than the white. Of course this is because there is more light reflected from the black paper, but it is still a surprise to see it demonstrated.

Parallel lines

If you need to draw straight lines parallel to an edge of the page you can use that edge as a guide running a stiffly held little finger down it as you draw the line with the pencil or brush held normally in the other fingers.

Detail

People often tell me that my paintings are very detailed. I am surprised at this as I am aware that I record in paint only a fraction of the visual information that I see. Many artists make an illusion of reality by painstakingly building up layer upon layer of detail. I paint by observing and recording the general visual relationships rather than the details of my subject. I make overall relationships of colour and tone, shape and proportion across the whole canvas rather than focusing upon any one area at a time. It is a constant surprise and delight to find that if this is done with a degree of accuracy then quite quickly an illusion of space and light and form is produced. With only a minimal amount of detail added a convincing realism is achieved. The brain of the viewer fills in much of the detail it thinks it is seeing in the painting.

In praise of Indian Yellow

I use a lot of this colour in making browns and blacks. Originally the pigment was made by heating the urine of cows fed on mango leaves, now it is made synthetically. It is unusual amongst the yellows because it contains no white. Straight from the tube it is a dark rich golden colour. Add white to it or dilute it with solvent and you produce a clear strong  yellow. But its use really lies in its relationship to blues and purples. We are told that as yellow is opposite to purple on the colour circle we can use yellow to dull down or darken purple. All the other yellows contain so much white that mixing them with purple produces a  grey at best. But add Indian yellow to blue purples and you get a wonderful range of deep rich browns and near blacks. Winsor and Newton produce a particularly good Indian Yellow, some other makes contain white.

Ellipses

In still life the circular tops and bottoms of jugs, vases and bottles are seen in perspective and are perceived as ellipses.

They can be tricky to draw. A friend demonstrated a very useful device that helps check the drawing of an ellipse. It is simply a piece of stiff card with a circle cut out of it. If you tilt the card the circular hole appears elliptical, the more you tilt it the thinner the ellipse becomes. With one eye closed hold the card in front of your work so that you can see the ellipse in your drawing through the circle in the card. Move the card backward and forward until the ellipse and card appear the same width. Now tilt the card until the ellipse in the card aligns itself with the ellipse in your drawing. You can now see if you need to make any corrections to you work.

Fine lines
When painting textures such as grass or twigs on a bare tree (textures which require many fine lines all in the same direction), it is possible to use a soft haired brush loaded with paint and splay it out in a fan shape by pressing it down against a hard surface. With the individual hairs separated out in this way you can print fine lines off the side of the brush, building up areas of delicately drawn texture quite quickly. But it ruins the brush. I keep several old ones specially for this purpose.

To create the illusion of space

The illusion of space in a two dimensional image relies on just a few basic principles. Most of them are so obvious that people overlook them, but used in conjunction with each other they produce powerful illusions of three dimensional space.
a. Shapes and lines that overlap others give the illusion of being in front of them.
b. Larger shapes tend to be in front of smaller shapes.
c. Visible texture or pattern brings a shape forward, lack of them makes it recede.
d. Tonal contrast comes forward in visual space, lack of tonal contrast recedes.
e. Saturated or strong colours tend to come forward in space, neutralised or dull colours tend to recede.
f. Sharp, crisp edges will appear forward of soft or blurred edges.

It is not always the case that all of these effects operate together in the same image. Provided two or three of them are working together they will create an illusion of three dimensional space. Sometimes there may be something happening visually to contradict the space. For example, it may be that you have a bright red house in the distance in a landscape, this goes against statement 'e'. But the shape of the house is likely to be small, it may be overlapped by other shapes in the foreground, its edges are likely to be less sharp than other edges in the foreground and there may be little tonal contrast between the house shape and other colours around it. All these effects will combine to make the red colour of the house sit easily in the distance in the image.

Colour in space
I was always told that blue recedes and red comes forward. I think this comes from the fact that distant hills often appear blue. This effect is very weak in comparison to those described above. It is possible to paint a blue shape with crisp edges on a white background to provide tonal contrast, and make it appear visually in front of a red shape if the red is painted onto a grey background of similar tone to itself and with a blurred edge.

