Watercolor Painting for Dummies (30 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
You can balance any of the elements, but balancing color needs a little more attention. I talk a lot about color in Chapter 5 and define the properties of color as hue, value, temperature, and intensity. Each of these aspects of color can help you achieve balance.
You can’t actually weigh colors, but depending on how you use them, some colors are heavy and some are light. You have to go by how the viewer will react to the color. (
Hue
names the color: red, yellow, blue, and all the others.)
How important a color is in the painting and how much attention it attracts determines how much it weighs. Red, for instance, is always attention getting and associated with danger through cultural teachings, so consider red a heavy color. A little dab of red can weigh as much as a big bunch of a light, airy yellow. Yellow often seems visually light, but a bright yellow can grab attention in a hurry, in which case it has more weight.
Next time you walk down the grocery aisles, notice the colors on labels and packaging. Marketing experts use colors that attract buyers’ attention. You can use the same colors to give weight to your painting. Just remember to balance them with some calmer colors so the eye has some resting areas too.
Check out Figure 6-3. Yellow and red are both attention-grabbing colors, but the larger area of yellow in this figure is balanced by a smaller area of red.
Intensity
refers to the brightness of the color. A more intense color carries more weight visually than a less intense or dull color. A dab of chartreuse balances against a big area of drab olive green in Figure 6-4.
Figure 6-3:
Yellow and red balance each other if used in the right proportions.
Figure 6-4:
Balance your painting by pairing different intensities of color.
In Chapter 5, I tell you how you can divide the color wheel in half to see warm colors — reds, yellows, and oranges — on one side, with cool colors — blues, greens, and purples — on the other. Generally, warms are the color of fire, and cools are the colors of water. To add to the confusion, each color can be biased toward a warm or cool color on the color wheel, which I explain in detail in Chapter 5. Purple, for example, can be more red, so warmer, or more blue, so cooler. The warm or cool feel to a color determines its temperature. When you understand color temperature, you can balance it in your painting. A painting can be dominantly cool with a contrast of warm or vice-versa. If you choose to use only warm colors, the painting may not feel balanced. You can also use temperature in shadows. If an object is warm, it casts a cool shadow. The red apple casts a blue shadow.
The warm red drapes in the painting in Figure 6-5 balance the cooler colors in the rest of the room.
Figure 6-5:
The warm red balances out the cool blues and purples in this painting.
Balancing temperature is an area that has no set rules that I know of, so feel free to experiment with warm/cool balance. Also, try keeping a dominant temperature, making the painting mostly cool or mostly warm.
Value,
where the color is on the range of light to dark, can be balanced too. Darks and lights can carry weight in a picture — darks more than lights. If all the dark area is on one side of the picture, it may feel heavy on that side. The value of the dark sky balances the value of the dark tree in the foreground in the painting in Figure 6-6.
Notice that nothing is really going on in the sky area, but by adding the darker value, it directs the eye back into the light area of the painting. Value is independent of color. The value can be dark blue or dark green. The eye will see value before it sees color.
Figure 6-6:
Dark colors on opposite sides of the painting keep the scene balanced.
Change the values often. It’s too easy to stick to
middle values
(gray or what falls between light and dark). Lights and darks make the painting sing. The lightest light touching the darkest dark within the painting will be the center of interest. It’s an extreme value change (or
contrast,
which is discussed later in this chapter). An entertaining painting displays the entire toolbox of values and uses a value pattern to lead the eye around the painting. And finally, the values need to be balanced. It’s a recipe of a pinch of this and pound of that and a little of the middle. You can find out more about value in Chapter 5.
You make many
transitions
or changes in art. Your painting goes from one thing to the other: blue to green, light to dark, big to small, cool to warm, and so on. How you make these changes provides new principles of design. The three main ways of making changes within your art are:
Contrast:
A big or abrupt change
Gradation:
A small, gradual change
Harmony:
A medium change
I hope you’re having a quiet afternoon to sit back, sip tea, and read this book. If, however, a fire engine screeches to a halt outside your door with a siren blasting, that would be an attention-getting contrast.
Contrast
is putting two strikingly different items close together. An abrupt change is always attention getting.
Figure 6-7 provides an example of contrast in color. This picture is a large area of dark blue with a small, intense yellow butterfly at the bottom. The bright yellow is a surprise against the dark blue; it contrasts with it. The yellow is intense, light, and clean. The blue is dark, heavy, and textured. Surprise! Contrast.
Figure 6-7:
A neon yellow butterfly provides contrast on a page of dark blue.
To choose contrasting colors, use your color wheel (check the Cheat Sheet at the front of the book for a sample). Colors that live close beside one another on the wheel are somewhat related and don’t contrast with each other. The biggest contrast comes from juxtaposing complementary colors — those opposite each other on the wheel. The yellow of the butterfly is not the complement of the blue (that would be orange), but next to blue’s complement, so it’s a
split complement.
Split complement schemes make for interesting contrast; the colors vibrate with energy.
Of course, intensity and value also need to be the right recipe. If all the colors are neutralized (toward gray) or darkened or lightened, they may not contrast dramatically.
Because contrast attracts attention, it’s a good thing to use in the center of interest. Contrast works with any element. One pointed triangle in a painting of all curvilinear shapes is contrast. A bit of bright white in a low-key (mainly dark) painting is contrast. Abrupt change of any element is contrast.
As in life, contrast must be used sparingly. Too much contrast in your picture creates chaos, just as the siren and hubbub become annoying if they continue.
