Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium (26 page)

Developing awareness of the role color plays in enlivening your darks is not just a means to an end. It is also much more fun than always using black. Many of us became painters out of love of mixing colors. Why pass up an opportunity to invent your own darks?

TREVOR CHAMBERLAIN,
EVENING, HERTFORD BASIN
, 1993
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
7 × 10 INCHES (18 × 25 CM)

Trevor Chamberlain takes care to give even his deepest darks a color identity. As a result, they are an integral part of the image.

Taking care to integrate your neutral
colors into the overall palette will add layers of depth and meaning to your work. In general, we think of neutral colors as those that have no definite identity. They are neither here nor there: not red, not yellow, not blue. We might define neutrals as the grays and browns we make when we mix all three primaries together. Thinking of landscape subjects, this calls to mind rocks, tree trunks, and branches; sand, clouds, and shadows also often qualify. But, in fact, most of the visual world is actually composed of neutrals. Grays and browns have all three primaries in
nearly equal proportions,
but the majority of the rest of the colors in the landscape involve at least a little red, yellow,
and
blue.

Imagine a grassy field in late spring. Green is surely the dominant color, but if you use a pure spectrum green, made of only blue and yellow, it will look artificial, like cheap plastic turf. You will probably want to add a little red to get it to look like it comes from this planet. The green will still dominate, but “neutralizing” the color a bit by adding its complement creates an earthier hue.

What color are the neutrals?
When a gray or brown is called for in a painting, consider giving it a noticeable color identity or temperature. Since neutrals like gray and brown are made up of all three primaries, it would be easy to let one of the component colors dominate just a bit. Alternatively, you could let all three remain visible by not mixing them too thoroughly. The resulting colors are clearly neutral, but the viewer is invited to do some of the work of mixing the components.

Choosing colors that are already present in the painting for your neutrals keeps them integrated in the scene. They should look like part of the same world you have been describing all along. Instead of automatically reaching for Payne’s gray and burnt umber, try using the red, yellow, and blue that are already at work on the page. The two quite different paintings on
these pages
both benefit from the coherence that comes from mixing the neutrals from the more intense colors that are used elsewhere on the page.

In this detail of
Socks
it is clear that, nominally, these are white socks, but the warm and cool component colors remain clearly visible. Likewise, the “gray” background reveals how it was mixed.

MARY WHYTE,
SOCKS,
2010
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
13⅜ × 14¾ (34 × 37 CM)

The rich, dark background in this portrait appears very casual, but care has been taken to vary the color temperature. The darks are never merely dark neutrals.

ERIC WIEGARDT,
ILWACO SAILBOAT,
2009
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
18 × 24 INCHES (46 × 61 CM)

Here the artist leaves the components of his neutrals visible on the page, rather than mixing them into simple gray or brown. When we see those same colors elsewhere in the painting, they resonate with our expectations.

ISKRA JOHNSON, STUDY FOR
FROM ONE TREE
, 2003
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
5 × 6 INCHES (13 × 15 CM)

The potent pinks are surprising as the color of leaves, and they might seem unlikely out of context. But the artist has used the intense component colors as the basis for all her mixes, and the result is completely believable.

MARC FOLLY,
CHANTIER
, 2001
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
9½ × 12¼ INCHES (24 × 31 CM)

Composition plays the major role in describing space in this industrial landscape. Marc Folly makes optimum use of dramatic linear perspective to locate the various elements relative to one another. The converging diagonals make us feel almost physically drawn into the trough, which takes up the entire distance from foreground to back. All the other features of the scene are squeezed into a shallow strip of territory at the far end, which goes even further to emphasize the cavernous foreground.

When composing
Gasworks,
below, for example, it was clear to me from the start that the arrangement of shapes would not be sufficient to describe the distance between the foreground and background. Recognizing that issue in advance and planning a solution were matters of awareness, rather than technique. Once I made a plan, I was able to shift the process from one set of skills (awareness) to the other (technique). Having done this, I could mix colors, adjust values, and apply strokes with a clear purpose.

TOM HOFFMANN,
GASWORKS,
2010
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
9 × 13 INCHES (23 × 33 CM)

There is meant to be considerable space between the rusty gasworks structures and the skyline in this scene, but both elements rest on the same horizontal line, which could compromise the feeling of depth. Since placement alone was not going to create the desired illusion, relative value, color, and complexity were adjusted to contribute to the sense of space.