Sight-reading is the musician's skill for reading and playing music they may not have seen before. One way to learn sight-reading is to sing the notes of randomly selected phrases. We can learn to see and identify color using a similar method, but with seeing and naming rather than seeing and singing.
Artists often have problems mixing a color they're looking at, especially if it's neutralized. Add to that, the same color distributed over a large area will appear differently in selected parts of that area depending upon light, shadow and other colors reflecting within it. For example, our eyes will see multiple colors on a red car parked under a large magnolia tree on a sunny, Spring afternoon. We might not see any of the original red color formulated by the factory who painted the car.
If we can learn to sight-read color, we can eliminate the guessing game from our color mixing process. Try this little exercise:
- Look around you and locate a large area painted a single color.
- Curl your index finger so that it touches your thumb, forming a little peephole about 3/4 inch in diameter. (We'll call this an isolator.)
- Close one eye, extend your hand about half arm's length from your face and with your open eye look through the isolator at any area of the solid color. Stare for at least five seconds.
- Now, move your isolator a few feet in any direction and stare at that area for at least five seconds.
- Compare the two areas.
Now, here's where we get into trouble, but not if we compare according to hue, value and intensity. For this week's tip, we'll compare just hue. Next week we'll compare value with hue, then intensity with hue and value.
You know that hue is a color's name. The twelve major hues are yellow, yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, red, red-violet, violet, blue-violet, blue, blue-green, green and yellow-green. Using only one of the twelve hue names listed, identify the hue you see through your isolator in each of six areas you find of something painted a single color. Hint: the hues you see might not be the color you think it is.
Do this exercise at least once every day, the more often the better.
Happy Sight-reading,
Dianne
P.S. We can find clarity by simplifying.
P.P.S. If something concerning composing paintings is bugging you, such as proportion, perspective, selecting and placing or anything at all, send me an email and I'll give it a go in a future letter.