Viewpoint

A slight change in viewpoint can have a dramatic effect on a composition. The two paintings below show what I mean. They were painted at Agrigento in Sicily where there is a beautiful limestone ridge with a row of Greek temples set among olive and almond groves.

I spent a couple of days scrambling over the rocks of the ruined city wall searching out interesting compositions and eventually found these two. They are virtually the same view featuring the temple of Apollo, you can see the same rocks and boulders in each.

With one painted from ground level and the other from the top of the ruined wall the resulting compostitions are dramatically different, one emphasising the drama of the rocks and the other featuring the olive grove.

True rectangle

To check that a canvas is a true rectangle measure the diagonals and make sure they are equal as well as checking that the corners are right angles. If you have a tiled floor in your workspace this can be very useful in checking the angles in your canvas. Line up the stretcher with the tiles to check the right angles.

Line of sight

If you are working from a subject in front of you, set up your painting so that it is next to your subject in your line of vision. This will help you transfer angles and proportions to the canvas.

Setting out your paintng equipment

Take the trouble to set out your working materials, easel, palette, etc. in such a way that you can be physically relaxed while working. If you have to bend or strain to reach your paints or to see your subject round the side of your easel then this makes it more difficult to concentrate and will affect the outcome of your work.

Life room

When working from the life model, do not do as most students do and stay in one place in the room whatever pose the model takes. Take the trouble to walk round the model until you find the aspect that is most visually interesting for you. It may be that from one viewpoint the light is particularly interesting or the forms are dramatic or subtle, or from another the pose is more clearly understood.

Subject matter

When looking for a subject for a composition, make sure that you are in some way visually excited by it. Your finished work will only excite the viewer if in some way it excited you. Look for a subject that has a quality of colour that you like, or wonderful textures, interesting shapes, startling light or space or atmosphere, or an extraordinary image. If you know what excites you about your subject you are far more likely to communicate this to the viewer.

Changing scale

When transferring a composition from a sketch to a larger painting surface it is important to make sure they are the same proportions. There is a simple way to make sure that this is the case.

Take the sketch and place it in one corner of the larger surface so that the edges of both sheets extending from the corner are aligned. Place a straight edge from this corner through the opposite corner of the sketch. Extend this diagonal across the larger surface. A horizontal and vertical line drawn from any point on this diagonal to the edges of the larger surface will enclose a rectangle the same proportions as the sketch.

You can also use this principle to decrease the scale of any rectangle whilst keeping its proportions the same

Re-use solvents

If you use a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit to clean your brushes when painting in oils, allow the dirty solvent to stand in a container for a week or so. The paint will settle out eventually and the solvent can be poured off and re-used.

Drawing from photos

When drawing from a photograph turn the photo and the drawing upside down to check your progress. This sounds crazy but really works. In inverting both images you are able to see them as abstract arrangements of shapes and it becomes much easier to spot anything that is out of proportion or wrongly positioned.

Shade your work

When painting outdoors, shade your painting from direct light . If you do this then you will intensify the colours to match your subject and when you view the picture indoors it will look bright and fresh. If you paint outdoors with strong light on your work you will tend to use duller colours in the work, and only notice this when you view the picture indoors.

Representing textures

When representing a textured surface pay particular attention to its edges. The quality of an edge carries as much visual information about texture as the surface itself. You can demonstrate this by drawing two patches of an identical texture. If you give one patch a hard jagged edge and the other a soft woolly edge you will find that the identical textures now seem to represent different surfaces.

Mirror image

If you want a fresh view of your painting look at it using a mirror. This reverses the image and you are able see it as though for the first time. It helps you identify anything that needs adjustment.

Choice or colours

I was fortunate to have been taught to mix colour using the colour circle and the principle of opposite colours neutralising each other. For years I used only six pure colours and white to mix most of the colours I needed, proud of the fact that I could mix almost any colour I needed from this simple palette. Then someone pointed out that I was using  expensive primary colours to mix browns and greys that could be made from cheaper earth colours. Now I have added a large tube of burnt umber to my palette.