All About Color: More In Depth Techniques of Color (Part 2)

If you haven't read Part 1 please go here.
 
In this Part 2 of "All About Color" I will be referring to figure painting quite a bit because that's my primary focus.  These practices can be used in any type of painting and drawing--even with colored pencils, and especially with other types of paint (acrylic, watercolor and gouache).

Tips For Your Palette and Swatches

A very helpful practice when setting up your palette is to start with white on the left and work clockwise from there into your warm hues.  Then continuing clockwise, work into your cool hues eventually ending with your darkest on the right.  Only load paints onto your palette that you will be using for your painting so you don't waste any, and it gives you more room to mix.  When you make swatches label them with the colors you used so it'll be easier to recreate that hue later on.  Also, when creating your swatches for a painting try to change it up a little bit here and there.  For example, if you always use sap green to add to a flesh tone when creating a shadow, instead try veridian green.  It's a little cooler than sap green, so it'll most likely add a little more depth.

Creating An Underpainting

An underpainting, also called a grisaille (pronounced griz-eye), is a technique that focuses on the values of your subject more than on the color.  That part comes later in the form of glazing and scumbling.  I'm not going to get into glazing and scumbling in this post though, but I do want to discuss the underpainting a bit.

For the underpainting it is traditional to use burnt sienna and burnt umber, or black and white.  As the artist you would start by creating a full range of values using the hues you've chosen (I used burnt sienna and burnt umber for this one).  Once your drawing is complete and you're ready to paint you will focus solely on the values of your subject.  Begin with the darkest value and block in all the shadows.  Personally, once this is done I move straight to the lightest value and begin blocking it in.  Most people say to move a couple steps at a time from dark to light, but I find that by doing both extremes first you will get a ton of value transition just by mixing a mid-value in between the light and dark.  Of course, for the lights you add white, but for the darks and really darks you use the burnt umber.  If you need to achieve a very deep dark try adding a little bit of french ultramarine to your burnt umber.

Burnt sienna and burnt umber are both earth tones in the brown family, so when you create an underpainting you are actually creating a monochromatic painting (or drawing if you're using colored pencils).  Since an underpainting is monochromatic you can actually create it using any color you choose.  Just remember, if you use blue then after glazing color onto it your painting will still have a cool feel.  If you use red your painting will still have a very, possibly overly warm feel.  This is the reason most painters stick to a neutral brown color scheme for the underpainting.

Using Black vs Mixing a Dark Value

In my last post about color I mentioned that most artists don't use actual black--we mix a dark brown, like burnt umber, with a blue, like french ultramarine to create a dark color that's near black.

The following is a swatch I made to illustrate this practice:

Oh, Flesh!  How I Love Thee!

Let's talk about flesh tones for a minute.  If you're a painter you can buy tubes of flesh tone paint.  DO NOT USE THIS!!  It's too pink, and it's too difficult to correct.  Mix your own flesh tones using a base color of white, a touch of red (I use cadmium red), and a touch of yellow (again, cadmium yellow).  You can add more red if you want it to be warmer, add more yellow if it's too pale or pink, and add more white if you go a little overboard with the yellow and red.

When you mix your flesh tones you need to mix a light, medium, and dark so that you cover at least 3 values of the skin.  You can customize and add more values later on while painting.  To create a darker value of your base skin tone you can add alizarin crimson, or follow the steps outlined in the next section regarding complementary colors.  Adding alizarin crimson will give the flesh tone a bit of a cooler feel, and therefore cause it to recede.  In my swatch set below I have created 3 values, but it doesn't end there.  As I am painting I will add cadmium yellow to certain areas in order to warm it a bit, and I'll add more sap green, or possibly even burnt sienna to the shadows to cool them off a little and push them back.  These 3 values are simply a starting point.

Creating Shadows On Flesh

Since flesh is basically pink, which is a tint of red, the complementary color is going to be green.  The best way to create shadows in any painting is by mixing a color with some of it's complement.  Adding gray to create a shade will muddy up your work and make it look flat, whereas mixing a color with it's complement will hold true to the color scheme and add more dimension.  So, for skin you will want to use your dark tone that you created in the beginning and add some green.  I use sap green because it is a transparent color.  Add as much as it takes to create that shade you're looking for.

Warm Spots On The Figure

There are areas that are inherently warmer when painting the figure.  The spots include joints like the elbow, knee and ankle.  Other warm spots are the pubic areas of your subject.  In order to create the warmer tones needed for these areas you simply take your lighter flesh tone and add just a tiny touch of red.  If you're painting wet-on-wet you can even add the red directly to the surface of the painting.

Another thing I would like to mention is that there are other colors seen on the figure.  There are greens and violets from blood under the skin.  There can be reflected light from the surrounding setup.  You may even want to shine a specific colored light on the subject to add to the effect.  Keep an eye out for anomalous color. 

How Does This Apply To Other Genres of Painting?

The same technique applies to all forms of painting.  In landscape painting you will want to watch for variation in the value of every color.  For example, if a tree has green leaves then you will automatically have two values--a light and a dark for shadows.  So, based on what I said a little further up, how would we create the dark?  That's right!  By adding red.  Remember, mixing equal parts of a set of complements typically results in a muddy brown, so to preserve your color harmony and scheme you would want to add the red sparingly until you get that shade you're looking for.  If it's too warm try using alizarin crimson instead.  It's a shade of red, but it's cooler than cadmium red.  After you have your two initial values you will want to mix at least one or two more values in between your already light and dark.  Now the light has become the value for your highlights, and the dark is your shadows.  The values in between will be your base color for the leaves.

What Should I Do Next?

Experiment with different color harmonies that can be found in Part 1 of this topic.  Ask yourself, does looking at these two colors make my eyes jump?  Consider how it looks like the colors are jumping when you see red and green directly beside each other.  This effect is called visual vibration and it's something that you want to steer clear of when creating art.  It's not pleasant to look at and people tend to walk away more quickly when they see this.  Is this color too warm or too cool?  Do I have enough value shift to create a dynamic piece, or does it look flat?  And always keep in mind that cool colors recede into the background while warm colors come to the foreground.